1 20 38 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/938f6f2472711f9912b0822a2e68aac0.pdf 6335d8f431ff3f801f2daa2f9f765041 PDF Text Text The FALL Santa F e 2002 Library Darwm Understanding Our Fellow Animals St. John’s College S?nta Fe NM 2 0 0 1 �On Darwin he name Charles Darwin carries a lot of baggage for us. It’s T difficult to find the man—the great scientist—under the popu­ lar misconceptions about evolution, the emotional debates that have raged for decades over the place of humans in the Darwin was born ingrand 1809, scheme the fifthofofthings six children of his physician father in and artis­ post-Darwin, the movement some tic mother. As a childAmerican he collected pebbles, plants, bird eggs, and shells; he was elementary and high schools to teach “creation­ STJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE slower than his sistersism, in school-what ’d symbols politely call today late bloomer. “The ” the Darwin we fish above car abumpers, the concept school as a means of education to me was applied simply atoblank, ” Charles wrote to his of social Darwinism everything from anthropology to business. brother. His father complained: “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching.” Sent to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine, Darwin devel­ oped an interest in sea creatures and microscopic beings, even discovering that the polyzoon ova of/Z/zrz/zz had cilia. He failed to develop any interest in anatomy, however, and was sickened by watching surgery performed without anesthesia. Dad sent him off to Cambridge in hopes that he would study for the clergy. There, he spent three years and amassed a wonderful collection of beetles in addition to learning bird taxidermy. In 1831, when Darwin was 22, a family friend arranged an unpaid internship for him—as a naturalist aboard the HMSBeagle. The captain, a believer in phrenology (the study of the shape of the head and features), hesitated to take Darwin along because he was worried about his large brow and nose. He relented, and the young man spent the next five years traveling 40,000 miles to lands around the globe. Carrying a book of Milton’s poetry in his pocket, he rode horseback through the south Amazon jungle. He watched phosphorescent plankton, formulated theories about coral reefs, observed tortoises and finches, searched for fossils, and docu­ mented hundreds of species of plants and animals. Back in England, Darwin married, fathered ii children, and retired to live like a country gentleman, his inheritance assuring a comfortable life for his family. The material he gathered on his voyage proved enough to keep him busily thinking for many years. Evolution wasn’t a concept introduced by Darwin, but he did describe a mechanism for it to happen—natural selection. His deep analysis of the natural world is shown in Origin ofthe Species by Means ofNatural Selection or the Preser­ vation ofFavored Races in the Stragglefitr Life. The book was published in 1859 and went through five editions in his lifetime. Darwin’s importance—and the source of all the hubbub—stems from how his theories bring humankind into the same fold as other species, into the natural world. In this issue of The College, wc look at some St. John’s alumni who spend a lot of their time thinking about or working with animals-from the fairly common interest in dogs to the more exotic devotion to elephants. In the tradition of Darwin, they are fascinated by the inner workings of the lives of animals and find that their com­ munion with other species somehow enriches their understanding of their own. -BG The College (usps 018-750) is published four times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, md and Santa Fe, nm. Known office of publication: Public Relations 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, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, md 21404-2800. Annapolis 410-295-5554 b-goyette@sjca.edu Barbara Goyette, editor Sussan Borden, assistant editor Susanne Ducker, graphic designer Advisory Board John Christensen Harvey Flaumenhaft Roberta Gable Kathryn Heines Pamela Kraus Joseph Macfarland Eric Salem Brother Robert Smith Santa Fe 505-984-6104 classics@mail.sjcsf.edu Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor Advisory Board Alexis Brown Grant Franks David Levine Margaret OdeU John Rankin Ginger Roherty Tahmina Shalizi Mark St. John Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �{Contents} PAGE 12. DEPARTMENTS a FROM THE BELL TOWERS Great Books for Tough Times William Pastille muses on the place of the college in the larger community, in light of this fall’s events. PAGE l6 Hearts of Animals PAGE la Alumni who work with animals explore what we can understand about dogs, horses, elephants, and other species. PAGE The events of 9/11 Barr and Buchanan: St. John’s and Beyond Santa Fe swordplay In New York for a St. John’s musical New tutors Announcements Miss von Oppen honored Remembering Bill O’Grady Rebound math Catastrophe summer Santa Fe community day 10 LETTERS 11 BOOK REVIEW 20 William Alba’s An Oz Album Job’s Life Through New Eyes Robert Sacks’ translation of Job, along with a commentary, brings new insights into the mysterious story. • • • • • • • • • • • ag ALUMNI NOTES ALUMNI PROFILES 31 Jim Rooney (A74) is a homeowner helper 34 David Maclaine (SF74) - an almostmillionaire PAGE 16 36 Samantha Alderson (A86) conserves art PAGE 22 objects of the past Much Ado About Nothing 39 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION AWARDS 41 CAMPUS LIFE Eva Brann’s trilogy covers the imagination, time, and non-being. PAGE Not your usual summer jobs 4a ALUMNI association NEWS 26 Tale of Two Homecomings Alumni Art Show 44 OBITUARIES 46 ALUMNI VOICES PAGE aa Alumni love to return to campus for seminars, prank reprises, and other fun stuff. How basketball can soothe the soul. 48 ST, JOHN’S FOREVER ON THE COVER Charles Darwin Illustration by David Johnson �<2 {From the Bell Towers} Alumni Response 9/11 September ii was a difficult day on the campuses of St. John’s. Students found out about the news from the few televisions around, from the Internet, from radios set up in the coffee shops, from their friends; col­ lege officials in Annapolis and Santa Fe called everyone together to tell what was known and try to answer questions. Phone banks were set up so that students could call home, and counselors were sum­ moned. “We at the college are a community,” said Annapolis president Chris Nelson, “and we have available to us the ben­ efits of community.” Classes were held so that students might gather and discuss events; with most students far from home, the presence of their friends and tutors proved reassuring. Some classes opted to proceed with their scheduled tutorial tasks-“They found comfort in close, finite work that was free of uncertainly,” said David Levine, dean in Santa Fe. Community dinners and services of mourning were held on each campus on the Friday following the attacks so that students, faculty, and staff could acknowledge together the tremendous loss to the nation and express personal sadness. In Santa Fe, David Levine noted that students would “never read a political science book in the same way again,” while in Annapolis, President Nelson cited passages from Homer’s Odyssey that had been read that week by freshmen and noted that Odysseus’ suffering and griefboth in his reactions to battle and in his dilemma about the suitors-must seem more imme­ diate to all of us now. Santa Fe alumnus Matthew Lippart, a ''Now, more than ever, dialogue must continue. aooi graduate, talked at the dinner about his brother and two friends who worked at the World Trade Center. After not talking to them for months, he had spoken with them by phone the previous night. The tragedy, he said, had made him think about the importance of staying connected with loved ones. “You shouldn’t be taking people for granted,” he told those assembled. In Santa Fe, a weekend’s worth of activities planned for the September 15 inauguration of president John Balkcom were cancelled. Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist and diplo­ mat, had been scheduled to speak on the topic of “The Great Books” on Thursday. Even though travel was almost impossible that week, he drove a car from Texas to Mexico, then took a small plane to New Mexico, then drove to the cam­ pus to keep his engagement. He spoke movingly about the importance of reading and the significance of the college’s program. When asked why he {The College- Flags everywhere, including THE SJC COFFEE SHOP. made such an extraordinary effort to reach the campus, Fuentes said, “Now, more than ever, dialogue must continue.” Students on both campuses felt called to act in some way. Many donated blood; others began to organize to raise money for relief efforts. In a very Johnny-like way, they questioned their place at the college, and the college’s role in the world. Maya Alapin, a junior from Canada, wrote in The Gadfly: “We have all been catapulted into what we could probably deem the most real identity crisis of our lives. What are we to do? And why weren’t we doing anything before? We feel guilt that our now seemingly selfish St. John’s pursuits have no ‘real life’ benefits, and that people doing the dirty work... have probably never read Plato or learned about a conic section.” Several students, including Alapin, met with a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, who reported their conversation in an article that was published in papers across the country. St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } By the afternoon of September II, alumni began to try to con­ tact their friends in New York and Washington. The listservs on the Internet proved to be a way for people to check in with each other and to let others know they were safe. Alumni in the reserves and on active duty are participating in the assaults on Afghanistan; others have found their lives affected in ways they could not have anticipated. Bart Lee (A68), a lawyer who is an amateur radio operator, served as the night shift super­ visor for the New York City Red Cross Radio during the week following the attack. The Red Cross managed about a dozen shelters 24/7 via ham radio, he says. “The cell phones, land­ lines, and internet connections didn’t work or were spotty at best...My earliest traffic per­ sonally handled was an emer­ gency evacuation order, and traffic at that level was all too common in the first couple of days.” One recent alumna, Sylvaine Rameckers (Aoi) had just fin­ ished an internship with NBC Dateline at Rockefeller Center in New York. On September la, her supervisor, a senior pro­ ducer, called and asked if she’d like to come back to the net­ work full time. “That first week, we worked round the clock,” says Rameckers. “The pace has been incredibly intense. At first, we would interview, get footage, try to document what was happen­ ing, and get pieces on the air the very same night...By the time a month had passed, things were a bit calmer, but it’s still an intense pressure to get the news out. I feel like I’m at boot camp. I feel disconnect­ ed from what has happened, but I do feel like we’re doing something to help.” Another alumnus, John Sifton (A96), had just returned �{From the Bell Towers} from Afghanistan when the Trade Center was attacked and the political and social situa­ tions in that country suddenly became of importance to everyone in America. Sifton wrote an article for the Sep­ tember 30 issue of the New York Times Magazine, “A Last Road Trip Through Premod­ ern, Postmodern Afghanistan.” As a human rights attorney and humanitar­ ian aid worker, Sifton had trav­ eled the country and worked in desert areas, bargaining with local Taliban leaders for the opportunity to document con­ ditions. “I was just fascinated by the realness of it all,” he said in the article. “You look out an office window, and you see a displaced family living in a bombed-out school, sleeping on the balcony and cooking Barr and Buchanan: St. John’s AND Beyond “Radicals are a dime a dozen among us, but radicals who suc­ ceed in imprinting their ideas and ideals on other human beings and transmitting them to future generations by reshaping actual institutions are few indeed,” says William W. McNeill in the Foreword to a new book about the radicals St. John’s knows best; New Pro­ gram founders Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan. The book. Radical Visions: Stringfellow Barr, Scott Buchanan, and Their Efforts on behalfofEducation and Pol­ itics in the Twentieth Century, is by Charles A. Nelson (A45) and represents the culmination of an effort that began as early as 1994, when Nelson started col­ Carrying On Ambassador Carlos Fuentes TRAVELED TO SaNTA Fe TO SPEAK ABOUT THE GREAT BOOKS. some birds they caught, doves. This is their life. They can’t change the channel.” lecting material for two books commemorating the looth birthdays of Buchanan and Barr. Those books were pub­ lished in 1995 and 1997. Researching the hves of the two men who started the great books program at the college in 1937, Nelson became interested in their friendship. (Barr was outgoing and multi-talented, a voluminous writer and ener­ getic speaker. Buchanan was quieter, with a “quicksilver quality” to his ideas and con­ versations. The two were friends for life, having met at Oxford in the igaos.) Nelson himself knew both men during their early days at the college since he served as administra­ tive assistant to Barr while a student. In the new book. Nelson dis­ cusses Barr and Buchanan’s early collaborations and their work at St. John’s. In the sec­ ond half of the book, he lays out what they did after they left the college in 1947-both had a sincere interest in world gov­ ernment, which they conceived {The Colleges?. Following the attacks, students have tried to carry on with their work. In Santa Fe, stu­ dents who wanted to learn more about Islam joined a study group led by tutor Michael Wolfe(SF94), who con­ centrated on Islam while earn­ ing a master’s degree in the his­ tory of religions at the University of Virginia. “Unfor­ tunately, oftentimes the only source of information people get on Islam is through events like these,” said Wolfe. “It tends to produce a distorted view of what Islam is about. In the study group, I hope we can help to distinguish between Islamic terrorism and more tra­ ditional views of Islam.” The college also collaborated with the Council on International Relations and presented a lec of as dependent on economic development of the Third World. Buchanan spent time in Israel, where he was interested in the cooperative living of the kibbutzim. Barr went to India and met with leaders who want­ ed to use an agrarian society model to benefit the people and make the best use of the land there. Nelson speculates that the desire to transform society manifested in their John ’5 College ■ Fall 2001 } 3 ture, “The Islamic Perspective of Current Events,” by Fethi Benhalim. At the Friday night lecture the week following 9/ii, Har­ vey Flaumenhaft, dean in Annapolis, took a moment to talk about why it is important for the college to continue nor­ mally. “Our work, at this col­ lege, does in fact, in various ways, make us better able to defend our country,” he said. “And it also makes us better able to preserve what’s best about it, and even to improve it; but above all, the work that we do here helps to make our country worth defending.” The title of the lecture, by Neal Weiner (A64), was “Generosi­ ty, Truth and Tolerance.” — Reported by Marissa Morrison in Santa Fe and Barbara Goyette in Annapolis. Charles Nelson (A45) shows DAUGHTER JaNET BeRGGREN (A72) HIS EARLIER BOOK ABOUT Buchanan. work at St. John’s carried over into the political realm later in their lives. Radical Visions is published by Bergin & Garvey, Green­ wood Publishing Group. A review will appear in a subse­ quent issue of The College. �4 Santa Fe Swordplay The newly completed Student Activities Center in Santa Fe played host to a regional fenc­ ing tournament for over 50 fencers from as far away as Amarillo, Tex. on September a8. A major tournament at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs was cancelled due to heightened security concerns following the tragedies of Sep­ tember II. James Odom, head coach of the High Desert Fenc­ ing Club in Santa Fe, decided to host a smaller, replacement tournament, giving half of the Heather Upshaw (SF04) WAITING TO FOIL AN OPPONENT. proceeds to the relief effort. St. John’s College donated the use of its gym. The tournament, along with a youth tournament held in town, raised $400 for the World Trade Center-911 Relief Fund. Swordplay has had an inevitable role in the history of the civilized world. Man has been poking stuff with sharp, pointy metal things long before he took the time to write great books-or any books for that matter. Sword duels continued to solve personal disputes until the end of the nineteenth cen­ {From the Bell Towers} tury (sort of like paper, scis­ sors, rock that really counts). Modern fencing as a sport con­ tinues the tradition and at least in form preserves the ceremony and prestige of swordplay from its aristocratic hey-day. The weapons used in fencing are foil, epee, and saber. Foil, by far the most popular, is a fast-paced point weapon used for poking, not slashing. Only the torso is a legal target. Epee (the author is an Epeeist at heart) is a slower-paced, men­ tally-oriented point weapon that has the whole body, even the toes, as a target. Saber is a curved, slashing weapon with everything above the waist a target. It originated from saber­ bearing cavalry charges and is fast and aggressive. The three weapons draw distinctly differ­ ent fencers. Saberists are usual­ ly short and angry. Epeeists are usually tall and relaxed. And foihsts are everybody else. Fencing bouts take place along a fourteen-meter strip. A bout between two fencers lasts, depending on the importance of the bout, either five or fif­ teen touches (not gashes. Mom) or until four or twelve minutes have elapsed. The point weapons have buttons that are depressed on the oppo­ nent, whereas saber blades are electrified (you really don’t want an explanation of how this works). There are two things fencing is not-dangerous or easy. Fenc­ ing is one of the safest contact sports. The blades are made of treated metal that among other things will break flat, reducing the already small chance of serious injury. And fencing is truly difficult. It doesn’t matter to me how many times you might have seen The Princess Bride. Skilled fencing resem­ bles playing good chess at a full sprint. The Santa Fe campus’ club, the Sexy Fencers (get it, SJCSF) has just this year gotten togeth- {The College Giving Regards to (Off-) Broadway About 100 New York City alum­ ni began their “getting back to normal” attempts on October 3, as they gathered for an evening at the theater-for a properly thoughtful, entertain­ ing, and inspirational show called The Spitfire Grill. The musical is based on the movie of the same name, written and directed by Lee David Zlotoff (A74). A Sundance Festival win­ ner, the movie was picked up for national distribution in 1996The college purchased seats in the Duke Theater on 42nd Street for New York alumni. The evening proved to be both a celebration of community- er to form an actual club, thanks to juniors with more dedication and organization than the author. Local coach and foil fencer Rob Madril, who happened to finish third in the recent tournament, instructs the team with help from talent­ ed tutor Krishnan Venkatesh. Representing St. John’s at the September 28th tourna­ ment were intrepid leader Eric Baldwin, intrepid lefty Jonathan Zecher, the dedicated and over-worked Erin Hanlon, sophomore talent Stephen Vorkoper, fellow transfer St John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } Lee Zlotoff(center) with Joe Boucher and Fielding Dupuy. Johnnies from every era seemed glad to see each other and spend time at a very St. John’s-related show-and great entertainment. The musical was first performed in Wiscon­ sin, where a writer/composer duo adapted the story of the lonely young woman, newly released from prison, who finds her way into the hearts of a group of small-town residents. After the performance, Zlotoff and James Valcq, who wrote the songs for the musi­ cal, talked with the alumni and answered questions about the production. “It was wonderful for the college to bring us all together,” said Zlotoff (who had traveled from LA for the event). “The play seemed to have the right kind of messages for us at this time, and we enjoyed meeting and talking with one another about it.” 4" Heather Upshaw, and 1. Indi­ vidual scores and rankings among the 33 foil fencers attending would not convey the satisfaction and personal pride that the Johnnies gained from simply competing. And hey, if Rob Madril places third, it was a tough meet. Any alumni still fencing are encouraged to contact the author by mail at the Santa Fe campus. I’d like to see what kind of fencer base we have in our community. -4 — BY Evan Hancock, SFoa �{From New Tutors The college welcomed nine new tutors thisfall. Joining the faculty IN Santa Fe:_____________ Martha Franks (SF78) earned a law degree from the University of New Mexico Law School. She clerked for Chief Judge Seth of the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, then practiced law in Washington, D.C. and Santa Fe, developing an expertise in environmental law. She also attended the Virginia Theologi­ cal Seminary. She is an attorney for the U.S. Department of the Interior. She taught a sopho­ more seminar first semester. John Gibson (SF88) is finish­ ing his PhD in the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Depart­ ment at Cornell (his disserta­ tion is “Dynamical Systems Models of the Turbulent Boundary Layer”). At Cornell he worked in the Computation­ al Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, managed the Graduate and Fac­ ulty Computational Research Facilities, and was an instruc­ tor in mechanical and aero­ space engineering. He also studies piano and vocal per­ formance. Patricia Greer has a BA from Notre Dame of Maryland, an MA from Johns Hopkins, and an MA from the St. John’s Graduate Institute. She received her PhD from the University of Virginia (her dis­ sertation was “The Net of the Mahabharata: Reading the Epic as Literature”). She lived in India, where she co-founded and ran a documentary film production unit, taught Eng­ lish, helped establish and administer the International Educational Institute, and was head of the International High School. She speaks Sanskrit, Tamil, and French. Ewan Harrison earned a BA in biology from the University of Cahfornia, San Diego, and the Bell Towers} an MS in Biology from the Uni­ versity of Michigan. He’s fin­ ishing up his PhD there (with a dissertation on “Mate Choice and Life History Evolution in Mexican Mollies”). He has taught at the University of Michigan and at Eastern Michi­ gan University. Jay Smith (SF77) received an MA in philosophy from Mar­ quette University and has been working toward his PhD from Fordham University. His disser­ tation explores our obligations to future generations. He has worked for the Environmental Protection Agency and has also worked for a range of interna­ tional organizations on projects in the South Pacific, Nepal, Somalia, Nairobi, and Fiji. Lise van Boxel earned a BA in political science from the University of Toronto and an MA from Boston College. She received her PhD in political science from the University of Toronto, with a dissertation titled “Revealing Perspectives: A Study of the Standard of Truth in Nietzsche’s Philoso­ phy.” She has taught at the Uni­ versity of Toronto and in a con­ tinuing education program modeled on St. John’s called Classical Pursuits. In Annapolis: Dylan Casey received a BS in physics and a BA in political theory from Michigan State University, and an MA in physics and a PhD in experi­ mental particle physics from the University of Rochester. He has designed, constructed, and tested equipment to be used at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He is interested in the nature of measurement, probability, and quantitative decision-making as these mani­ fest themselves in determining what are the smallest pieces of matter and how they interact and are related. Jeffrey Smith received a BA from Emory University with a double major in philosophy and political science, and a PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is completing a book on human nature in Rousseau’s Emile, which has been accepted for publication. His interest in community 5 development in Chicago led him to found and edit an annu­ al journal of urban affairs and to host a weekly radio program on which he interviewed com­ munity leaders and local politi­ cians about community issues (like the participation of gang leaders in the political process) and about innovative policy ini­ tiatives (like community devel­ opment banking). John Tomarchio received a BA in English from Columbia University and an MA and PhD in philosophy from the Catholic University of America, where his work focused on the relationship of the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas to that of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists. He has taught at Catholic University, in the Core Curriculum at Boston Universi­ ty, and at Villanova University. He has published articles on the metaphysics of Aquinas and on the computerized research methods that he used in doing his research and in producing the indices upon which it is based. Crash Proof: After years of the “Camp St. John's” entrance sign for the Santa Fe campus being dam­ aged REGULARLY BY ERRANT DRIVERS, ANEW (HOPEFULLY IMPENETRABLE) SIGN WAS FINALLY INSTALLED - AT A SAFER LOCATION, NoW ALL THAt’s NEEDED IS LIGHTING. PICTURED ARE MEMBERS OF THE CaMPUS PLANNING COM­ MITTEE, FROM left: TUTORS MiCHAEL RaWN, CHAIR; JuLIE ReAHARD; JaCQUES DuVOISIN (A80); Hans VON Briesen, director of Laboratories and past chair; Kathy Mizrahi, director of Housing and Residen­ tial Life; tutors Judith Adam and Mark Rollins; and student representative Christian Blood (SF02). {The College. 5f. John^s College ■ Fall 200/ } �{From the Bell Towers} 6 Announcements New Dorms Slated FOR Annapolis A confluence of factors led to crowding in the Annapolis cam­ pus dorms this fall. As a result, freshmen were assigned to triples in the largest rooms in Humphreys, and some former singles were made into doubles. Although total enrollment is only slightly above the opti­ mum of 460, a greater number of upperclassmen requested rooms on campus, leaving fewer rooms available for incoming freshmen. The largest landlord in Annapolis had changed some rental poli­ cies over the summer, and more apartments close to cam­ pus that had formerly been rented to Johnnies were being “upgraded” for the upscale market. The Campus Planning Com­ mittee (a group of faculty and administrators who examine physical plant issues and make building decisions) resurrected the perennial question of whether another dormitory should be built. Currently, there are enough dorm room spaces for about three-quarters of the students to live on-campus. Because improvement in off-campus housing availability is not likely, the committee decided to go ahead with plans for a new dorm. Student forums and a faculty discussion of the project brought up important issues: should the college sacri­ fice any more back-campus space to dorms? would a new dorm change the social pat­ terns of students? how about suites, or rooms with kitchens? During the coming semester, the committee will address the questions, find an architect, decide on a location, and secure permits. Projected date for the new dorm’s opening: in time for the Febbies who will arrive in January 2003. Shopping Benefit Alert OK-so the Internet has not proved itself to be the best place to buy furniture, find a job, make investments, or order groceries. But plenty of stuff is being sold online, and now there’s a way for shoppers at some of the best-known web sites to benefit St. John’s. GreaterGood.com has set up an online system for benefiting a number of charities and non­ profits. Here’s how it works: go to their site at www.greatergood.com, choose a cause (St. John’s!), click on Shop to visit sites like Barnes and Noble, Lands End, and Dell Computer. A percentage of your purchase will be donated to the collegeat no extra charge. New Vice President FOR Santa Fe Sought The college is conducting a search for a new vice president for the Santa Fe campus. The vice president, in partnership with the vice president on the Annapolis campus, helps supervise all areas of develop­ ment, including corporate and foundation relations, planned giving, annual giving, alumni relations, government rela­ tions, and public affairs. The advancement staff on both campuses work as a single team for advancing the national pro­ grams of the college, while pur­ suing and supporting local and regional programs of interest to each campus. Specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to major donor cul­ tivation and stewardship, devel­ opment and implementation of capital projects, participation in strategic planning, manage­ ment of staff, and maintaining local community and govern­ ment relations. The qualifications are a bachelor’s degree plus eight to ten years experience in advancement/development work with a major institution, preferably in higher education. The candidate must have exceptional communication and organizational skills. Also, he/she must have experience managing staff and volunteers, and in participating in annual fund and capital campaigns. Letters of interest along with a current resume should be sent to St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM, 87505-4599, Attention: Director of Personnel. Lower Rates for Student Loans A notefrom Caroline Chris­ tensen, director offinancial aid: Now is an excellent time for alumni to consolidate student loans-interest rates are the lowest in the history of federal student loans and with consoli­ dation a student can lock into these rates. Excellent informa­ tion is available at www.loanconsolidation.ed.gov. Miss von Oppen Honored Annapolis tutor Beate Ruhm von Oppen was honored by the Republic of Germany in Sep­ tember, when she was present­ ed with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, D.C. An authority on the German Resistance during World War 11, von Oppen grew up in Ger­ many, moved at 15 to Holland, where she attended high school, and then moved to Eng­ land, where she attended the University of Birmingham. During the war, she served with the British Foreign Office and later worked in the Royal Institute of International Affairs and on the research staff of Nuffield College, Oxford. After coming to the U.S., she was a member of the staff of the microfilming project of the American Historical Associa­ tion’s Committee for the Study of War Documents. Her translations include Konrad Adenaueher’s Memoirs. She is the editor of Documents on Germany under Occupation 045'54 and Religion and Resis­ tance to Nazism. She is also the {The Colleges?. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } Beate Ruhm von Oppen (right) Glenda Eoyang (SF76) WITH editor and translator of the wartime letters of Helmuth James von Moltke, published in German as Briefs ann Freya and in America and England as Letters to Freya, 1939-45. Moltke was a member of the German government staff who was executed just before the end of the war because of his opposition to the Nazis. Von Oppen has also recently edited and translated a second voL ume, this of letters from Moltke’s mother Dorothy to her family in South Africa, A Life in Germany. Ironically, Dorothy’s letters were written in English and had to be trans­ lated for publication in Ger­ many. The book awaits an Anglo-American publisher. Von Oppen has taught at St. John’s since i960. This fall she was made an honorary alumna by the St. John’s Alumni Asso­ ciation (see p. 40.) �{From the Bell Towers} Remembering Bill O’Grady Every year Philanthropia, the group of alumni volunteers who help the college with fundraising, looks for reunion class leaders who will bring members of their class together in common cause. When Kate Lufkin Day (A76) was asked to be a reunion class leader, she decided to bring her class together to give a gift to St. John’s in the name of a tutor who meant a great deal to them: the late Bill O’Grady. O’Grady, a tutor from 1970 to 1986 who taught on both campuses, was well known for his open heart, his poetic spir­ it, his commitment to students, and his love of the college. Stu­ dents assigned to his lab classes considered themselves lucky and called the class “poetry lab,” a reference to O’Grady’s ability to shed light on the lyri­ cal side of any subject. The class of ’76 felt particularly close to him. Having been freshmen early in his tenure, they shared fond memories of his classes-especially an O’Grady-Simpson freshman seminar and an O’Grady-von Oppen sophomore seminar. To honor the tutor they so well remember, the class will give a gift to the college’s O’Grady Fund, whose purpose is to provide money for stu­ dents on both campuses in times of emergency. The fund is used to help students who face unexpected needs. The fund could help a student afford a plane ticket in the event of a death in the family. If a parent loses a job, the fund could help the student buy books. When a financially-stretched student breaks a leg and can’t walk to an off-campus job, the fund could be used to help cover necessary expenses. Day herself came up with the idea for the fund shortly after William O’Grady (far left) at a Senior Oral in the 1970s. O’Grady’s death in 1986. The seeds of the idea were sown years ago, when Day was a friend of O’Grady’s in Santa Fe, where she lived after gradua­ tion as her husband. Bill Day {SF80), finished St. John’s. “I remember agonizing to Mr. O’Grady one day about how we could not afford to move back to Minnesota after my hus­ band’s graduation,” Day wrote in a letter to her class suggest­ ing they make the gift. “In typi­ cal fashion. Bill offered to lend us-no, give us-the money. T have much more than I need. Really. I’d be happy to help you out,’ is how I remember his words at the time.” Although Day and her husband did not have to take O’Grady up on his offer, his compassion and gen­ erosity have stayed with her. And it seems that his spirit of compassion and generosity is also alive among her class­ mates. So far, the class has responded with ii gifts totaling $20,970, and contributions continue to arrive. Day is pleased with the results. “It was certainly successful beyond anything I had hoped for,” she says. “Everybody who respond­ {The College -St ed seemed to really care about current students and their needs-and to remember keenly their own needs as students. I don’t know if current students realize this, but a lot of alumni really do care about their lives and want to help them make it through. We all know how hard it can be.” Rebound Math All basketball fans can rattle off the basic statistics of a game: field goals, free throws, rebounds, assists, turnovers, blocked shots, and fouls. But how many know about the working man’s stat? The trillionaire’s club? The plus/minus? Annapolis senior Randy Pennell can explain them all, now that he’s finished a Hodson Trust internship working in the statistics department for the Philadelphia 76ers. Pennell spent last summer in a small, cramped room in Philadelphia’s Spectrum gathering every kind of NBA statistic you can imagine for both teams and individual players. The working man’s stat? “That’s when a player gets something in every category in the box scores: shot attempt­ ed, shot scored, shot blocked, free throw, foul committed, turnover, etc.” explains Pennell. The trillionaire’s club? “It’s more or less the opposite-when a player gets a one and nine zeros.” Plus/minus, Pennell says, refers to the points scored by the team while a player is on the floor over the points scored by the oppos­ ing team while that player is on the floor. While Pennell sticks with real basketball rather than fantasy (he’s a Druid), the summer satisfied some basketball fantasies he never knew he had. He attended home games for the Eastern Con­ ference and NBA finals and met all of the Sixers, as well as Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. Pennell’s internship should prove helpful as he pursues a career in sports-writing. He’s already gotten a jump start: he published a series of human interest articles on the basketball playoffs in the Chester County Press while working for the Sixers. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } �8 {From the Bell Towers} and Grounds crew worked extra hours to accommodate the pipeline contract crew, “People stayed until nine o’clock many nights just in case the gas came back on, because they would need to re-light the pilot lights to start the water heating process,” said B&G Director Ted Gonzales. Without the use of gas apphances in the dining hall kitchen, Aramark adjusted the meal service to include veg­ etables, hamburgers, and hot dogs cooked outside on a char­ coal grill. Catastrophe Summer When my husband, tutor William Alba, and I moved onto the Santa Fe campus in July to take on the role of sen­ ior residents, we found it hard to contain our excitement. Our new position would provide a beautiful little apartment at the base of the mountains plus a chance to become more closely connected to the college we love. What could go wrong? We didn’t know then that we were moving onto campus just in time to experience Catastrophe Summer. A TWISTER BLOWS THROUGH CAMPUS Wilting plants SIGNAL GAS POISONING At the beginning of the sum­ mer, Grounds and Landscape Supervisor Pat McCue (SFGI83) started to worry about campus trees that were dying. A large cottonwood as old as the Santa Fe campus, which for decades had wel­ comed visitors at the parking circle, was dead. Nearby a tall ponderosa, nine pinon trees, and a number of chamisa bush­ es were all on their deathbed. “I couldn’t find any sign of disease,” said McCue. “I was sure it was some type of pollu­ tion.” He asked tutor Linda Wiener, an entomologist, to look at the trees. “Herbicides or pollution didn’t seem likely, and the only other thing I could think that would have that kind of effect would be a gas leak,” she said, “Pat took a shovel and started digging. He said it just reeked of gas.” The gas had been killing the trees in the same way it would a human being or other living body-by interfering with the ability of the organisms to carry oxygen, McCue explained. “Gas doesn’t really poison a tree. It suffo­ cates the roots,” he said. Luckily, McCue and Wiener discovered the problem before Taking down the cottonwood TREE WHICH HAD BEEN POISONED BY A NATURAL GAS LEAK. any explosions occurred. Since the campus gas lines belong to St. John’s, the college needed to fix the problem. A contractor was hired to test every campus pipe for leaks. For the next month, the grounds and roads were torn up and gas was large­ ly unavailable on campus. For those staying in campus housing, this meant taking cold showers for about three weeks, Jennifer Brookes, director of Conference Services, worried that summer conference atten­ dees living in the dorms would be unsettled by the lack of hot water, but she heard few com­ plaints. “Most everybody was very understanding,” Brookes said. “One group leader said he {The College - Messagefrom the switchboard: a mother bear and cub had been sighted on Atalaya trail. could give up coffee if he con­ tinued to have cold showers in the morning, because they were so exhilarating.” Presi­ dent John Balkcom offered the use of the guest shower at the Hunt House, less than a mile from campus, and the showers at the Student Activities Center had hot water after less than a week. An understaffed (two employees were out on short­ term disability leave) Buildings St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } During one of these outdoor meals, when the soccer field was set up with canopies and grills for a staff picnic, a twister passed through campus. It picked up the canopies and dumped them in the middle of Camino Cabra, The canopies were replaced before the party started and no one got hurt. But Gonzalez couldn’t believe the string of near-misses the campus was facing. “We had so many things going on-one after another,” he said. Brooks agreed: “It was totally wacky.” Lightning STRIKES Atalaya From July 8 to July ai, I worked as an RA (resident assistant) for the Monte Sol Writing Work­ shop, a residential program that helps high school students develop their creative and ana­ lytical skills. On the morning of Saturday, July 14, the students headed up Atalaya Mountain, just above campus, for a hike with the workshop’s other RAs, John McCarthy (SFoi) and Liz Borshard (SF99). At breakfast, shortly after saying farewell to the hikers, I opened the local newspaper and panicked. According to a news report, a fire had started near the top of the mountain the previous day and had not been extinguished. Luckily, the fire was out between the time �{From the Bell Towers} the newspaper was printed and the hike began. The fire, caused by a lightning strike near campus, occurred on Fri­ day the 13th. A WOODPECKER STRIKES The next exciting event was a brief power outage caused by a woodpecker. On July aa, the bird landed on a transformer near the gym, causing a short. “It fried the woodpecker and knocked out the electricity,” Gonzales said. This time the affected struc­ ture was not on college proper­ ty, so St. John’s did not bear the cost of repair. The utility com­ pany had power back on within a few hours. Magic on Campus Santa Fefreshmen dig deep on Community Service Day. While most freshmen come to St. John’s expecting to embark on a rigorous intellectual jour­ ney, few expect to be handed a shovel and asked to do some hard, physical labor. But on Community Service Day, held the Saturday before the first full day of classes, roughly onequarter of the new freshman class volunteered to roll up their sleeves along with upper classmen, faculty, and staff (including college president John Balkcom) and tackle some labor-intensive jobs on campus. Participants cut down a mature cottonwood tree (a landmark meeting place on campus) that was killed by a natural gas leak so that it could be replaced with a young sycamore. They also dug a trench-50 feet long and a feet deep-for a new gas line that Toilets stop flushing Throughout July and the begin­ ning of August, I often con­ soled myself during a cold shower with this thought: “At least the toilet works.” One morning in early August, the water lines in the walls of our apartment moaned, then the water stopped flowing. I ran down to the academic build­ ings, hoping to find a function­ ing lavatory, but they were all out of order. The water short­ age was caused by an accident during work on the water lines. Yes, in addition to the gas lines being replaced, water lines were being replaced to increase the water pressure in case of fire. This was a project the col­ lege had planned long before the other catastrophes will run under the beautiful grassy lawn north of Weigle Hall. “The lawn is one of the most central landscape areas of the college, both socially and physically,” said assistant gar­ dener Mike DiMezza (SF98 and EC99). It was DiMezza who first suggested the college dig the trench by hand to save the lawn from the ravages of a backhoe. The day had a festive atmos­ phere, reminiscent of barn rais­ ings and filled with good humor. Some staff members teased the students, saying that when they finished digging the trench they could start on the hole for the long-proposed swimming pool behind the gym. Those whose physical exertions rarely surpass haul­ ing heavy backpacks worked alongside the more muscular members of the crew. When the day was over, the volunteers were rewarded with a barbecue on the Fishpond Placita, spon­ sored by the senior class. DiMezza estimated that the 35 volunteers contributed at least 140 hours of labor that day. “I cannot tell you how {The College. occurred. The crew had hit a water main and needed to get a part from Albuquerque before they could repair it. The col­ lege reacted swiftly, procuring porta-potties as well as bottled water for the washrooms and the dining hall kitchen. At this point in the summer, I was enrolled in the Summer Classics program in a seminar on The Plays of Kalidasa. When it was time for the mid-morn­ ing break, we stepped outside and were happy to see that porta-potties had arrived. They were painted a bright yellow, which helped boost spirits. By this point in Catastrophe Sum­ mer, people were eager to be cheered. “I only told a couple of peo­ ple that I wanted my mommy,” said Gonzales. Digging WITH student backs— NOT A BACKHOE—SAVES THE LAWN. deeply grateful I was that I didn’t have to dig that trench by myself,” he said. Brendan O’Neill {SF93), director of college events, said that Community Service Day is about building community. St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } 9 Bears head TOWARD CAMPUS By the time students began mov­ ing into dorms for the fall term on August ai, I breathed a sigh of relief that Catastrophe Sum­ mer had ended. But later that morning, Vivian Duran at the switchboard delivered a voice­ mail message to the college community, alerting us that a mother bear and her cub had been sighted on Atalaya trail. As I listened to Duran’s recorded advice on how to behave during an encounter with a bear-hold your hands high to seem taller and back away slowly-I smiled. Surely, this was just one more potential disaster that the col­ lege would manage with grace and determination. 4— BY Marissa Morrison (SFGI03) “We are fortunate because of our small size, but we still have to work on ways to bring every­ one together,” he said. “When we come together as a commu­ nity - faculty, staff and student^ helping each other out - that’s when the magic happens on this campus.” -4 — BY Teri Thomson Randall �{Letters} IO Wrong Author I’d like to correct an easily made but signif­ icant error in John Rankin’s series of pro­ files on Johnnies in the world of policy (“Rousseau and Realpolitik,” The College, Summer aooi). Mr. Rankin cites me rec­ ommending reading Karl Monger as an economist. It should have been “Carl Monger,” who published his path-breaking and revolutionary Grundsatze der Volkswirtschaftslehre [Principles ofEconomics] in 1871. His son Karl Monger became a noted mathematician, who also occasional­ ly wrote on such topics as the role of uncer­ taintyin economics. It was Carl Monger (with a “C”) who dissolved the great prob­ lems that had bedeviled classical econom­ ics by introducing the concept of choice at the margin. The confusion between the two is a common mistake, but one with signifi­ cant consequences when one goes to the library or the bookstore. — Tom G. Palmer, ''Iknow that the St. John s oftoday is not the St. John s of my day, but it still hets a very tender spot in my heart. sections are central to his main thesis. I’m not sure if it exists in an easily acquired print medium, but it’s on the web at http://www.abelard.org/turpap/turpap.htm. I don’t know what the current Sopho­ more readings are, so I can’t propose some­ thing to drop to make room for this. That’s always the rub, isn’t it? — Thomas N. Day, A71 A8a there must be more pictures out there. I know that the St. John’s of today is not the St. John’s of my day; but it still has a very tender spot in my heart. My connection goes back to 1913, when my father was on the faculty. — Edward E. Gray, Class of 1934 An Adler Rememrrance Just another of those examples of how seemingly minor events can impact one's entire life: Why or how it came about, I can’t recall, but in late 195a I began read­ ing Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, wherein, of course, he mentioned St. John’s and the great books program. Two years later I was enrolled at St. John’s. Although there may have been an opportunity-he lectured once while I was there-I never made a point of thanking him for what turned out to be a seminal experience in my life. — Jerry Milhollan, Class of 1958 Reading List Suggestion I finally got a chance to read A. M. Turing’s paper “Com­ puting Machinery and Intelli­ gence.” I’d like to propose that SJC include it as part of the sophomore seminar read­ ings. The paper is extremely accessible to a non-technical student, reading almost like one of Maxwell’s papers. It contains the original description of the famous Turing Test. It also contains the germ, though not pursued, of Chaos Theory. It makes predictions about the future of Artificial Intelligence which coincide with the present time. It also pres­ ents, in very general terms, the function­ ing of a digital computer. It represents a source document that much of our present society rests upon. If Johnnies are sup­ posed to understand the roots of their cul­ tural assumptions, then this is a very acces­ sible way into the beginnings of the impact of computers. On the down side, Turing makes a pitiable response to religious objections to Al, mostly because he doesn’t take religion seriously and doesn’t make a serious effort at a counter-argument. He also has a touch­ ing faith in the statistical provability of ESP. On the other hand, neither of these Sje DESK -1935 St. John’s Forever I was amazed to see pictures of my desk in my room at the Delta Psi Omega fraternity house in the Summer issue of The College. I was intrigued with the comment about my neckties that were hanging on the wall. I wonder if the students of today have any neckties. My roommate in 1935 was Robert H. Lampee of the class of 1935. His desk is the one on the left of the picture. He was the editor of the St. John’s Collegian, the college newspaper. There was an Under­ wood typewriter under that cover. Several years ago I sent my collection of photographs of St. John’s to the Alumni Office. I suggest that alumni of my vintage send their collections to the college also. Our ranks are getting thinner, but I feel {The College - St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } The CoZZege welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters maybe edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to; The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis MD 21404 or The College Maga­ zine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: b-goyette@sjca.edu, or via the form for let­ ters on the web site atwww.sjca.edu - click on “Alumni,” then on “Contact The Col­ lege Magazine.” �{Book Review} POETRY PUZZLES William Alba combines visual andpoetic whimsy in his book An Oz Album. BY James Idema R obert Frost defined “The Figure a Poem Makes” in an introduction to the 1949 col­ lection of his complete poems. “It begins in delight and ends in wisdom,” he wrote. “The figure is the same as for love.” William Alba, a Santa Fe tutor, could have had something like that in mind with An Oz Album (Pulley Press), a chapbook of his own delightfully eccentric verse, inter­ spersed as it is with fragments from the writings of Sandburg, Blake, Dante, Woody Guthrie, Whitman, and L. Frank Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz). In a whimsi­ cal tribute to Walt Whitman, for example, Alba frames verses from Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” between lists of the zip codes of the places the author has lived and their corresponding dates. Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and other characters from The Wizard of Oz-i ncluding the Wicked Witch of the West (aka Sister Frances Dolores, his first grade teacher)-drop in on the fun. We open the book to a boldly abstract four-color map of Oz and close it on a high­ way map of Chicago. We discover that Oz and Chicago (where the poet lived for four years before coming to Santa Fe) have had major influences on his writing. Their landmarks appear throughout. This is a poem he calls “Madison/ Wabash.” It is printed in bold type over a faint reproduction from Sandburg’s “Chicago.” There’s different kinds, I want to say. There’s different kinds of pain. It takes all kinds: your ears go deaf from squealing trains. Your eyes get stares when you forget, and smile at a commuter. A blast of cold chills your soles. The broken heater. Your temples tense. Your mind goes flat as highways, suburbs, prairies. The land is flat for miles and miles. You wait. You wait. “A BEAUTIFUL BOOK IS A CONSERVATOR OF KNOWLEDGE,” SAYS AlBA. Your tongue tastes smoke. That’s nothing new. Your throat turns dark as night. The sun falls down as lights appear. Not stars. Lights. Here is a pair of winsome, haiku-like poems under the heading “wakes of innocense”: 1/ memory of 1968 this Monarch alights on my chest, opening, closing, opening its wings I run through the park; look, mommy, look it flattens and flutters away 2/ mystery the one I love like my constant dog is never in my dreams the places I’ve lived recur after I move like the seasons in a year {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } Some of the material in this small book is set in acrobatic arrangements and various sizes of type, some of it minuscule strips across the top of a page requiring serious squinting to discern the message, which is, in this case, to follow the yellow brick road. Several poems describe driving experi­ ences. One limns road rage on Chicago’s Edens Expressway. It is composed in the shape of a balloon. The invocation is reprised in tiny type in the shape of a butterfly. When I met Alba, he was teaching a sum­ mer writing and thinking workshop for high school students in a Bard College pro­ gram held at St. John’s. I told him my first reaction was that his poetry, which I found compelling and entertaining, but at the same time challenging in both content and typography, seemed a cross between Wal­ lace Stevens and e.e. cummings. He seemed to find the observation amusing, which is how I intended it. Still, when I suggested some readers might be put off by having to turn his book upside down or reach for a magnifying glass to read it or leaf backward to confirm elusive refer­ ences, he defended his approach earnestly. “Poems are the hardest writing to make public, to get read by people I don’t know,” he said. “My poems are revealing and inti­ mate, so I needed to publish them myself. But I wanted most of all to make a beautiful book, something one cannot see on the Internet. A beautiful book is a conservator of knowledge, not easily discarded, and its content should engage the hands and body as well as the mind of the reader. Touch is as important as sight, which is why I ask the reader to handle my book, move it around.” Please don’t attack these pages hoping to squeeze messages from my verses, he seems to be saying. Rather, loaf, as Whit­ man says, invite your soul, pause frequent­ ly, read aloud, open yourself to my experi­ ences and, of course, read them more than once. As T.S. Eliot entreats us in the open­ ing lines of The Love Song off. Alfred Prufrock: “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’ / Let us go and make our visit.” �{The Program} GREAT BOOKS FOR TOUGH TIMES In a speech delivered to the Caritas Society on October 2001, a tutor muses on the events ofthisfall and the role ofSt. Johns in the larger community By William Pastille HEN I WAS FIRST ASKED TO speak on this occasion, the suggested topic was the role of the college in the larger community. That was last summer, a time that now seems unapproachably distant-a lifetime ago. What I am about to say has become a cliche, but I will say it anyway: On September ii, everything changed. Our shock at the terrible loss of life in New York and in Washington reminded us of the meaning of mortality; it reminded us that we are creatures of a day only whose light can be extin­ guished at any instant; it reminded us that every moment is a pre­ cious treasure, given to us on loan and hkely to be withdrawn with­ out the slightest notice. Some Americans even seem to be changing the way they live as a result. Some things that seemed to make sense before September ii no longer seem to make sense now. It is only fitting, therefore, that the topic of this talk should change somewhat as well. I will still speak mostly about the role of St. John’s in the larger community that is our nation; but it might be appropriate also to say a few words about what the study of the Great Books offers to us at a time of crisis such as this. The best way, I think, to give some impression of the value of Great Books in these times is to tell some recent stories from the classroom. Just yesterday, for instance, I was leading a small study group which was discussing Plato’s Crito, a dialogue that takes place in Socrates’ prison cell as he awaits his execution. At one point in the text Socrates makes the following statement: “One should never do wrong in return,” he says, “nor injure any man, whatever injury one has suffered at his hands.” Immediately, one of the students replied to this with a question: “If Socrates is right,” she asked, ’’does that mean we shouldn’t have responded to the terrorist attacks?” This sort of thing has been happening frequently ever since September ii. The students are finding the events of this time to be intimately connected to the books they are reading. It is this ability to make a personal connection across the centuries that makes a book great. The Great Books speak just as powerfully to us as they did to our forefathers and to their forefathers. This is a time of conflict, and conflict is a major theme in many of the Great Books. The first book that the freshmen read in their seminar classes, Homer’s Iliad, focuses on the conflict of the Tro­ jan war. It is about the overweening wrath of Achilles, the strongest of the Greeks. In the week following the attacks, the stu­ dents were coming to the end of the book, and another tutor told me that, in his class, one of the young men became very upset at various criticisms of Achilles that had been leveled by some of his classmates. “How can you say such things about Achilles?” he finally said. “I want to be like Achilles! ” When pressed for his rea­ sons, it came out that he admired Achilles’strength and the power it gave him to destroy his enemy utterly. And he added, “If we had a few more Achilles today, Afghanistan would already be in ruins.” At this juncture, my colleague said, anotheryoung man pointed out that Achilles’ victory, which was motivated by an unconsid­ ered and self-absorbed thirst for revenge, was won at the cost of a great deal of death and suffering for his own people. You can imag­ ine, in those days shortly after the attacks, when it was not clear what the American response would be, that these issues were intensely critical for the members of that class. This sort of timely and intensely personal conversation can only happen because the books speak so directly to us, no matter where or when they were written. And that brings me to the first digres­ sion I want to make concerning the contribution St. John’s makes to the larger community: we contribute our graduates to the nation. St. John’s believes that the truest service a college or uni­ versity can do for its country is to educate the young to be the best citizens they can possibly be. The principal obstacle preventing this is a certain particularly American parochialism described by Tocqueville-a widespread tendency in this country to ignore other places and times. We are so chauvinistic about our national superiority that many of us quite unconsciously seem to feel that if it’s not happening in America, then it really doesn’t count. And we’re so pragmatic as a people that many of us quite unconscious- {The College -St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } �{The Program} adults to discuss a series of the ly seem to feel that if it’s not Great Books over a long period happening right now, it’s of time. Two weeks ago I was either dead and huried in the leading one of these seminars past or inaccessible in the in Philadelphia, and we were future. Consequently we live discussing the second half of far too much in the moment to Homer ’ s Odyssey, in which develop the kind of long-term Odysseus returns home to find and global perspective that we his household being preyed need to see the larger picture of upon by the many suitors of his hfe on earth. abandoned wife Penelope. One The program of study at St. of the women in the group, John’s is meant to counter this after listening to lots of talk focus on the present and the about the action and plot of the close-to-home. St. John’s story, finally said, “I’m sorry, believes that the study of the but all 1 could think about while Great Books opens up the larg­ reading this was the extra­ er perspective an American ordinary restraint Odysseus really needs to conscientiously showed. I know exactly what he perform his function as a citi­ must have felt: 1 am so angry zen, because, unlike the citi­ about these attacks that I just zens of some other nations, we want to do something, any­ are not merely the subjects of thing, to strike back. But 1 have the rulers, but the rulers of the to keep restraining myself, rulers. We must keep our eye on because 1 know that lashing the larger picture so that we can outwon ’ thelp. It’s almost tear­ direct the actions of our repre­ ing me apart. ” This was, of sentatives to the right ends, so course, a few days before the that we can criticize and correct bombing began. them when they are wrong, and Again, the book was speak­ so that we can urge them on ing directly to the experience of when they are right. The Great this woman, and again on a very Books, we think, are the finest timely topic-the matter of self­ preparation for citizenship restraint. The Great Books are available to our nation’s young replete with discussions of this men and women, and St. John’s issue. For instance, in Tolstoy’s contributes to the nation each War and Peace, the masterful year about 200 young men and old commander-in-chief of the women who are well-prepared Russian army. General Kutu­ for the duties of citizenship. William Pastille zov, spends most of the book Let me return to another restraining the younger generclassroom story now. Some of als and officers under his command from taking any action against you may not know that St. John’s offers what we call “Executive the invasion by Napoleon. He suffers great criticism for being Seminars” in Annapolis, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, senile, unpatriotic, even treasonous, criticism levelled by those Washington, and Chicago; these are monthly meetings for busy John s believes that the truest service a college or university can do for its country is to educate the young to be the best citizens they can possibly be. Theprincipal obstaclepreventing this is a certain particularly American parochialism... ” {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } �14 {TheProgram} So knowledge can be taught, but it cannot govern; wisdom,on the other hand can govern, but it cannot be taught. who feel that some response simply had to be mounted. But Kutu­ zov was deeply in touch with the tide in the affairs of men; he sensed that Napoleon was riding the crest of a wave and that to attack that wave before it was ready to turn back from the shore would simply lead to ruin for his forces and to subjugation for his country. And he was right; once Napoleon reached Moscow, the tide began to turn. Only then could a response from the Russians be successful. Kutuzov’s restraint in the face of horrible losses ended up saving the Russian nation. We might ask ourselves. What do people like Odysseus and Kutuzov know that allows them to exercise restraint when neces­ sary and to act at the right moment? But it seems to me that this question is improperly formed, because it is not their knowledge that makes the difference, but their wisdom. And this brings me to the second digression 1 want to make concerning what St. John’s offers the larger community: through the study of the Great Books we offer an entry into the love of wisdom, which is even more important than knowledge when it comes to leading life well. If colleges and universities take seriously the welfare of their stu­ dents and their countries, they ought to be concerned about grad­ uating people who not only have knowledge but who also have a sense for how to use it well. But no amount of knowledge is suffi­ cient for this end. Something besides knowledge is required for the proper employment of knowledge. Why is that? The simplest route to understanding the limitations of knowl­ edge is to meditate on two familiar adages: “Knowledge is power” and “Power corrupts.” Though we tend to accept both of these adages quite readily, we seldom make a connection between them. And yet the connection could not be simpler: if knowledge is power, and power corrupts, then knowledge corrupts. Of course, this is facile syllogizing that cannot stand up to logical scrutiny, but the conclusion nevertheless contains a kernel of truth. Knowledge can certainly be wielded as a sort of power; indeed our society tends to advertise education and training as a source of empowerment. And although power does not necessarily corrupt, we all understand the temptations offered by power to bend the rules, if not break them, for oneself and one’s inner circle. There­ fore it simply is a fact that a person who uses knowledge as a source of power will be tempted, and may succumb, to the cor­ ruption that is offered by all sources of power. Consequently, something besides knowledge is necessary if one is to avoid using one’s knowledge poorly. What is that? The answer, as the founders of the St. John’s program of study knew, is wisdom. And so they wanted to add to the idea of the uni­ {The College - versity as an institution devoted to knowledge the further qualifi­ cation that it should also be devoted to wisdom as the higher source to which knowledge answers. But here they encountered a problem that is truly insurmountable: wisdom, unlike knowledge, cannot be taught. Wisdom requires judgment, and judgment requires not just knowledge and the ability to draw conclusions from knowledge, but also the sort of life-experience that engen­ ders habits which make us tend toward the Good even when we do not know what is right. And the sort of life-experiences that lead to such habits cannot be provided by someone else, not even the most skillful teacher; they must be lived through in the concrete and practical situations that come up in daily life. So knowledge can be taught, but it cannot govern; wisdom, on the other hand can govern, but it cannot be taught. How, then, could wisdom, being unteachable, take up a position in higher education beside knowledge, which implies a great focus on teaching as the correl­ ative to learning? The answer is that it cannot. Wisdom itself stands above teach­ ing and learning; as Socrates pointed out, it is either divine or almost divine. But it is well within human capacities, as Socrates also pointed out, to cultivate the love of wisdom, even if wisdom itself lies beyond our reach; and perhaps the love of wisdom, if pur­ sued diligently, can somehow communicate some of the qualities of wisdom to the seeker, in the same way that any lover begins to take on some of the attributes that are admired in the beloved. What is more, love of wisdom is both teachable and learnable as a form of contagious enthusiasm: the teacher’s love of wisdom can be communicated to the student by example. So whereas wisdom itself cannot find a place in the academy, love of wisdom can. Indeed it should, if colleges and universities are concerned with the good of the students who attend and the good of the societies in which those students will be citizens; for it is love of wisdom alone that can keep the students on track until they have enough judg­ ment to guide themselves and their society well. And St. John’s takes this obligation seriously: in addition to contributing to the nation graduates who are well prepared for citizenship, we also send forth graduates whose love of wisdom will steady them until they acquire experience, judgment, and perhaps even wisdom itself. Let me return to another story from the classroom. The week after the attacks, 1 was leading a discussion with about eighteen graduate students on Francis Bacon’s very brief essay On Revenge. Bacon makes the following bald statement about the prudence of taking revenge: “Wise people,” he says, “know that they have enough to do in the present and with whatever might St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } �{TheProgram} 15 Ifcolleges and universities take seriously the welfare of their students and their countries, they ought to be concerned about graduatingpeople who not only have knowledge but who also have a sensefor how to use it well happen in the future. They don’t spend their time taking revenge. People who spend their time worrying about past injuries just waste their time.” Nowyou can imagine the electrifying effect that statement had at a time when so many innocent lives had been so recently lost, and when some people in the room desperately hoped for retribution, while others were confused about the prop­ er course that should be followed. Nevertheless, because all of the students had been at St. John’s for a while and had learned how to converse intensely but politely, we had a civilized, if highly charged, conversation, and I think that everyone left the meeting feeling that he or she had seen just a bit further into the complex­ ities of justice and retribution. This classroom story about graduate students and the earlier one about the participants in the Philadephia Executive Seminar bring me to the third and final point I want to make about St. John’s contribution to the larger community; In addition to con­ tributing to the nation young people who are very well-prepared for citizenship and whose love of wisdom will help them to help the country in years to come, St. John’s also offers its experience in the study of the Great Books to adults. St. John’s takes seriously this commitment to adults who are long past school age. After all, those of us who teach here are adults, and we do not keep doing it only because we enjoy helping the young to find themselves, although we certainly do enjoy that calling. We keep doing it also because continued exposure to the Great Books and to the ideas of others keeps us steadily growing in the same skills we hope to give to our students. For although we are adults, we are also mindful of Socrates’ continual admonition that we don’t really know who we are, because we always take ourselves to be much more knowledgeable than we actually are. And the best way to keep an awareness of this ignorance alive in ourselves is to be constantly talking with others about the most important things in hfe. The infinite variety of responses to life’s most important questions will always keep us on our toes if we let it. Since those of us who teach here are adults, and since we can benefit from the Great Books in this way, there is no reason to doubt that other adults could also benefit from what we do with the Great Books, as long as they are willing to engage in civil discus­ sion and are open to really trying to hear and understand the opin­ ions of others. So St. John’s also has programs for adults that allow them to participate in the conversation with the Great Books in a number of different ways. In addition to the Executive Seminars and the Master’s degree program already mentioned, our Santa Fe campus has what is called the “Summer Classics” program, and we {The also offer what is called a “Continuing Education” program. So, as I see it, St. John’s makes a three-fold contribution to the larger community in times such as these: first, it produces young people who are well prepared to shoulder the burdens of citizen­ ship in these difficult times; second, it produces young people whose love of wisdom can help them to make better choices in these difficult times, both for themselves and for the nation; and finally, it offers us adults the opportunity to continue to grow both as citizens and as lovers of wisdom. Let me leave you with one more story about a discussion with students. This conversation happened outside of class, and, as it happens, I do not even know the students I was speaking with, a young man and a young woman who had joined a conversation already in progress and remained after the other students left. The young man had been reading Matthew Arnold’s famous poem Dover Beach, which many of you probably learned in high school. Well over a century ago, Arnold looked out across the English Channel on a breezy evening, looked out on the ancient world that had been bloodied so terribly in the European wars during the hundred years before his time, and wrote the following lines: Ah, love, let us be true To one another! For the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams. So various, so beautiful, so new. Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light. Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight. Where ignorant armies clash by night. The young man recited the last line slowly. Thinking about the current situation and the recurring violence in human affairs, he said “Have we learned nothing at all? How can there be hope when the ignorant armies continue to clash, year after year after year?” The three of us stood in silence for a while. Then the young woman said, “But the poem gives the answer: ‘Ah, love, let us be true,’ it says.” The two of us looked at her quizzically. “Well,” she drawled, as if she were belaboring the obvious, “where there is love there is hope.” 4" William Pastille is a tutor in Annapolis. He’s currently the direc­ tor ofthe Graduate Institute. COLLEGE'S:. John’s College ■ Fall noot } �{Johnnies on Animals} HEARTS o/ANIMALS Reflections on our relationships with other members ofthe wild kingdom. By Sus3AN Borden, A87 an an elephant hold grudges? Can a dog experience separation anxiety? What makes a horse love its rider? Do animals have souls? Intelligence? Emotions? Johnnies have read Aristotle’s Parts of Animals, dissected a sheep’s heart, strug­ gled with the foundations for and implica­ tions of Darwin’s Origin of Species. In today’s lah curriculum, freshmen observe squirrels, spiders, and seagulls. Seniors trace the ancestry of fruit fly families. In seminar and tutorials, love and friendship are frequent topics of discussionfrom Plato’s Phaedrus to Yeats’ “When You Are Old And Gray.” Alumni who enter careers that involve working with animals continue to think about the relationships between humans and animals-they are confronted with the conundrums of under­ standing between the species every day. But even after years of observing and caring for animals, they say there’s much they don’t understand. In the end, we are left to wonder: what can we really know about the heart of another? Tales of Two Critters Claudia Probst Stack (A88), a horse trainer, riding teacher, and competitive rider, tells the story of a boy she once gave riding les­ sons and his old, arthritic horse. “The boy wasn’t a bad kid, but he was raucous and loved to ride hard,” she says. “He could be rough on the horse. When he took off the tack and bridle, he didn’t unbuckle it, he just pulled it off. Typically, a horse in his condition would not want to have a lot to do with a boy like that, but this horse loved that little boy. Every time the boy showed up at the gate, the horse would come running over. He didn’t mind being galloped around, even though I’m sure it hurt his joints.” “What made that horse rise above his discomfort?” she asks. “What was he getting out of it? Why did he enjoy that relationship?” For Stack, these questions reflect the mystery of love-not only between people and animals but, in a larger sense, any love. “What brings any two critters together? Whether it’s a horse and a person or two people, you always think to yourself: why are these two together?” she says. “I guess it’s hke many relationships that aren’t perfect and yet are working. There seems to be some kernel at the heart of the relationship that’s either good or bad. If it’s wrong from the start. {The College- it doesn’t matter how many supplements you give the horse or what kind of equipment you buy for him.” If it’s right, she sug­ gests, then a raucous boy can “ride the bejeesus” out of an arthrit­ ic horse and the two will be happy together. It’s not just the four-legged creatures who can find joy in a seemingly mismatched relationship. Emergency veterinarian Elizabeth MacDonald (SF83) says that in many cases, it’s the nature of the person that determines the relationship. MacDonald has worked with difficult dogs, including those she calls “real problem children,” who are adopted from the pound after living in stressful, often abusive situations. These dogs can thrive in the care of committed, responsible pet owners. “They may shred the house from stem to stern, they might constantly have accidents, they may be barkers, yet these people are absolutely bonded to them,” she says. “These are the lucky dogs. When it comes to pound dogs, there are very few lucky dogs, but I’ve see them.” MacDonald is convinced that the strength of the bond comes from the person involved. “It’s not so much the temperament of the animal. It comes from the people-how much they’re willing to give, to sacrifice. My feeling is that animals are our responsibility, our charge, not our right, but not everybody thinks like that.” MacDonald sees a range of people in her practice. Some agree that, once pets are taken in, the owner is responsible for them no matter the inconvenience. At the other end of the spectrum are the people who asked that their cat be euthenised after they’d changed the color of their decor and it became obvious that the cat shed too much. She has even encountered people who, when told the cost of treating their cat, said it would be cheaper to buy another than to treat their sick pet. For the most part, people who would balance their cat’s life in their checkbook have opted out of the game before they even meet veterinary behaviorist Barbara Simpson (A71). Because she’s a specialist, Simpson’s clients’ willingness to devote time and money to their pets is demonstrated in the very fact that they are consulting with her; they’ve shown they have a commitment that goes beyond standard veterinary care. “It’s sometimes astounding,” Simpson says. “There seem to be quite a lot of people who have a very close relationship with their companion animals. They share their beds with their animals and work their schedules around them. They celebrate animal birth­ days and take them on trips.” In a few cases these are single peo- St. John's College - Fall 2001 } �{Johnnies on Animals} ''Myfeeling is that animals are our responsibility, our charge, notour right, but not everybody thinks like that. ” —Elizabeth MacDonald [SF83] “Are you my mother?” is the title of AnNAPOLIS PHOTOGRAPHER Amy Raab. The rancher raised the THIS PICTURE BY HEIFER, which HAD BEEN BORN DURING A Wyoming spring snowstorm and ABANDONED BY ITS MOTHER. {The College . St John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } 17 �i8 {JohnniesonAnimals} y^nimals use the same signals to communicate with people as they do to communicate with each other.'' —Barbara Simpson pie for whom a pet is a substitute for other companionship, or adults who don’t have children but treat their dog like a child. But this is by no means the rule. “These are often people who have very normal relationships with other people, but are incredibly attached to their animals,” she says. Brain Eater Unfortunately, man’s relationship to animals is not exclusively one of love and devotion. Eric Scigliano {SF75), a Seattle-based journalist whose book about elephants will be published this spring, has explored in depth the relationship between man and elephants. A key to understanding this complex relationship, he says, is to realize that elephants are “uniquely non-domesticated domestic animals.” Although they have been captured, trained, and worked for more than three thousand years, elephants have never been bred for docility or any other qualities. Genetically, they’re still “pure,” wild animals. Whatever qualities of loyalty, affection, and gentleness they show are those they are naturally endowed with. This lack of genetically-manipulated docility means that, while in some cases elephants are dominated by affec­ tion, there will always be a role in the relationship for coercion and intimidation. Dominating a 12,000-pound creature through coercion and intimidation is at best an uncertain enterprise. At worst, it can be lethal. Scigliano describes the traditional relationship a mahout (elephant keeper and driver) has with the Asian logging elephants in his care: “It’s a lifelong relationship. The young elephants and young boys grow up together, sleep together, live together. The elephants have been known to sacrifice their lives for them,” he says, “yet the mahouts can get themselves killed if they abuse their elephants.” He tells a story he heard in Sri Lanka about one rogue elephant whom the national elephant catching team had been sent to catch and relocate. The locals had named him Molekanna, Brain Eater. This nickname seemed unthinkable, Scigliano says, because ele­ phants are vegetarians, but the team had been dispatched after the elephant was believed to have killed his eighteenth human. Eventually, the team found the nineteenth victim, a school teacher, with his head missing. When they finally captured the elephant, they learned what had turned him into a carnivore. He was a study in animal abuse: he had been blinded in one eye, per­ haps by acid, was half blind in the other eye, and was full of gun­ shot wounds. “Elephants remember abuse. They remember friends and enemies,” Scigliano says. “They can take revenge years later. That bit about an elephant never forgetting is pretty {The College. [A71] close to the truth.” Scigliano describes the roots of his own interest in elephants in his book. Love, War and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans: I still remember when I first felt the allure, though I never saw circus elephants as a young child; we hved in Saigon, between Vietnam’s French and American wars, where circuses fol­ lowed European tradition and lacked grand animal spectacles. But Saigon’s zoo had many beasts and few barriers separating them from visitors; crocodiles lazed beneath a footbridge, monkeys would escape their cage, and ayoung elephant would reach her trunk across to visitors, nuzzhng their faces and tak­ ing peanuts from their hands and whatever else seemed inter­ esting from their pockets. I imagined that she recognized me out of all the kids who thronged around her. Elephants’ noses and memories are so discerning, perhaps she did. Horse Midwife____________________________________ Lyn Desmarais’ (A83) introduction to animals was far less exotic; she grew up working a family dairy farm in New Braintree, Massa­ chusetts, with her brothers and sisters. She began milking cows at age six and delivered her first calf by the time she was ten. It was Desmarais’ responsibility to know when the cows were about to calve so that, when the time neared, the cows could be kept in the barn in case any problems arose during delivery. “Every once in a while you’ll have miscalculated the due date or a cow will outsmart you and run off,” she says. “We had 100 acres-plenty of pasture running in and out of woods, and springs and brooks as well. When a pregnant cow ran off to calve, it was often my job to get on a horse and ride back and forth covering every foot of ground.” Desmarais remembers one occasion when, after searching the farm, she finally found the missing cow and her newborn calf. She put a halter on the cow and tried to lead her back to the barn. “I was yanking and yanking, but the cow was not going anywhere. The next thing I knew, my horse was behind the calf, nudging it to its feet and pushing it all the way to the barn.” The cow, of course, followed her offspring. Desmarais says there are two aspects of this story that interest her. One is the horse’s understanding of how to get the cow and her calf back to the barn. The other is the horse’s concern about the calf. “I understand animals having a very strong sense of sur­ vival,” she says, “but I don’t understand why they’d be so gentle with the young of others.” St. John’s College ■ Fall aooi } �{Johnnies on Animals} Simpson, the veterinary behaviorist, gives the broad strokes of an explanation: “Mammals are highly evolved, sophisticated beings and they share the vast majority of their physiologi­ cal systems with us-their brain structure, hor­ mones, reproductive modes, maternal care-we have a tremendous amount in common,” she says. “Many animals also share complex social behavior. They live in societies, have long-term relationships, and demonstrate clear individ­ ual recognition. These can be fairly complex societies and with that goes complex communi­ ty behavior.” Behavior can become even more complex in a society made up of more than a single species. The result can be a bemusing positive, as with Desmarais’ horse and calf. But the complexity of inter-species societies can lead to negative behavior as well. If I Could Talk to the Animals In her practice, Simpson sees many such nega­ tive cases. Often they are the result of miscom­ munication. “One of the disorders I treat is separation anxiety in dogs,” says Simpson. “A dog can get very attached and when the owner leaves the house, the dog misbehaves, or is destructive, or gets so nervous it eliminates in the house. When the owner comes home and finds what he’s done, he may punish the ani­ mal. He may interpret the behavior as spiteful rather than understand it as an anxiety disorder for which sympathy and treatment are needed rather than disciplinary measures.” Simpson says this is a common failure to understand and respond to what the dog is communicating. “Animals have their own systems of commu­ nication,” says Simpson. “Some of it is innate, some learned. It is especially refined in social species like dogs or horses. Animals use the same signals to communicate with people as they do to communicate with each other.” As pet owners try to understand what ani­ mals are communicating to them, horse riders work to help their horses understand what they are saying. Stack, a rider since age 8, began to learn natural horsemanship when she turned 25. She describes the method: “You use body language to show the horse the direction you want him to go, if you want him to speed up or slow down. You either come at him or back off, you kind of dance with him a little bit to show him what you’re looking for.” Stack uses dance as a metaphor for training within a single ride. It also works as well to Animal Bookijst Claudia Probst Stack Think Harmony With Horses by Ray Hunt and Ground Work by Buck Brannamanboth these books are by the natural horse­ manship experts whose work inspired the book and movie The Horse Whisperer. Eric Scigliano Bonobo by Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting-a good introduction to our neglected and fascinating “next of kin.” The Elephant in the Greek and Boman World H.H. Scullard and The First Fos­ sil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor-elephants in classical history, war, and myth. The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy-this novel is a remarkable effort to imagine the African elephant’s consciousness and world. To Whom It May Concern: An Investiga­ tion ofthe Art ofElephants by David Gucwa and James Ehmann-a quirky but intriguing account of the first elephant­ drawing project. Elephant Tramp by Shm Lewis-the best circus memoir. Burmese Timber Elephant by U Toke Gale, and Elephant Billby J.H. Williams­ best memoirs of working with elephants in Asia. Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord ofBegin­ nings by Paul B. Courtright-a scholarly study of the elephant-headed god. Lyn Desmarais Lassie Come Home by Eric Knight AU Creatures Great and Small and other books by James Herriot BeautifulJoe by Marshall Saunders Black Beauty by Anna Sewell “The Most Dangerous Game” by Roald Dahl (a short story) Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White Barbara Simpson Know Your Dog: An owner’s guide to dog behavior\sy Dr. Bruce Fogle Know Your Cat: An owner’s guide to cat behartorWXIt. Bruce Fogle The Expression ofthe Emotions in Man andAnimaki by Charles Darwin {The College- 19 describe the communication between a horse and rider throughout a long-term partnership, allowing the rider to communicate more abstract things, such as good judgment and trustworthiness. “You have to put horses in situations where you can show them they can do what you’re asking them to do,” Stack says. “You build up a trust, let them know that you’re not going to put them in a bad fix. In eventing [an equestrian triathlon, more or less], you can’t really fake it. There are some disciphnes where, if you can hold the horse together for 10 or 20 minutes, you can fool the judge. But in eventing, when you hit a cross country course that the horse has never seen, you know really fast where you are in your training.” Trust. Communication. Anxiety. Gentle­ ness. Revenge. Love. Devotion. Are our relationships with animals really that complicated? What about the role of dependence? Maybe we’re reading a lot into animals’ good-sense policy of not biting the hands that feed them. “People think it’s all about food but it’s not,” says Stack. “I never hand-feed my horse and I don’t give him treats. But if I call him, he comes right over.” She describes a time when she was pregnant and unable to ride. She still, of course, fed and cared for her horse. “He knew something was up,” she says. “Every time I came to the barn my horse would just look at me in a way that said, ‘What happened? We used to do things together. We used to go out all the time.’ ” 4" Lyn Desmarais (A83) grew up working a dairy farm in Massachusetts. She raises butterflies, is part of a program to reintroduce bluebirds to Massachusetts, and has near-future plans to raise honey bees and begin small-scale farm­ ing. She lives in Weston, Mass. Elizabeth MacDonald (SP83) is an emergency veterinarian. Her clinic is in Ardmore, Pa. Eric Scigliano (SE75) is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Outside, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Newsweek, and the Utne Reader. He lives in Seattle. Barbara Simpson (A71) is a veterinary behavior­ ist. Her clinic is in Southern Pines, N. C. Claudia Probst Stack (A88) is a horse breeder, trainer, riding teacher, and competitive rider. She lives in Rocky Point, N. C. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } �{Faculty Books} JOB’S LIFE THROUGH NEW EYES Robert Sacks'trarbslation ofthe Book ofJob helps readers re-examine some important questions. By Mark Sanfilippo, SFGIoo he Book of Job...is a constant play between the way in which a lovely surface can obscure a darker center and the way in which our view of the deeper intent of things can often obscure our view of their simple surface.” In many ways, this quotation from The Book ofJob with Commentary: A Trans­ lation for our Time (Scholars Press) by Santa Fe tutor emeritus Robert Sacks sums up the book’s effort. Sacks’ translation focuses not only on the simple surface-level beauty of the text, but it also tries to present a way to comprehend the deeper secrets housed within those words. Sacks never seems to lose sight of the nature of the work at hand-that the Book of Job, in addition to being a theological/philosophical text, is just as importantly a work of literature. While accuracy is indeed a moti­ vating factor for a scholarly translation, a bit of an artist’s hand is required of the translator when the piece is to be enjoyed for the beauty of its words and phrasing as much as for their content. Sacks prefaces his translation with a brief introduction in which he recalls the dichotomy of Greek philosophy and the Hebrew Bible-or Athens and Jerusalem, as he puts it. Sacks states that these two traditions, while they address many of the same ques­ tions, do so from such different standpoints that oftentimes mak­ ing a comparison of the resulting “answers” is all but impossible. He believes that the Book of Job touches on some of the questions most central to Greek philosophy and does so in such a way as to make a comparison of Athens and Jerusalem not only possible, but inevitable. This has led him to an exploration of the Book of Job. Luckily for the students of both the Bible and the develop­ ment of Western thought, Sacks was kind enough to make a good record of that exploration. The first half of the book consists of the translation. Here one notices immediately that he does indeed have the necessary “artist’s hand,” for the text flows effortlessly and its images come {The College- across in clear, striking tones. Sacks has provided ample footnotes to aid those tvith little or no knowledge of Hebrew. He makes dis­ tinctions between the various usages of words like LORD, GOD, God, and The Almighty, which are consistent and correspond to the original text. In addition, he attempts to convey in English the ambiguities latent within those all too frequent Hebrew words that have multiple definitions, e.g. horn/light/ray. Sacks says that one verse in particular inspired him to produce his own version of this difficult text: verse 6 in chapter 42. The King James Version reads: “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Sacks explains that this line brought to a cUmax his misgivings about the existing translations. The verse comes after God has rumbled from the clouds and left Job awestruck; it is in many ways the summation of what his experi­ ence has been. But Job doesn’t abhor himself, and to have him say so in this final part of the book distorts the thrust of the story. Robert Sacks’ version of 42:6 reads: “Wherefore I have both contempt and compassion for dust and ashes.” Job’s realm of understanding at this point has far surpassed the solipsism of a “why me?” character; Job is not simply concerned about himself or his lot. That wasn’t his dilemma to begin with, and Sacks felt that the existing translations were incorrect in conveying this meaning. Job’s was a cosmic question dealing with the nature of justice. By this time. Job has come to possess a balance of con­ tempt and compassion for the necessarily dual existence of man (“dust and ashes”)-his existence as both a part of Nature and sep­ arate from Nature. The second half of the book consists of commentary. This por­ tion remains true to its name in that Sacks resists trapping himself in a “Job theory” and then simply applying such a theory to the text in its entirety. Instead, he comments on the chapters and does so with a driving inquisitiveness that pulls the reader along. While he does track and expand on themes like the realm of human logic vs. the realm of cosmic/Godly logic and civilization vs. the Land of the Jackals, Sacks doesn’t resist the urge to explore whatever St. John's College ■ Fall 2oof } �{Faculty Books} ai Sacks never seems to lose sight ofthe nature ofthe work at hand— that the Book ofJob, in addition to being a theological/philosophical text, isjust as importantly a work ofliterature. might seem of interest in each chapter, be it a word that is used in a noteworthy fashion, or the history of a phrase’s usage throughout Biblical literature, or even a comparison of other translations. The question that Sacks feels is most central to the text“Shall a man be more just than his God?”-is played with throughout the commentary, inevitably becoming a question of “What is Justice?” Job is forced to deal with his prior “knowledge” of justice being shattered or superseded. How is he to come to terms with the dissolution of what he previous­ ly held to be permanent? Sacks says: “The surface world, to which Job has commit­ ted himself to taking seriously, is a crazy, contradictory world. full of wisdom, valor, and madness, full of roads to glory that lead nowhere. The simple world of growing corn and barking dogs has become more like a Picasso still life which when it first comes to sight seems to be no more than a blue bottle and a bowl of fruit lying on a country table. Yet as one looks on, order begins to evap­ orate, and one begins to wonder how, if Durac is right, Ptolemy could ever have even seemed to be right.” The rules/maxims that had formerly ruled Job’s life (and had apparently “worked”), no longer apply. Even Job’s “friends” (hav­ ing never experienced his level of disillusionment and pain) can offer no sympathy or compassion, and their bhnd adherence to tra­ {The College- dition just simply won’t jibe with Job’s new-found perspec­ tive. Of particular interest in the commentary section is the chapter entitled “Reflections on ir:6.” This chapter delves into the nature of the word “perversion” as it is used throughout Bibhcal literature. The word comes from the Latin meaning “to twist through and through.” The effect of perver­ sion, this twisting, necessarily spans generations. Sacks explains it like this: “In the Torah there is a general tenden­ cy to use the wordperversion to refer to those acts of the fathers which have a lasting and devas­ tating effect on the whole of the nation: for example, black slav­ ery in early America. Or, to put it in other words, even an immigrant who has newly become a citizen of this country, although he. like all others, is innocent of any crime his father may have com­ mitted, has by virtue of becoming part of us, inherited a debt to the Native American Peoples, a debt which we shall never be able to pay in full.” These perversions of the fathers affect the branches of the children for generations, and the only relief in sight hes in ritu­ al and, in the case of the Old Testament, sacrifice. There is much ofinteresttobe found in The Book of Job, and Mr. Sacks’ translation and commentary serves as a good guide book. It points us in several different directions of possible interest, but leaves the ultimate decision of what to explore to the reader. St. John ’5 College ■ Fall 2001 } �{Faculty Books} MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Eva Brann examines three subjects of non-being in aphilosophical trilogy. By Barbara Goyette, A73 t first glance, the imagination, time, and negativity don’t seem to have much in common as topics of thought, except perhaps that no single philosopher or writer has produced the definitive book on any of them. Threads of their myster­ ies are woven into many of the great books though, from Plato to Newton to Tolstoy. They tickle our minds with feathery wisps of interest but don’t become as solidly consuming as the larger questions of being, human emotion and perception, knowledge, or nature. But to Eva Brann, a tutor since 1957 and dean in Annapolis from 1990 to 1997, these three are related in more profound ways. She’s written a trilogy of books about how we deal with and think about them. And for her, the topics all derive from a fascination with­ it’s hard to express this without sounding like one of the impossi­ bly dense St. John’s metaphysics readings-that which has no real being. Imagination is “a vision of something not actually there,” time trades in memory, a picture-as in imagination-of what no longer exists, and “naysaying,” our ability for negativity, is some­ how a font of dialectic and understanding. She may be examining what’s not, but everything Eva Brann writes is full of ...stuff. Open her book The World ofthe Imagina­ tion randomly, for example to pages 750 and 751, and find discus­ sions of or references to: Bachelard on Herman Hesse, a Chinese landscape painter who “wandered off into the space projected by his own imagination,” Wordsworth, Don Quixote’s grand notion of reality, Santayana’s “normal madness,” T.E. Lawrence on the fort of ancient Azrak, Guy Davenport on Grant Wood’s images of Iowa, and Louis L’Amour’s westerns. The acuity of her examples and her ability to bring disparate ideas into contact with each other are hallmarks of Brann’s writ­ ing. Pages 750 and 751 contain the end of a discussion about Proust and the beginning of a discussion about imaginative places. That the imagination can turn “space into place insofar as it is ... a propensity for projecting human feeling into space and a readiness to be affected by its local presences” can be demonstrat­ ed by citing examples from literature. Brann’s Don Quixote exam­ {The College- ple is particularly illuminating. Don Quixote attacks a band of windmills which he sees as monstrous giants. He is dragged off his horse and suffers bruises. Sancho Panza delivers the obligatory “I told you so.” Everyone knows the basics of this story. But Brann finds the imaginative wellspring of Cervantes’ hero to make her point. “An old enemy, a sorcerer wise in the black arts, wishing to cheat the Don of his glory, has turned the giants into windmills. It is Sancho Panza’s prose, not Don Quixote’s poetry, that is delud­ ed,” she writes. “The point, implicit but crucial, is that it is our mundane soulless world of flour-grinding windmills that is under a spell, a reverse or disenchanting spell cast by the enemies of glory. This spell is the ... pervasive notion that the ordinary is the actual.” Through Don Quixote’s imagination, the spell is broken and the true landscape emerges. The deep mystery of the imagination Brann attributes her initial interest in the imagination-which ultimately led to development of the themes in the trilogy-to the heavily intellectual content of the St. John’s program. “We always focus on the use of reason. That induces an appetite for imagining and reading works of fiction,” she says. Although she wrote many articles and two interpretive books during the first thirty years she was teaching, Brann says that the push to think more thor­ oughly about the faculty of imagination was different in character. She felt her own imagination coming alive, “blooming,” as a com­ plement to the rigors of the program. “It’s the opposite of what people might think,” she says. In 1978-9 she spent ayear away from St. John’s at Whitman Col­ lege in Walla Walla, Washington. “It was beautiful there, so dif­ ferent. The landscapes reminded me of that Beatles movie The Yel­ low Submarine. I used to ride around the golden and mauve hills and look at the little cabins, and I began to think I’d like to write about the workings of the imagination.” She began the project by reading everything she could find on the subject. Whitman had a good hbrary, so she read widelyphilosophers, psychologists, artists. She found few serious books on the imagination, but much material that was useful to her proj­ ect. When philosophers wrote about the faculty, she found, they didn’t seem to uncover it completely. “Kant called it a mystery too St. John's College • Fall 2001 } �deep to write about,” she notes. In the new science of cognitive psychology Brann discovered some important leads. “The psychol­ ogists had gotten into a terrific battle about whether or not we actually have a mind’s eye,” she says. “It was plain to me that we do have internal pictures. But what does that mean? What are they?” When she actually got down to writing the book, she found that her real work would be to bring together the thousands of things she had read, thought about, and seen. Once the organization was clear, however, the book quickly took shape. The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance (published in 1991 by Rowman & {The College- Littlefield) is a large book-800 pages. There is a chronological accounting of how various philosophers from Plato through Wittgenstein dealt with the imagination; a discussion of the psy­ chological aspects of the imagination: consciousness, representa­ tion, direct perception, and theories about how visual imagery occurs physically; a consideration of the metaphysics of images (are they nonexistent entities? are fictional objects real in any way?); a discussion of literature as the words representing the visions of imagination; an examination of imagination and space, including various geometries and visual art forms; and, finally, a St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } �{FacultyBooks} ^4 ^Ifl di^ up a Greekpot, that is not ancient, it ispresent. The only aspect ofantiquity is what I imagine about it. look at “worldly” imagination: images of the divine, creation of utopias, public vision, common imaginative landscapes. “I tried to write about what, in each discipline, the essence of the imagination is, and then I wrote a soberly romantic conclusion,” says Brann. Her conclusion-which she unashamedly calls her favorite part-outlines the important role that imagination plays in human action. “You can’t act purposefully unless you have a mental image of how things ought to be,” she says. This imaginative mechanism applies to pohtical and social action, and also in a deeper way to everyday life. “Unless there are days on which you are filled with the image of something loveable, your life, your job, your work will be dry as dust,” she says. Where do the images come from? From reading, memories, your childhood. “Good images, those that are usable for us, have a certain gauziness about them,” they are not too precise, she says. Precise images don’t give us enough breathing room, space for actions and reali­ ty to interact with what our imaginations devise. Brann doesn’t use Don Quixote as an example for this point, but it’s helpful to think of how broadly the errant knight takes his charge: every event, every item in daily use takes on a new and different mean­ ing under his gaze; imagination has the power to transform. The what, when, and where of time Brann’s second book. What, Then, Is Time?, yN^s, written in 1998, after she spent seven years as dean of the college. During her tenure as dean, she didn’t “think anything out, there wasn’t reflection.” Administration calls for a different type of thinking­ deliberating rather than contemplating. She was hungry for reflection, and for what comes from reflection when you’re Eva Brann-writing. “When 1 handed the keys to the dean’s office to Harvey [Flaumenhaft], I sat down and could hardly stop writing,” she says. (Indeed, after the book about time, she produced two more-7%e Ways of Naysaying, published in aooi, and a book about the Odyssey, to be published this spring. ) In answer to the question of how time became the second sub­ ject for her consideration, Brann says in her introduction: “My previous preoccupation had been with the imagination. It turned out that to think about the imagination entailed thinking about its treasure-house and workshop, that is, memory. But memory is largely (though not altogether) of the past, and the past is a phase of time.” Another source for the imagination is more elusive yet: {The College- memory of things that never were. Fiction writers, she notes, draw from a deep fund of such memories. And as readers of fic­ tion, we shde in and out of worlds that are constructed of such memories; strangest of all is that we can somehow share the land­ scapes of these worlds. She approached the book about time in the same way as the book about imagination-with extensive reading on the subject. However, the organization of the book is not based on the approaches of the various disciplines to the basic questions, as the first book was. Instead, Brann devised an ingenious pairing of thinkers. Plato and Einstein, she notes, both view time as a clock (Plato posited a cosmic clock, Einstein a local and “artificial device”); Aristotle and Kant consider time as something meas­ ured by the human soul. Other pairs include Plotinus and Heideg­ ger, Augustine and Husserl, Hegel and Bergson. The pairings show, among other things, that the problems we have with under­ standing time have not changed over the millennia. The second part of What, Then, Is Time? contains Brann’s own reflections on time; here the connections to imagination are made more clearly. She looks at what it means to have memory: “You go into the storehouse of your imagination and flip through a file. If you flip for a long time it is an old memory, if not, it is newer. Therefore the past arises by the study of the imagination.” Even concrete objects from the past do not give a true sense of time, because “we always live right on the cusp of the present.” She offers an example from her former life as an archaeologist: “If I dig up a Greek pot, that is not ancient, it is present. The only aspect of antiquity is what I imagine about it.” In a discussion of what she calls time pathologies, Brann explores some of the “practical effects on the economy of life and the choice of ends” that certain attitudes toward time bring about. She is particularly interested in the future, since she considersalong with the minor devil of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Lettersthat “nearly all vices are rooted in the future” and that there is a “widespread current enslavement to the future.” The examples she cites to confirm her view are well-known. We revel in the fast tempo, the novelty, of modern life, but an ever-increasing push for novelty will lead to things happening at a speed that human expe­ rience can’t take in. The emphasis then switches from thoughtful reaction to past experience as a basis for dealing with what the St. John ’5 College ■ Fall 2001 } �{Faculty Books} as We revel in thefast tempo, the novelty, ofmodern Ife, but an ever-increasingpushfor novelty will lead to things happening at a speed that human experience can i take in. future might bring to a kind of frantic projection toward what is imagined to be inevitable (“prepare to meet the future or be overwhelmed by it,” as the saying goes). Brann worries about the effects of this futuremindedness on our ability to be happy because it so strongly burdens our present. She quotes Octavio Paz: “Whoever builds a house for future hap­ piness builds a prison for the present.” Something from nothing In the third book Brann under­ took, she considered what was common to imagination and timethe “non-.” Imagination is of what does not exist and time is what no longer exists. “Both capacities for seeing images and for hav­ ing a sense of time are governed by something intellectual. It’s the ability we have for negativity, for non-being,” she says. In The Ways ofNaysaying: No, Not, Nothing, and Nonbeing, published in 2001 by Rowman & Littlefield, Brann explores our many kinds of negative saying and thinking. She begins with children and the ubiquitous tendency among them, when aged around two, for saying “no” and refusing to accommodate our wishes for them. She points out that the saying of “no” is often in conflict with the child’s action (every parent has seen a dashingly independent toddler refusing to drink her juice while simultaneously clutching the cup to her lips); “the naysaying does not concern the objective issue but the ownership of the will,” she says. “Along with the will and from the same source, from naysaying, comes thoughtfulness.” A child includes “no” among the very first words uttered, and as the child’s capac­ ity for exerting will develops, so too do language and thought. Brann argues that this delight in negativity is the beginning of the ability to discriminate and make reasoned choices. Brann cites a saying which “happens to be the fundamental dic­ tum pinpointing the crucial constructive function of naysaying,”-Ozn«M determinatio est negatio, which translates: All deter­ {The C o ll eg e • mined devotion involves some naysaying. Thus, far from being a dark, dreary path, the study of negativity is “the most wonder­ ful subject,” says Brann. She goes on to discuss the logical implications of non-existence, fictions of imagination, the metaphysics of non-being, Hegelian negativity, the noth­ ing that is the “supreme attain­ ment of the East,” and finally, how “nothing” becomes, for philosophers like Heidegger, the source of Being. Along the way there are side-routes that investigate many of the most mysterious of the St. John’s perenni­ al seminar questions like how the appearances are both not the original being and yet like the original (Plato’s question in the Republic, the Sophist, and other dialogues). Perhaps it is this reiteration of the questions called to mind in the St. John’s seminar readings that makes Eva Brann’s books so interesting. One needn’t be a Johnnie to recognize the impor­ tance of these questions, but for those who’ve read the same books Brann has spent the past 30 years with, her treatment of the issues is a re-illumination. The startling juxtapositions-Plato and Ein­ stein, for example-and the insights into the books-Don Quixote’s world as the rightside up one, the flour-grinding wind­ mills as the upside down one-seem to epitomize the places we’d all like our minds to carry us. In addition to raising and discussing the perennial issues, Brann has a knack for reminding us of the moral dimensions and implications for human action that accom­ pany philosophic points of view. Half apologetically, Brann calls her books the Trilogy of the Human Center. They are about what lies between the sense and the intellect. While students we were sometimes abashed at living in any world other than that of the intellect, and as we’ve grown we’ve become more comfortable in the middle ground-the place of imagination and memory. That she shows us so much of the “stuff’ at the human center is certainly not nothing. St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } �{Homecoming} TALE OF TWO HOMECOMINGS Whether to Santa Fe in July or Annapolis in September, alumni like revisiting their college days. Santa Fe another. At the post-lecture reception, they showed their books, he Program, the tutors, the students, the campus: talked about their publishing work, and displayed no persisting alumni remember their time at the college as a func­ rancor from their deep disagreement earlier in the evening. tion of all four (and perhaps of some unnamed factors The later evening led inevitably to the coffee shop party, where as well). At Homecoming in Santa Fe this July, where the class of ’76 reveled in the contribution of A.T. Michael Mac­ alumni flocked back to campus to celebrate the Donald reunions of the classes of 1996,1991,1986,1981,1976,1971, and (SF76), who burned a hit parade CD of dance tunes from room parties from their era. We’re talking Hollywood 1966, all the elements of nostalgia were present in force, as commons class­ Swingin’, Signed Sealed Delivered, and Respect. mates reunited, returned to seminar and lecture, and partied the Saturday morning, on the other hand, brought seminar, a more night away with the traditional gusto of liberal artists. programmatic experience. There was the gamut to choose from: From the very first, all went well hatted: at registration Friday Mr. Carey on Dostoevsky’s Notesfrom the Underground, Ms. Reaafternoon. Alumni Director Tahmina Shalizi and her able assis­ hard on Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Mr. Davis tants Leslie Wolfe (SF03), Anna Perleberg (SFoa), and John and Ms. Adam on Balzac’s Gobseck, Mr. Cornell on Chekhov’s The McCarthy (SFoi) gave out stylish low-rise khaki baseball caps Black Monk, and Mr. Bybee on Plato’s Meno. From there, all with the SJC monogram on the front and “aooi” on the back. repaired to the soccer field for the traditional fiesta picnic, with After the barbecue dinner on the Placita, it was time for lecture fun for kids, including a pinata, and group photos for the reunion in the newly outfitted Great Hall. The universally deplored buck­ classes. et-slouch chairs, used in the Great Hall from the start (because the The Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association was held after chairs in the Great Hall must be stackable), have at long last been lunch in the portico of the new Student Activities Center. For supplanted by-brace yourselves-comfortable chairs. Still stack­ many of the alumni, it was their first encounter with the buildingable, but with actual arms, and straight backs, and attractive the most frequently overheard remark was “Wow.” At the meet­ maroon upholstery. The alumni gasped. The alumni stared. The ing, John Balkcom (SFGIoo), president of the Santa Fe campus, alumni sat. The alumni smiled. and David Levine (A67), dean of the Santa Fe campus, reported on The lecture was also a treat. Dana Densmore (A65) and Bill the state of the college; and Glenda Eoyang (SF76), president of Donahue (A67) gave a point-counterpoint talk entitled “Bringing the Alumni Association, reported on the association’s year. Elec­ the St. John’s Ethos Into the Real World.” Ms. Densmore defend­ tions were held: Jason Walsh (A85), Mark Middlebrook (A83), and ed the thesis that all the Great Books are true, while Mr. Donahue Clint Lively (A78) were elected as alumni representatives to the maintained that all the Great Books are wrong. Bold assertions on Board of Visitors and Governors; and Bill Tilles (A59), Valerie both sides! The Densmore/Donahue team does more than argue Pawlewicz (A89), Martha Jordan (SFGI86), Robert George (A85), politely about extreme ideas: they are the founders of Green Lion and Amber Boydstun (SF99) were elected to serve as directors on Press, which publishes works in the history of science, from New­ the Alumni Association board. Michael Rodriguez, Director of ton to Aristotle to Faraday to Euclid; and they are married to one T {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } �{Homecoming} Tutor Peter Kalkavage with alumni from the ’80s - top left; Dana Densmore (A65) and Bill Donahue (A67) lecturing in Santa Fe - bottom left; a group meets up on the quad, just like 2,7 Annapolis_____________________________ uring Homecoming weekend in Annapolis this September, the St. John’s-bred dichotomy of “Same and Other” seemed to take center stage. Johnnies attend Homecoming looking for the Financial Aid, and Richard Lampert, a founder of the Library and same: they want to talk with their same tutors, Fine Arts Guild, were made Honorary Alumni. Mr. Lampert said enjoy the same mental excitement they once felt in semin he hoped that the new Student Activities Center would spur the eat in the same dining hall where they once spent hours disc college on to fielding a foothall team, because it had been his life­ virtue, justice, and whether the coffee shop’s milkshakes were as long dream to he able to relax in front of the television with a heer good as those at Chick ‘n’ Ruth’s. of a Saturday afternoon, to root for his alma mater. But while Johnnies come seeking the same, they’re often most The Saturday night banquet saw the reunion classes gather in excited by what is other. They explore the the Great Hall for a fine meal, toasts to renovations of Mellon Hall and wander themselves and each other, a few short and ii5TH eunion for i ks through the Greenfield Library and the excellent speeches (Mike MacDonald Barr-Buchanan Center. When they get the SF76 received the alumni award of Meritchance, they chat with current students to see p. 39), and dancing into the wee hours. The first event of the weekend was a private party hosted by Rick Lightburn (SF76) and his brother-inlearn what effects MTV and the Internet The hallmark of a successful Homecom­ law, Claiborne Booker (A81), to celebrate the reunion have had on the logos. And in seminar, in ing, it seems, is exhaustion, happy exhaus­ of the class of 1976. A warm summer evening on the the same classrooms where they once sat, tion. Not too much exhaustion, however, Bookers’ pristine courtyard provided the perfect perhaps even discussing the same text, to go to the President’s Brunch at the Hunt backdrop for catching up and reminiscing. Victoria they sometimes learn just how “other” House Sunday morning, the laid-hack yet Hanley (SF76) showed classmates her new book The Seer and the Sword, while Glenda Eoyang (SF76) they themselves have become. elegant end to the weekend’s festivities. shared her thoughts on being president of the Alum­ Homecoming itself is a play of same and All in all, what was heard around the cam­ ni Association. And everyone got a kick out of an old pus this weekend was delight at the event class picture: there they were in their flashy 70’s garb other. Some activities have been repeated so often you’d think they were started hy itself, pleasure in seeing the college thriv­ with flaring collars, feather boas and all. The party Barr and Buchanan: the alumni soccer ing and improving, and renewed fondness was a great success and proved to he a perfect kick­ off for the weekend’s events. classic, the picnic lunches, the coffee shop for all things St. John’s. party, and the Sunday brunch stay largely by John McCarlhy(SF01) IN THE OLD DAYS - RIGHT. D R {The College -St -6 John ’5 College . Fall 2001 } �2,8 {Homecoming} The class of ’8i reprises “West Street Story,” their prank skit TOP left; typical seminar gestures are never forgotten - BOTTOM left; alumni children discuss Harry Potter during their own seminar-RIGHT. the same from year to year. But this year the Alumni Office (Roberta Gable, Ay8, assisted by Dolores Strissel) tinkered with a few of the old activities and introduced some new ones to make the weekend just a little more “other” than Homecomings past. One new event, a career panel, started the weekend with a bang. A panel of la alumni discussed their careers and career paths before a standing-room-only crowd of current students and young alumni. During the discussion the room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. When the formal part of the panel ended, students were invited to step up and talk with the alumni whose work interested them. The students positively (but politely) lunged for the alumni, and many talked for so long at the 6:30 p.m. event that they missed lecture. While those who stayed were happy with the way they spent their time, those who attended lecture said it was not one to miss. Annapolis tutor-on-leave Abraham Schoener (A8a), who is study­ ing viticulture in Napa, spoke about “The Biology of the Fermen­ tation Vessel,” a suitable prelude to the wine and cheese party with current seniors that followed. For those whose tastes ran to beer and chips rather than brie and cabernet Sauvignon, a boat­ house party was held with music requested by the class of’76. “No disco” was the rule, although a Rod Stewart song managed to fall into the mix. The incident spawned no complaints. The next morning brought alumni back to the classroom with leaders Douglas Allanbrook (HA85), Eva Brann (HA89), Samuel Kutler (A54), Chaninah Maschler (HA98), Bill Pastille, John Sarkissian, Malcolm Wyatt, Peter Kalkavage, Joan Silver (MA76), Nick Maistrellis, and Curtis Wilson (HA83) leading seminars on {The College. readings from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye to Augustine’s Con­ fessions to Robert Frost’s “Black Cottage.” Susan Ashmore (A76) and Adam Wasserman (A76) led a seminar on Harry Potter for children of alumni. Afternoon events included Freshman Chorus Revisited, where tutor emeritus Elliott Zuckerman (HA95) led alumni in classics such as “Gaudeamus Igitur,” “The Heavens Are Telling,” and “Ave Verum.” The class of 1981 staged a reprise of their senior prank skit, “West Street Story.” Outside by the gym, the soccer classic proved an exciting game despite the students’ victory, and in the bookstore an autograph party brought together nine authors and scores of readers. One of the best changes made to Homecoming this year was the moving of registration and the Saturday evening cocktail party to McDowell Hall. With the fireplace room of the coffee shop pro­ viding a warm backdrop for registration, the bright elegance of the Great Hall and McDowell classrooms made the cocktail party a special affair. A series of moving toasts-thankfulness for com­ munity in the face of what had happened earlier in the monthgraced the Saturday night banquet and Mr. Zuckerman played the piano for the waltz party afterwards. A coffee shop party DJ’d by Robert George kept alumni dancing until the wee hours. Those who managed to turn in early were able to play croquet on the front lawn Sunday morning and still make it to the President’s House in time for a champagne brunch. While Homecoming’s “other” events were a hit with alumni, the “same” seemed to carry the day. Bill Pastille’s seminar on Augus­ tine’s Confessions was as enjoyably contentious as any sophomore ever witnessed. Eva Brann, whose seminar was on an essay by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, said that not only was the reading about a cockfight, but a cockfight almost broke out in the class. Homecoming reports were written by Roberta Gable and Susgan Borden. St. John’s College ■ Fall siooi } �{AlUMNiNoTES} 1941 Bruce Graybeal writes to say that he helps his wife Barbara manage and operate a private conservative school at Ohve Branch, Mississippi: De Soto County Academy. He is studying homeopathy. Davies spent time with Jacqueline and Dave Rea (class of ’49) while the fisherfolk fought the fish and seasickness (just joking). This trip has become a long-standing tradi­ tion for St. John’s alumni who live on Long Island.” i960 1951 1945 William Lieb attended the Santa Fe Homecoming where he had two pieces in the All Alumni Art Show: “Unreal” and “Original Bliss.” After 25 years in the film business, he graduated at age 70 from Santa Monica College of Design Art and Architecture in 1993. He had a seven-year retrospective solo art show at the University of Califor­ nia, Riverside, in 1996. He has two grandsons: Danny, 5, and Alex, 3. In the fall of 2000, George Wend took a river cruise from Amsterdam to Vienna. Tony Hardy is semi-retired, still working half-time as a psychologist. He plays tennis and gardens in his “spare” time. He’s working on a book on phenomenology, with roots in Kant and Cassirer. as an active partner in the Philadel­ phia office of the law firm of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP since January i, 1993,1 am now Senior Counsel to the firm. I continue professionally active as cochair of the Joint Philadelphia Bar Association/ United States Dis­ trict Court Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee, as judge pro tern in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Day For­ ward and Commerce case-manage­ ment programs, and as chair of the latter program’s advisory commit­ tee. I am certified by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. as an arbitrator in the BBB Auto Line program. I take an occasional engagement as an expert witness on issues of professional responsibihty, as an arbitrator, or as a medi­ ator.” had a hip replaced; gotten a novel. Naturally Bad Manners, accepted by a publisher (it is scheduled to appear before next May); am presently beginning to negotiate a position as a resident Research Scholar at Hanazono University’s International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan, and hope to become a Rinzai Zen lay brother; have been invited to attend the 2001 meetings of the Eranos Circle at Ascona in Switzer­ land as their guest because of my translations and books concerning Adolf Portmann and his work; and otherwise I am enjoying the life of a penurious seventy-year-old Liberal Artist. My e-mail address is presently rbcc@erols.com. Jerry M. Hynson, retired teacher, school principal, and coordinator of Baltimore Public Schools, has been elected a trustee of the Mary­ land Historical Society. {The College. Donald Schell (SF) writes: “In sings polyphonic sacred music out­ doors in New York City. You can read about it at WWW. streetsingers. org. 1968 1969 John Falencki (A) reports that his Mabshall Clark (SF) is purchas­ oldest child married this June. He is living in New York and enjoying work as a family physician in a col­ laborative office with a physical therapist, family therapist, manual medicine therapist and homeopath. ing energy for the state of Califor­ nia with fellow St. Johnnie Jonathan Teague (SF75). At the time he wrote in, he was expecting a very interesting summer. Johanna Evans is owner and CEO ofXenopus I Inc. Medical Research. Tipping the Scale Lawrence G. Myers (1951) writes: “We all know that we improved our minds at the college, but let me give high praise (greek word epainos} to those at the college who helped me to improve my physical health. Six weeks prior to starting my freshman year, I left the U.S. Army’s Tilton General Hospital where I had been a patient for 23 months after being wounded in the Battle of Luzon in 1945. When I left the hospital and arrived at St. John’s, I weighed 135 pounds. After my sophomore year, I tipped the scales at 175 pounds. So let me thank the dining hall staff and those who provided the hundreds of hamburgers, fries, and cups of chili that I ate in the Coffee Shop while poring over Euclid or looking up the aorist passive for of some Greek verb. Now at age 79,1 stiU weigh 175 pounds but I look forward to putting on a few pounds when I return to the college this fall to celebrate our class’s 50th anniversary. If some of you guys are on a diet. I’ll gladly take your desserts.” r. 1959 Charles B. Watson’s (A) son, Ivan is NPR correspondent in West Africa-Lagos, Nigeria. His daugh­ ter, Anya, graduated from high school and wiU attend Connecticut College in the fall to study Marine Science. 19981 walked the Camino de Santi­ ago with my second daughter, Maria. Our book about that pil­ grims’ walk came out this spring. My Father, My Daughter, Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago. We’ve read at the College of Preachers in Washington, D.C. and in October will be part of a symposium on pil­ grimage at Stanford University and then traveling up to Seattle to open a forum on pilgrimage at St. Mark’s Cathedral. We carried small stones from the windmills in Navarra to add to the mound at Cruz de Ferro and I thought frequently of Don Quixote as we walked. In our read­ ings, I finally noticed that I’m the Don Quixote character in the book. Maria is the Sancho Panza charac­ ter, of course.” John Hetland leads a group that Richard Carter writes: “I’ve just On 7/20 at Montauk the SJC Annu­ al Striped Bass and Bluefishing Charter sailed again with Allan Hoffman (class of ’49), Harvey Goldstein (class of’59), Cora and Peter Weiss (class of’46), Peter Davies (class of’48), his brother and nephew. Says Allan, “Mary Goldstein (class of’59) and Phyllis George B. Jones HI writes: “My wife died in June 1991 and I retired to play golf. Met my current wife Randi playing golf in Hilton Head Island, S.C. We married in August 2000 and honeymooned in Vegas, Hawaii, San Francisco, Monterey. Had a great visit with Harrison Shepard (A61) while in San Fran­ cisco. Now living in Hilton Head. Since the telephone company didn’t list our number, 843-8376657 will get us. 1964 1954 Edward Mullinix writes: “Retired 1949 "^9 D St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } �{Alumni Notes} 30 The Helping Life ebecca Thompson (SF71) writes: “My first community serv­ ice job at St. John’s was helping an elderly Hispanic family and tutoring a young Hispanic girl. Thirty years later. I’ve just left a migrant education job with 3-4-year olds, preparing the children and families for entry into kindergarten. This year I worked with middle school kids, tutoring and ESL. I must be where I want to be! My kids are 18 and 21, and continue to provide us with interest and debate. We bought our home in Petaluma and have an endless vista of landscaping and improvements, should we choose to follow that road...love to hear from old friends.” R Michael Anthony’s (A) son. Will, graduated from Lake Oswego High School and is now attending the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In addition to teaching at Thomas Aquinas College, Richard Ferrier (A) is president of the Declaration Foundation, and with another tutor has co-authored a hook for high school civics. The book is America’s Declaration Principles in Thought and Action and is available from the foundation’s website at declaration.net. 1970 William Wade Douglas (SFGI) is CEO of Sangraal by the Sea Confer­ ence Center, hosting groups, churches, and colleges. Sangraal is also a youth hostel and provides lodging to worldwide members from many countries as part of hosteling international. St. John’s College staff, faculty, and students may stay one night free. His wife Linda (SFGI83) is coordinator of gifted education for Middlesex Co. public schools in Virginia. 1971 After finishing St. John’s, Dwight Platt (A) went to Virginia Theo­ logical Seminary and ended up in Baltimore teaching at St. Mary’s College. In 1975, he started a busi­ ness in commercial real estate to supplement his salary at St. Mary’s. Today that business owns 42 build­ ings around Baltimore, and Dwight’s younger son. Sage (Haverford ’96), runs the Con­ struction Division. Dwight and his wife Nina live in the Greenspring Valley at a farm they have owned peacefully for over 27 years. This year they decided to totally reno­ vate the house, and within the last 2.7 months, the peace has been lost forever. (“Just kidding!” he notes.) Dwight sees David Johnson (A68) quite frequently and has kept up with the college over the years. He and David ran a seminar for adults for a couple of years at the Mary­ land Club. Dwight win not be at the 2001 reunion because his oldest son, Charlie, is getting married the same weekend, but he hopes to see more of his class at the 35th reunion in 2006. Nick Patrone (A) graduated in 2001 with a BM in composition from the East Carohna University School of Music. Now he’s in the Master’s program for composition. He’s still practicing medicine as a rheumatol­ ogist in Rocky Mount, N.C. His son, Paul, wiU be entering St. John’s in the fall of 2002. 1974 Richard Ferguson (A) received and accepted an early retirement offer from his company. Who says that a soft economy is bad news? He is tak­ ing a year off to decide what he wants to do. He is still hving in Boulder Colorado, with the same address, the same phone number, and the same wife as he has had for the last twenty years or so. 1975 Mark Habrel (SF) writes: “I have Paul Eitner (SF) and his wife Denise Roy are enjoying their first grandchild. Turner Gene Eitner, born December 1999. Paul is an aerospace/communications engi­ neer and Denise is a certified nurse midwife. They have settled in Southeastern Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia. Barry Sher (A) closed his office last year and is now running a virtu­ al design studio out of his dining room. “My staff is stretched across two states,” he writes. 1973 Donnel (A) and Janet O’Flynn (A74) write: “Our son Aidan will be a freshman in Annapolis in the fall of 2001! Our daughter Kathleen is also starting college, at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Bar­ rington, Mass. Our empty nest is on {The College- Martha’s Vineyard where Donnel is rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven. I am doing pediatric occupational therapy in the Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools. We look forward to lots of parental visits to St. John’s.” this year been named Director of Music at St. Edward the Confessor Episcopal Church in Wayzata, Min­ nesota. For those who don’t know, I have a six-year-old son: Aaron John Rening-Habrel. I have also been married three times and, at each wedding, fellow SF75 alumnus G. Kevin Johnson has been my best man. (Talk about overworking a friendship!) 1976 Betsy Davenport (SF) received a PhD in psychology in 1989. She married Joe Kaplan in 1987 and has one child, age 9, two stepchadults, 33 and 36, and two grandchildren, 5 and 4. Her work includes writing a column on parenting, public speak­ ing, the occasional local talk-tv show, private practice psychothera­ py, parenting consultations, diag­ nosis and treatment of St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } ADD/ADHD. She is preparing a book for publication and has more in the works. Victoria Hanley’s (SF) book. The Seer and the Sword, is being pub­ lished in the U.K., the U.S., and Canada, and translated and pub­ lished in Holland, Norway, Fin­ land, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Her second book. The Heal­ er ’s Keep, will be pubhshed in 2002. “I’m happy!” she writes. 1977 Corry Miller Weierrach (A) reports she’s enjoying two years off from work, keeping busy with daughters Madeleine and Helen, and engaging in several volunteer activities. Andrea Williams Ham and Robert James Ham (both SF) write: “Jim and I were thrilled to be able to attend our niece’s gradua­ tion with St. John’s College Santa Fe campus in May 2001. INDIA Clarke (SFor) is a third genera­ tion graduate of St. John’s College. Both her grandfather, John L. Williams (class of ’50) and her mother, India Williams (SF73) preceded her as did Jim and 1. Con­ gratulations India Clarke. We‘re all proud ofyou!” News from Marlene Strong (A): “I just found out last week that I passed my licensing exam for my Marriage and Family Therapist license! I’ll continue to work as a social worker at a foster care agency until I figure out what to do nextone of these days I hope to find a job that combines my research skills and my clinical skills. Right now I’m exhausted from all the studying-there was a four-hour written exam in January and then an oral exam in April-it all comes down to you and two strangers in a hotel room with a tape recorder for 35 minutes! Anyway, I’m very relieved it’s over and I can go back to having a life instead of studying all the time.” Deborah Cohen (A) writes that her firm, Cohen Marketing Ser­ vices (CMS), has been granted a patent for a new process of formu­ lating soy products. The process �{AlumniProfile} 31 Household Name Jim Rooney’s days arefilled with the nightmares that homeownersfear. By SuS3AN Borden, A87 e’s the Click and Clack of the home­ front, Annapolis’ answer to Sherlock Holmes. Jim Rooney (A74), a home inspector and house maintenance columnist, is the man to call about mysterious leaks, odors, drafts, and buzzes. Not long ago, a woman called Rooney about a sewage smell whose source she couldn’t trace. He asked her if she had a family room. She said yes. He asked if she had a bar sink. She said yes. He asked if she drank. She said no. “So there’s the problem,” Rooney says. “The trap in the bar sink dried out.” Rooney sees his ability to diagnose problems-sometimes over the phone-as a legacy of his St. John’s days. “I’m just using what we learn at St. John’s,” he says, “a way to approach a prob­ lem.” Rooney has always put his problem-solving abilities to good use, even during his St. John’s days. He organ­ ized and headed a carpentry crew while a student at St. John’s, framing single family homes and light commercial and town­ house projects. Later he became a project manager for commercial construction proj­ ects costing from $200,000 to $5 million. Rooney is a licensed Maryland home improvement contractor and a member of the National Historical Trust. He has writ­ ten instruction manuals for the Stanley Tool Company and lectured on residential homebuilding, repair, and restoration. He has acted as an arbitrator and served as an expert witness in construction-related cases. And, he is known throughout Annapolis as the author of “Homefront,” a popular house maintenance column. Rooney has been writing Homefront for the Annapolis Capital since October 1994, “The VENT PIPE DOWN THERE NEEDS TO BE EIXED,” NOTES JiM RoONEY (A74) AFTER A TRIP column to “On The Level” and is now offering it to newspapers across the coun­ try. While he is pleased to join the organization that syndicates Ann Landers, Molly Ivins, and the comic strip “Andy Capp,” Rooney says it was a long road to syndication. “The first thing you do when you’re trying to get syndicated is get used to rejection,” he says. “Some of my letters just barely made it over the transom before they came flying back.” Rooney finally got a break when the Capital announced the results of a readers survey: Rooney’s column was the favorite, beating every col­ umn in the paper, including Dear Abby. He sent the syn­ dicates the survey and rewrote the opening of his cover letter to read: “This column sells papers.” The approach worked. Creators signed him on, and Rooney is now poised to become a household name to house­ holders nationwide. AlUMNI HoUSE Reverdy Johnson House ). INTO THE BASEMENT OF THE (AKA giving Annapolis residents advice about hot water heaters, ductwork, gutter guards, roof venting, replacement windows, con­ crete, and septic systems. What are the things that are most on a homeowners mind? Rooney says that the most common problems are wet basements, leaky roofs, inoperable heating and cooling systems, and plumbing malfunctions. But he prefers solving more esoteric problems. “I’ve investigated everything from bat odor in an attic to a mysterious houseground causing lights to brighten and dim,” he says, clearly fond of the very nightmares that cause homeowners to lose sleep. This past August, Rooney signed with Creators Syndicate, which retitled his {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } On the Bookshelf The Reader’s Digest Guide to Home Repair - Jim’s comment: Oddly enough, this is one of the best books for do-it-yourselfers on the market. The Old House Journal Guide to Restoration - For more aggressive projects The following periodicals are for anyone who wants to turn pro: The Journal ofLight Construction Fine Homebuilding �{AlumniNotes} technology makes a whole new gen­ eration of soy products possible. The range of products span the bakery and snack categories; a press release lists soy tortilla chips, soy tortillas, or even soy “wraps” and soy “Chinese wrappers” as pos­ sible products. 1978 George Harper (A), an attorney at large, reports that he “holds court (up) at 14744 Main Street, Upper Marlboro, MD 2,0772.” 1979 Greg Cowell (SF) writes: “With my second child on the way I thought I would send in an update of my life, not having done so since I drove away ar years ago. My wife Jeannine and I have been married 8 years. We have two future St. John’s candidates at our house, our daugh­ ter Cathryn is three and a half, and we are expecting a son in the next month. I have been practicing med­ icine for r6 years and currently I am the medical director of a medium­ size emergency room in Illinois. Music is my passion, but I have yet to figure out how to make money as a musician. My e-mail is gcowelled @aol.com. Regards to all, but espe­ cially to old E and F dormers who might be reading.” 1980 and Etym(bi)ology, Omnidawn Press, 2002. 1981 Warren Spector (A), along with Alan Schwartz, has been named co­ president and co-chief operating officer of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns. Spector continues to head the firm’s fixed income division and other units. 1982 Randy Linder (SF) writes: “Life rolls on. (Anyone out there have any ideas how to stop/slow this train?) I’m starting my sixth year as a professor at the University of Texas in evolutionary biology. Which means I’m up for tenure. Oh the joys of stress. Otherwise, life is good. Well, except for truly infernal summers, rra degree heat is not compatible with cycling home from work. Lord help Austin when global warming really kicks in. I hope there’ll be a good turnout for our ao- year reunion next year. I’m very interested in what youse guys have been up to. Do feel free to stop by if your travels bring you to Austin, Texas.” Pedro Martinez-Fraga (A) was selected as the 2001 Lawyer of the Americas by the University of Miami Interamerican Law Review and the School of Law. The award recognizes extraordinary accom­ plishments in the area of interna­ tional law. Pedro’s successful repre­ sentation of several countries in federal district court in the U.S. and arbitral proceedings in Europe and South America gave rise to this most prestigious hemispheric recognition. Pedro also chairs the Greenberg Traurig International Litigation Department. Melanie Longoni (SF) is currently in her third year of study at Austin Presbyterian Theological Semi­ nary, where she is enrolled in the Master of Divinity degree program, in preparation for ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She is especially interested in min­ istry with children and with adults with developmental disahihties. Erik Jacobs (A) has two daughters: Ada, who turned four on June 12, 2001, and Katie, who is nearly a year old. 1983 Linda Douglas (SFGI) is coordina­ tor of gifted education for Middle­ sex County Public Schools in Vir­ ginia. For news of her husband, William, see notes for the class of 1970. Steve Barkhimer (A) writes that Elizabeth Travis (SF) writes: “I’m since graduating from the Eastern Classics Program in rggb, he has been enjoying an extremely active life in the Boston theatre world, and has just released a CD of origi­ nal music called “Time Was,” which can be obtained through www.cdfreedom.com or sbarkhimer@aol.com. still in California. Turning 40 too soon. Heard from Dave Larom (SF83)-he is in San Diego with wife Nancy Lovinger and their new baby. Sounds like life is good for them these days, too. What’s up with the rest of us that came together dur­ ing the fall of ’7g to first discuss ashtrays and the capital ‘G’ Good?” Roh Crutchfield (A) e-mails that the info for him in the Alumni Reg­ ister is about a year out of date. He’s currently living in Henderson­ ville, North Carolina and his e-mail address is robcrutchfield@yahoo.com. Liz Waldner (A) writes that she has three new poetry collections coming out: Selfand Simulacra, Alice James Books’ Hawley Prize winner for 2001; Dark Would, Uni­ versity of Georgia Press Contempo­ rary Poetry Series winner for 3002; {The College. 1984 Beth Lohr Koolbeck (A) writes that she and her husband Gregory had a new baby girl, Joy, born in January. 1985 Jeffrey Wilson (A) writes: “I was granted tenure at Loyola Marymount this year. My first publica­ tion, an article on Kant’s sublime, is forthcoming in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. I am in my fourth year of co-teaching graduate philosophy seminars in Germany through the University of Frankfurt. I am increasingly involved in St. John’s Episcopal Church in South Central Los Ange­ les with parishioners from 27 coun­ tries. St. John’s is one of the Epis­ copal parishes that already 5t. John’s College ■ Fall 200/ } performs same-sex unions-and I’m still looking for the boyfriend to make that commitment with.” Beth Anderson and David Stahl (both A) have moved to Camp Hill, Pa. Their new address is 853 Wynnewood Road, Camp Hill, PA 17011-1635. 1986 Linda Hamm Grez (A) writes: “My husband Joe Grez and I got married on the steps behind the Quad in Annapolis in June of 2000. Guests included Roger Lowe (A86) and Sallie Fine (A87). I’d love to hear from classmates in Annapohs or Santa Fe. E-mail: llhamm2@earthlink.net.” Barbara Roherts (SFGI) has returned home to the Denver area, where she is a special educator in a public elementary Montessori school and a school for the gifted and talented. From Todd Masilon (A): “After having served for about six months in Bosnia as an enlisted Intelhgence Analyst (to Tia Pausic (A)— just missed you while you were working in Croatia), I have recently returned to the U.S. and have grad­ uated from the Army Officer Candi­ date School (euphemistically referred to as “Charm School”). Currently, as a newly commissioned Second Lieutenant (at 37 years of age, I think I’m the oldest 2LT in the Army), I am at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., preparing to attend the Mili­ tary Intelligence Basic Officer Course. Wife Renee and daughter Molly (three years old) will join me here shortly (I’ve seen them for a total of about three weeks since leaving for Bosnia last Septemhera welcome reunion indeed). “Upon graduation in December, my orders take us to Darmstadt, Germany. This is a good thing, since I’m sure to be deployed to Bosnia/Kosovo/Macedonia at least twice during the three years that we’re there, and Renee and Molly will be at liberty to have adventures in Europe while I’m away. “Despite the fact that I’ve yet to use the Arabic language skills the Army has taught me, I continue to �{AlumniNotes} maintain my fluency (thank God for the BBC and their Arabic broad­ casts on the Internet). “As a former Johnny, and holder of two MAs in Unguistics, friends and family thought I was nuts for joining the Army a little over three years ago. While there have been many trying times, and a lot to gripe about. I’m happy to say that, upon reflection. I’m proud to be a philosopher-warrior. Yes, the mili­ tary trains me to be ready to destroy and kill, but it also trains me to pre­ serve and protect. Happily, my philosopher-wife is consonant with this life and its requirements.” O’Neal, and his wife, Lynn Thomp­ son, is the Director of the Southern Pines Public Library. Across Spain.” “Any Johnnies pass­ ing through San Francisco give me a call!” he says. Teresa Jeanne Fullinwider (A) and Christopher John Bailey (A) Picot Floyd (A) reports that he is working at Citibank, for the Latin American Consumer Banking Divi­ sion. He is the UNIX systems man­ ager. His wife Suzy is alternately homeschooling and Montessori schooling their daughters, Myrina, 6, and Daphne, 4, got married in October of 1996. She now goes by the name Teresa Bailey. They live in Pittsburgh, where Chris is a free-lance writer and Teresa is a Doula. On March 20, 3001, they had a baby boy named Simon David Bailey. 1988 1989 Jennifer Lee (SF) writes: “After Christina Paige (A) writes: “Since 1987 “It would be nice to hear from old friends,” writes Mira Skadegard Thorsen (SF). “We are moving to a little horse farm not too far from Copenhagen (ao min.). Since I just finished a degree in Literary Theo­ ry and Anthropology, I assume I’ll be working either in some sort of research or on a PhD within the next year or so. Having three kids does keep us fairly busy though...Anybody interested in Danish dressage horses should drop me a note. I’d also love to hear from anyone working with post­ colonial discourse theory, and race and gender theory (and human rights and business). There aren’t too many people working in these areas in Denmark. Our new address is: Mira, Sune, Tess, Tara and Tai Skadegard Thorsen, Sortmosen 6, 3520 Farum, Denmark.” Sai,LIE Fine (A) e-mails that she’s recently completed her education administration program and is now certified (and certifiable!) to serve as a principal for grades 7-13. “I plan on teaching one more year before making any career decisions. I moved last March and my new address is 3136 Richmond Road; Beachwood, OH 4412a. I also made a cyber move and can now be reached at salhefine@msn.com.” Bob Howell (AGI) is Director of Technology and English Depart­ ment Chair at the O’Neal School in Southern Pines, N.C. Bob’s daugh­ ter Emma is a sophomore at 1999 I’ve been teaching math, sci­ ence and literature classes at Kino School in Tucson, Ariz. Now I’m in charge of the Junior High Reading and Writing Program, which suits me to a T. The best part of teaching at an alternative school is that my daughter goes to work with me every day. After all those different sur-names (Smith, Freeman, etc.). I’m very comfortable as Christina Paige. I miss Chris Colby and the Annapolis campus print shop, and Mr. Starr, but I’m still friends with Deirdre McGlynn (A86) and Robert Beeson (SF88).” Diana Shaw-McCarthy (A) is working on a master’s degree in public administration at New York University. Her husband, Jonathan, is a research economist at the Fed­ eral Reserve Bank of New York. Elaine Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI), having committed to fulltime writing, has completed editing of her father’s World War II letters. Her book, titled From Calcutta With Love, is being published by Texas Tech University Press in early 3003. In July 2002, she will have a book signing and talk at the St. John’s Santa Fe campus as part of the “speaking volumes” program. Jeffrey Falero (A) reports that he graduated in June with an M.S. in Civil Engineering (Structures) from Stanford University. He also co-authored an article about the construction of the latest leg of Spain’s bullet train; it appears in Civil Engineering magazine, June 2001, Vol. 71, No. 6, “Speeding eight wonderful years in Greece, Dimitri and I are returning to the States with our two daughters. Our new address is: 2804 Goodwood, Baltimore, MD 31314.1 haven’t held a proper job in all my time in Greece, but I did get a masters in education and plan to teach middle school math. Lots of new begin­ nings...” The first big-screen appearance for Christopher Sullivan (A) was in Metropopular in Spike & Mike’s 200! Classic Festival ofAnimation. He was the voices of Los Angeles and New York. Metropopular won Honorable Mention in Short Film­ making at the Sundance Film Festi­ val and tied for runner-up for Best Short at the Texas Film Festival. Brad Stuart and Sara Larson Stuart (both A) are delighted to report the birth of their daughter, Eleanor Kay Stuart, on June 18, 3001. Marty Gelfand (A) had an article published in the American Bank­ ruptcy Law Journal, “How a Com­ munity Saved Their Hospitals from Unnecessary Liquidation.” His arti­ cle tells the story of how Cleve­ landers rallied to stop a bankrupt hospital system from selling its neighborhood hospitals to a com­ peting local mega-hospital on con­ dition that the hospitals shut down before the Delaware Bankruptcy Court hearing. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } 33 1990 John (“Johno”) Obenauer (A) emails: “I have some news I am extremely relieved to report: after starting graduate school in physics and then working in data analysis and computing jobs, I finally com­ pleted a PhD in, of all things, bio­ chemistry. I just started working as a research scientist at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research this past month (June 2001) and am very excited about it. In my personal life, I married a cutie named Michelle Blackwell (now Obenauer) in 1994 and am surprised to find that I like being married, even after seven years. Michelle is a bio­ chemist too, at a private company in Cambridge, Mass. To all the other Johnnies out there in grad school, hang in there! It feels a lot better when it’s over! ” David Ruy (A) is residing in New York City, where he has been in practice as an architect since receiving his M.Arch from Colum­ bia. He currently splits his time between his practice and teaching duties at Princeton Univ. His e-mail address is david@ruyklein.com. Dahra Latham (A) is still living in Seattle, and has completed her first year of law school at the University ofWashington. “I’m spending the summer as an extern at the Fair Access to Contraception Project,” she says. “I would be delighted to hear from auld acquaintance: my snail-mail and phone are the same, and e-mail is dahra@u.washington.edu. I would also like to hear from any Johnny attorneys out there who might be interested in the project.” 1991 Lena Skadegard (A) is currently working on an MFA at Hunter Col­ lege in painting. Professionally, she works as a clothing designer and buyer. She lives in New York City. �{AlumniProfile} 34 Quiz Show Which Johnnie wants to be a millionaire? By Sus3an Borden, A87 Mattise. Goya. Dali. Jasper Johns. Can you place these artists’ lives in chronological order? How quick­ ly? What if you were competing against 500 other players for speed and accu­ racy? What if the chance to win one million dollars was riding on your answer? These were not hypothetical questions for David Maclaine (SF74). One August day in the summer of 2000 he found himself scanning his memory bank for artists’ bios in an odyssey that took him to ABC Studios in New York to compete on the hit game show “Who Wants To Be a Mil­ lionaire?” To win a spot on the show, would-be contestants call a tollfree number and answer three questions that require them to arrange a group of items (such as people, places, or events) in a given order (such as oldest to youngest, east to west, or earliest to latest). Five hundred of those who get all three questions right are placed in a pool and of those, forty are selected for a further qualifying round of five questions. Maclaine says that the odds of selection for the second round are about r in 300. He’s heard of people winning a spot in the pool one hundred times without being selected. For Maclaine, it took only four times. It was during this second qualifying round that Maclaine was asked about the artists. The question gave him no trouble; Jasper Johns, he explains, had recently been on the “Simpsons.” Other questions involved putting celebrities (Geena Davis, RuPaul, Dr. Ruth, and Winona Ryder) in order of height and putting poets in chronological order. The selection of poets-WiUiam Carlos Williams, Rita Dove, Sir Philip Sidney, and Galway Kinnellwent far beyond the Robert Frosts and Emily Dickinsons that haunt most game shows. Luckily for Maclaine, he had an MA David Maclaine attributes his game show SUCCESS TO LUCK, St. John’s, and “The Simpsons.” in literature and a St. John’s education under his belt. And-current students please take note-Maclaine, who had faith­ fully attended Friday night lectures, was able to answer this question correctly because the poet Galway Kinnell gave a lec­ ture at St. John’s during Maclaine’s fresh­ man year. “I still remember him, wander­ ing up and down on the stage in the Great Hall,” he says. “He had no prepared speech, but spoke impromptu-a discussion of Walt Whitman liberating poetry from the strait jacket Milton had put it into.” Maclaine put the poets in order, hung up the phone, and two hours later received the call-he would be flying to New York to compete on the show. While Maclaine had beaten some very tough odds to get that call, he was not com­ pletely surprised that he’d done so. In high {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } school, he was part of a champi­ onship quiz team and discovered that he had the poise to compete. “There are plenty of people who know a great deal but freeze up dur­ ing competition,” he says. “Two of the people on my high school team ended up co-valedictorians, but during the games they’d sit with fixed grins on their faces while the rest of us answered the questions.” While Maclaine was not the type to freeze up, his early attempts to get on “Millionaire” were thwarted by a lack of focus brought on by depression. At the time Maclaine started to call into the show, his mental health was suffering. His freelance writing career had taken a downturn. A book he was working on fell apart. A day job ended poor­ ly. When he finally found himself unemployed, he was too paralyzed to look for work. His game show phone-ins reflected his mental state. He called the show while he was in the middle of reading a book on medieval history and got a ques­ tion about the medieval kings of England. “I botched it,” he says. “I was not focused enough to get even a handit-to-me question.” Not long after, Maclaine took part in an experimental program to test a new anti­ depressant. His depression lifted. “It turned on some switch in my brain that remained on after the study was over. I went back to calling the show and it was a lot easier,” he says. There are countless factors that influ­ ence our lives, and even if no one can say what’s causal and what’s coincidental, it certainly seems that Maclaine earned his way on to the nation’s hottest TV show with the help of experimental drug TAK637, the towering height of RuPaul, the appearance of Jasper Johns on the “Simp­ sons,” and a Friday night lecture by Galway Kinnell. Competition on “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire” begins with the Fastest Finger round, where players are asked a question similar to the call-in questions. The con­ testants punch their answers into a keypad �{AlumniProfile} and the one who gets the question right in the shortest time makes it to the Hot Seat, where he has a chance to win up to one mil­ lion dollars. Before taping, contestants are given a Fastest Finger practice session, where Maclaine says he made every kind of blunder possible. When the show started, the contestants were asked to place a series of actresses in order according to age. Maclaine got them right but mistakenly held dovm a button too long, entering one actress for two slots. While the winner of the round was sit­ ting on the Hot Seat, Maclaine had plenty of time to think about his mistake. “Your wrong answer stays locked on the screen in front of you the whole time you’re watching the winner play,” he explains. “1 knew the next round would be my last chance and I was determined not to botch it.” During the next practice session, Maclaine doggedly worked with the keypad, choos­ ing several sequences to enter over and over again. The next question asked the contestants to place four rock songs in order of release. “I didn’t recognize a single one,” Maclaine says. “I just punched in one of the patterns 1 had been practicing. I sat there thinking, ‘OK, that’s it. I’ll be going home soon.’ Then I heard Regis call out the first answer and I though it was amusing I’d gotten it right. Then the second one was also right. I was thinking clearly enough to know I was only a coin flip away from getting them all right and sure enough, I had. Only one other poor schmo got it right, and he had actually spent some time thinking about it.” Maclaine, clueless about the question, had entered his answers faster. He went to the Hot Seat laughing giddily. “If anyone needed a break at that point, I did,” he says. The Hot Seat is what “Millionaire” is all about. It’s where the contestant sits across from host Regis Philbin and is asked rs questions of increasing difficulty, winning increasing amounts of money. After hear­ ing each question, the player can decide to try to answer it (and risk losing much of the money he’s won), or to walk away and keep the money. One difference between “Millionaire” and other game shows is that contestants on the Hot Seat are given no time limit for answering the questions. Although the show is known for how easy its early ques­ tions are, Maclaine ran into trouble on only his third: How many claps did it take to operate the original Clapper? Maclaine couldn’t remember, or perhaps he had never known. “Ever since they invented mutes, I haven’t been listening to commer­ cials,” he admits. Still, he managed to get the question right and answer some harder questions, like what did Michael Jordan announce he was going to cut back on: endorsements, film-making, baseball, or golf? Maclaine had no memory of such an announcement, but he took his time, allowed the nervous energy that clouded his thinking to dissi­ pate, talked through everything his mind could dig up about Jordan, and let his brain do its work. “I didn’t panic at the questions I didn’t have nailed. That’s one way that going to St. John’s really helped me,” Maclaine says. “People who have gone through a more conventional education, where they think in terms of answers that they either do or don’t know, become paralyzed when they don’t have the answer. But when you’ve had the kind of education where there aren’t many fixed answers, where you’re used to sitting down and discussing things, you can sort through your thoughts and work out the answer. The idea of talking your way through it is natural for a St. John’s alumnus.” Maclaine was asked several middle-level questions he considered easy: What kind of art was Frederic Remington famous for? How long ago did dinosaurs became extinct? Whose nickname was the Desert Fox? He had no trouble with these, yet was unsure where the Pentagon was located. “That was before September rr,” he says. “Now it’s a question we all know the answer to.” Eventually, Maclaine reached the $350,000 question: What’s the material inside an etch-a-sketch: carbon, silicon, aluminum, or magnesium? “Somehow, I knew how it worked. A light metallic sub­ stance is attached to the surface by static electricity. The black lines are not set down, they’re cut through the background. That told me it was something metallic, either aluminum or magnesium. If I’d remembered my chemistry, I would have had the answer instantly. Magnesium, after all, would explode.” He decided to take a chance. “I knew that a quarter-million dol­ lars was worth the gamble, that it would change my life significantly more than $125,000” He gave his answer. After learning that aluminum was cor­ rect, there was a pause in the taping. A pro­ duction assistant reminded Maclaine that {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } 35 Millionaire Questions Answered Artists: Goya, Matisse, Dali, Johns Celebrities: RuPaul, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder, Dr. Ruth Poets: Sir Philip Sidney, William Car­ los Williams, Galway Kinnell, Rita Dove It took two claps to operate the origi­ nal “Clapper.” Michael Jordan announced he would cut back on endorsements. Frederic Remington was famous for western art. Dinosaurs became extinct around 65 million years ago. Erwin Rommel’s nickname was the Desert Fox. The Pentagon is located in Arlington, Virginia. he needn’t be embarrassed to walk away with $250,000 if he didn’t know the answer to the next question. When filming resumed, Maclaine was asked, for half a million dollars, which type of tree most of the world’s supply of cork comes from: oak, hickory, aspen, or birch. Unsure of the answer and unable to reason it through, Maclaine walked away from the show with $250,000. But not before Regis told him the answer: oak. Since then, the relation of oak and cork seems to pop up everywhere in Maclaine’s life. While watching a golf tournament from Spain (a major supplier of cork), he saw an informational segment that dis­ cussed the country’s oak trees and cork industry. Reading some literature on cork floors, he saw their origins as oak explained. But such reminders of his decision not to answer the cork question never trouble him. “I’ve spent no time regretting my play. I’m so delighted to come away with what I did,” he says. “The day I’m embar­ rassed to walk away with a quarter million dollars is not anywhere on my horizon.” �{AlumniProfile} 36 Object Lesson Samantha Alderson (A86) found a career that mingles art and history—cls an art conservator. By Roberta Gable, A78 he liberal arts were kind of a shift for Samantha Alderson (A86) when she came to St. John’s, because in high school the arts she concerned herself with were the fine ones. She attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City, which gave her equal doses of studio work and art histo­ ry. She figured the college experience ought to be heavy on the academic side, since she wasn’t sure if she wanted to pursue an art career. She chose St. John’s “because I wanted to go to col­ lege for an education, not for a profes­ sion.’’ She kept up with drawing and painting while she was a student, and even helped set up the first visual arts preceptorial. Then, in one of those clearas-a-bell moments, the idea of becoming an art conservator occurred to her. Alderson had traveled in Italy before col­ PUTTING THE PAST BACK TOGETHER: SaMANTHA lege and had seen people doing restoration work. Alderson applies acrylic resin to the EDGES of a ceramic VESSSEL FROM EqUADOR That image had apparently lurked in her subcon­ BEFORE REASSEMBLING IT. scious until its sudden manifestation during her senior year. Since she had no idea what was involved in such work, she had some serious servator, and then she was able to volun­ research to do. teer at the Guggenheim in the painting She went up to NYU (which has one of conservation lab. She worked as a paralegal the three major art conservation programs to pay the bills, and eventually the Guggen­ in the U.S.) and had a talk with the direc­ heim offered her a paying job. Meanwhile tor, who spoke to her of the prerequisites: she took classes, all over the place: at the i) at least four to six courses in art history, Art Students League, working up her port­ anthropology, or archaeology; a) a science folio; and at Hunter and Gity Gollege in art background, including at least one year history, general chemistry, and organic each of undergraduate general chemistry chemistry. In three years she’d acquired and organic chemistry; 3) formal course the brute minimum to apply to the gradu­ work in a wide variety of fine arts media ate programs, so she did, but she didn’t and a portfolio of your own artwork; 4) and expect to get in, because she’d been told some previous conservation experience. that most people had to make a second run Despite being, shall we say, technically before they did, the programs being small unprepared in many ways for this pursuit, and competitive. Alderson resolved to pursue it anyway. In fact, she did get into NYU and And this is where her St. John’s educa­ enrolled in the fall of 1990, beginning a tion kicked in. “St. John’s gave me a sense four-year program (three years of course­ of being up to the challenge, the confi­ work and then an internship) for an MA in dence that I could do anything.” First, she art history and, concurrently, a certificate volunteered (which is in many fields an in conservation. excellent way to get your foot in the door, “Art conservation” is the modern field as many Johnnies have discovered) at the that has evolved from the tradition of “art Morgan Library working with a book conrestoration.” The idea is that with a tripar­ T {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Fall 200/ } tite background in science, fine art, and art history, the conserva­ tor has both the hand skills to clean, repair, and restore art objects, and the sensitivity to do so in ways that will preserve them for future generations. Gonservators have to understand materials, their strength, how they age, their solubility, etc., and choose the proper tools (even, for example, formulating their own adhesives) to do what’s proper. As a part of that, they often research many aspects of the object including its chemical constitution, its history, and its anthropologic signifi­ cance. And it turned out that for Aiderson that “object” was the right word. The other main areas for conservation are paintings, paper, textiles, photographs, and library materials but early on she decided on objects, which includes sculpture, deco­ rative arts, and architectural, archaeologi­ cal, ethnographic and natural science materials. She spent three summers work­ ing on an archaeological dig on the island of Samothrace in Greece (the island’s high­ est peak Fengari was where, according to the Iliad, Poseidon watched the battles during the Trojan War). There she cleaned, reassembled and stabilized ceramics, glass, stone and metal objects from the classic period. In her last year in graduate school, how­ ever, she concentrated more on objects from less familiar places, what you call your “ethnographic” material. Generally this is not ancient stuff-being anthropology as opposed to archaeology-and often the objects were not created to be art but intended for functional, religious, or cere­ monial use. “You handle these objects very differently. If you have a pot covered with a thick gooey black residue, you don’t neces­ sarily clean it off-you have to ask if that residue is important.” For her internship (the fourth year of the graduate program) she decided to focus on ethnographic objects, and got a spot at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where she worked on a wide �{Alumni Notes} Deirdre Routt (A) and Kevin Graham (A90) are overjoyed to announce the birth of a child, Nora Elizabeth Routt Graham, on April II, aooi. JEANNINE K. Bramwell (SFGI) got her master’s degree in counseling from Adams State College in 1998. She became a national certified counselor in 1999 and retired from public school teaching in aooo. 1992 Cynthia Millington Brandreth (AGI) has a baby boy, Zach, born October 19, 2000. 1993 Miriam Spectre (A) and Akiba Ashley Waring Victor (A) writes: CoviTZ (A) report that their son, Abraham Joseph Spectre-Covitz, was born on May 7. They are also happy to report that they have finally disentangled themselves from the “Ivy League” and moved on to saner and simpler academic groves. Akiba is now professing to know something about constitu­ tional law and civil rights at the University of Richmond (www.richmond.edu/ ' acovitz), where he is also the liberal arts-oriented pre­ law advisor. After years of work and grad school (getting her second master’s degree, in history, in 2000), Miriam has welcomed the opportunity to take time away from being an archivist to explore moth­ erhood. They are enjoying living in Richmond, where they purchased and moved into a house only two weeks before Abe was born! If you see a car with Virginia license plates that read “SJC 91,” stop and say hi. “We are still at Chatham Hall School where Oliver is the Chap­ lain (he was ordained on July 21 at St. Paul’s School in New Hamp­ shire) and I teach Latin part time. Elizabeth and Lucy (ages 3 and 2) love all the horses, fields, and ‘big­ girls’ at Chatham Hall but are thrilled by the busy harbor life of Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, where Oliver is teaching sailing for the summer. Would love to hear from Bryce Heavner and Donald Eubank!” John MacFarlane (SF) is featued in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. After beginning at Harvard, he switched to St. John’s and then returned to Har­ vard. He earned a PhD in philoso­ phy at the University of Pittsburgh and was hired for the faculty of the philosophy department at Berkeley. In addition to his focus on logic and classical philosophy, he plays the fiddle in a bluegrass band and is known as “The Fiddlosopher.” 37 Eveline Smilack (A) recently received her MFA in film produc­ tion and direction at USC and is beginning at CAA (Creative Artist Agency). Her film Ripen is now starting the festival circuit. William Edelglass (SF) writes: “For any old acquaintance who hap­ pens to be passing through northern India, I have a beautiful house nes­ tled into the Himalaya, with plenty of space, or at least suggestions for good hotels, as well as great climbs and fascinating people. Half the year I am based in Dharmsala, as Assis­ tant Director of Emory’s Tibetan Studies Program, and Visting Facul­ ty at the Institute of Buddhist Dialects. I teach Tibetan philosophy to students from the States, and western philosophy to Tibetan monks making their way through a fourteen-year curriculum in Bud­ dhist philosophy.” variety of objects, “as much as I could get my hands on, as much as possible on things I hadn’t worked on before.” The folks at the museum liked her, and after her gradu­ ation kept her for another year in an advanced internship, and then she was able to stay on there the next year with a Kress Foundation grant (to do a technological study of Zapotec urns, archaeological Beth Martin snapped this photo of her classmates-and assorted friends—FROM THE CLASS OF 1994. ThEY WERE ATTENDING THE CRO­ QUET Match last April. 1994 Ross Vineberg (SF) writes: “I am living in Jerusalem, Israel. I am learning modern Hebrew, involved in fine-art photography, poetry, and learning Torah. It’s intense liv­ ing here, for obvious reasons, but I’ve met many quality people and love living here so it makes it aU worthwhile, all my love to class 1994-Moish.” MattTebo (A) is enjoying living in San Francisco with his wife, Arnie, and playing in a band with Garth Klippert called Suisol. LisaMabli de Jong (SF) reports that she received her PhD in Envi­ ronmental Science, Policy, and Management from Berkeley. Her dissertation subject was forest fire behavior and she is now working as ceramics from ancient Mexico), and then, sure enough, after the grant year was over, they hired her as an Assistant Conservator, and then promoted her to Associate Con­ servator. Alderson continues to work on a wide variety of archaeological, ethnographic, and natural science material from the museum’s collection, researching, docu­ {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2001 } a research scientist for the USDA Forest Service in Davis, Calif. “I also just got married to a Dutch man named Arend Jan de Jong, so my new name is Lisa de Jong,” she adds. 1995 Jennifer Garmaise nee Berger (SFGI) writes: “I worked in jour­ nalism for five years and now I am teaching world literature and Eng­ lish at an orthodox Jewish High School. My wonderful husband Mark moved to Los Angeles from Chicago in August. Last year, I spent a lot of time learning Torah. I hope everyone I graduated with is doing well. I would love to hear from anyone in the Los Angeles area (or anywhere)! Jgarmaise@yahoo.com.” menting, repairing, cleaning (or deciding not to clean), and establishing the parame­ ters for the display, transport, and storage of objects. A basketry hat from the Pacific Northwest, a featherpiece from the Ama­ zon, a wooden Hindu altarpiece, a Mayan ceramic vessel, you name it. The world has passed through her hands. 4" �{AlumniNotes} 38 Katherine Spencer (SFGI) is teaching art in elementary school and loving it. She can he contacted at klark_kat@hotmail.com. “Con­ tact me, Susanne and Juha,” she writes. a tutor position at St. John’s one day. I wonder if they’ll hire me. My husband is starting a construction business here in Santa Fe so I think I’ll be here for a long time.” Greet­ ings may be sent to AmythestCM@msn.com Marissa Colleen Mkal Misiaszek (A) writes: “I have a wonderful, outgoing, and inquisitive one-yearold son. I was married on the sum­ mer solstice at dawn on the beach. I received a grant to study Anasazi communities in the four-corners region near Santa Fe. I completed my landscape architecture thesis on creating a community in a flood plain. I’m still looking for a job.” Mike Layne (SF) writes: “I am a Counselor III at a youth shelter here in Barrow. This is my second year here in the Arctic. My first year I worked for the state of Alaska as a social worker and I absolutely hated the punitive aspects of the job. I took a summer off and returned as a counselor at the local youth shel­ ter. Been happy ever since. My wife and I have been married two years now and hopefully will have our first child in the spring of 2002.1 would love to hear from alumni and tutors. All visitors to our neck of the woods have a free place to crash. E-mail me at mike_layne@hotmail.com. If any­ one knows how to get hold of Dan Meyers, please give him my contact info.” 1996 Loreen (AGI) and Greg Keller announce the arrival of their third daughter, Alison Marie Keller, who was born May 23, 2001. David Longjohn Stanton (SF) is living in Los Angeles and practic­ ing law. 1997 Paula Ruhin (AGI) and John Swann (AGI) announce their engagement. A spring 2003 wed­ ding is planned. Paula will be pur­ suing a BS in computer science this year and John will be starting a PhD program in the history of technolo­ gy. Paula and John still reside in Annapolis and would love to hear from any Johnnies. John’s e-mail is cygnnus@hotmail.com and Paula’s is psrubin@aol.com. InyaLaskowski (SFGI) reports that she showed her encaustic monotypes in eleven art shows last year. In May she returned to Santa Fe to create new work at the Col­ lege of Santa Fe Printmaking Cen­ ter. At that time she also had a oneperson exhibition at Hand Artes Gallery in Truchas, N.M. In September/October 2001 her newest series, “Songs of Munnin and Hudinn,” will be featured at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes, Calif. She says that the Norse god of old, Odin, had two ravens as advisors, one called Munnin, mem­ ory, the other Hudinn, thought. Her works are abstract deductions about our existential dilemma. She likes to refer to them as “visceral philosophy.” have been teaching at Loyola High School for the past four years. I have decided not to return. I am now ungainfully unemployed. I hope to find a job in foreign policy. Here is my fantasy: Corporation X offers me my Wonderjob but says Wonderjob starts in a few months so I have time to travel and when I get home, know that a paycheck will be waiting for me.” 1998 Nathan Schleifer (SF) got his JD from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis in May 2001. Stephen Conn (SF) spent an inter­ esting year studying lighting design in the New Mexico State University Department of Theatre Arts. He was a cast member of the American Southwest Theatre Company’s pro­ duction of the Lorca play “Blood Wedding,” and on that experience, based his short independent film project titled “Backstage.” As always, he sends his “greetings to the great class of 1998!” 1999 Brent Hinrichs (AGI) recently moved to San Jose where he is Upper School Head at Hillbrook School, a K-8 independent school in Los Gatos, Calif. “While not at work, I enjoy the warmth and sun­ shine of Silicon Valley I ” he writes. Dominic Crapuchettes (A) writes: “Still doing web programming in Flash 5 for an internet math tutori­ al company named BoxerLearning. com. Still living with Amanda Dulin (A) in Charlottesville and having a great time with her. Still {The College. Elaine Spidle Ataha (A) recently bought and is running her own business. One Stop Body Shop. She is a licensed massage therapist and a veterinary technician focusing in anesthesiology in orthopedic sur­ gery. Leslie Norton (AGI) writes: “I Amy Borsick Stanton King (SF) got married on June 21,1999 to Shawn King, and they are “happily living just outside Santa Fe and truly enjoying life.” She writes, “My daughter Allison has a daugh­ ter, so I suppose that makes me a grandmother. Who’da thunk it? And I’m only 36. Presently, I am a balloon twister. I know about 40 different balloon animals and shapes. It’s really nifty. I can make everything from a dog to a guitar. I am considering applying to UNM’s PhD Program in Anthropological Linguistics and hoping to apply for thinking about returning to school for either business or technology. Not playing Magic any more or going fishing in Alaska this sum­ mer.” Rodino Anderson (A) writes: “I’m finally leaving Florida and moving to New York. I will attend Teachers CoUege, Columbia University in the fall, where I am enrolled in a PhD program in philosophy of edu­ cation. I guess the two years I took teaching philosophy and mathe­ matics at a high school have paid off. I’m looking forward to reunit­ ing with close friends in the New York area. My other non-New York living friends can continue to write 5f. John’s College ■ Fall aooi } me at rodino69@yahoo.com until I get settled. God bless you all! ” Hagop Varant Krpanian writes: “Although I only spent one year at SJC during the 1995-1996 school year, it was one of the most memo­ rable experiences of my li fe. The skills I’ve acquired during my short stay have served me well and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I would love to hear from any of the class of ’99 who remember me. After St. John’s, I spent two years at a local junior college and finished at Berkeley with a BAin political science. I just finished my first year at the Medical College of Wisconsin, which was as difficult as it was rewarding.” Paul Ronco (SF) writes: “Hi, everyone, hope you’re all doing well. I had a great year. If you want to drop me a line, I can be reached at pronco@hotmail.com.” Sara J. Elzerman (SF) will begin her final year of law school this fall at the University of Southern Cahfornia. She looks forward to prac­ ticing in the Los Angeles area. Kristin Jacob and Steve Dumont (both SF) write: “We were married on July 27, 2001. We are currently living in Seattle where Steve is in the second year of his union electri­ cian apprenticeship and Kristin is an office manager at a veterinary hospi­ tal in Federal Way. We still haven’t decided what we’re really going to do with the rest of our lives, but we’re having fun in the meantime, attending as many Seattle Mariners games as we can afford! We’d love to hear from anyone-e-mail Steve at imacurioso@aol.com or Kristin at radinsgirl@aoLcom.” Josh Hendrix (A) writes: “After two years of silence, I suppose an update is overdue. Shortly after graduation I was hired to run the summer camp at a small, private pre-school in Wilmington, Del. After a successful summer I stayed on to teach pre-kindergarten and remain still a pre-K teacher and head of the preschool department. I love my work and I’m ecstaticaUy happy to have the time at night (free from homework and paperwirting) to play in three bands. P.S. I recently spent a lovely week in Jamaica with Kelly O’ Malley (A) �{Alumni Notes} and Rob Holbrook (A). Mr. Hol­ brook is flourishing in the Peace Corps there.” 2000 Christopher Vaughan (A) has received his Associate of Arts degree from the University of Alas­ ka, Anchorage. He will be attend­ ing Flagler College in St. Augus­ tine, Florida, enrolling in the education program. He hopes to teach elementary education to deaf children. V. Leslie Hendrickson (SF) writes: “Class of 2000: Greetings all! I have just moved to New York City and will start work at Colum­ bia University soon. I’d love to hear from friends!” Greetings maybe sent to vlesliehendrickson@hot­ mail.com Michael Baetz (SF) writes: “It looks as if I’ll be spending my sec­ ond winter in Big Sky, Mt. If anyone I know wants to ride a great moun­ tain, come on out! My e-mail is mpbaetz@netscape.net. Hope you are finding your little niches and enjoying life.” John Hunter (AGI) and his wife Lisa live in Chattanooga, Tenn., where he teaches ancient world his­ tory and Latin and coaches basket­ ball and lacrosse. Lisa does technol­ ogywork for a local manufacturing company, S.I. Corporation. James E. Lewis (SFGI) is now a stu­ dent in the psychology department at New School University in Man­ hattan. “This semester,” he writes, “either I will learn to distinguish the various forms of schizophrenia. 39 or I will develop a form of schizo­ phrenia in which I find some meas­ ure of comfort. Otherwise, I have spent more than one hour attempt­ ing to form a connection between Times Square and the desert, which I miss.” Mehmet Can Atacik (A) hoped to finish his master’s degree in gov­ ernment administration at the Uni­ versity of Pennsylvania’s Fels Cen­ ter of Government this past summer. Calling All Alumni The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be pub­ lished in March; copy deadline is February i. In Annapolis: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404; b-goyette@sjca.edu. In Santa Fe: Karina Hean (A) just returned from a Post Bacc year in Florence, Italy, where she spent time draw­ ing. She got a scholarship to spend a semester at the Rietvald Academy (an arts school) in Amsterdam. She is back in Maryland for a while, working at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in their galleries and funding research. The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Public Relations Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; classics@mail.sjcsf.edu. Alumni Notes on the Web: Read Alumni Notes and contact The College on the web at; www.scja.edu - click on “Alumni.” {Alumni Association Awards} Alumni Award of Merit At Homecoming in Santa Fe and Annapolis, three alumni werepresented with the Alumni Award ofMerit by the Alumni Association. A.T. Michael MacDonald (SF76) has devel­ oped his career around a love of music. MacDonald runs AlgoRhythms, a digital mastering studio in New York. He records, masters. and produces jazz, rock, and Broadway; he also restores archived analog master tapes of classic performances on the Ed Sullivan Show-which featured such artists as Louis Armstrong, The Rolling Stones, and The Doors. MacDonald has received several Grammy nominations for his recordings and two Grammy awards for McCoy-Tyner recordings he recorded and mastered. Opera is also on MacDonald’s list: he’s restoring and digitizing historic concert performances made between 1935 and 1985. MacDonald has presented several benefit concerts for St. John’s. Warren Spector (A81), the co-president and CEO of the Wall Street firm Bear, Stearns, was intro­ duced by Brother Robert Smith, who has known Spector since his student days. Brother Robert declined to describe the importance of his position, saying that there are ample reports in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Instead, he told how Spector first went to Princeton and studied mathematics. Becoming disen­ chanted, he left and supported himself for a year as a professional bridge player be­ fore coming to St. John’s. “Princeton just wasn’t the sort of community I was looking for,” said Spector in accepting the award. “After reading the catalogue I was taken by the idea of St. John’s. I found here some­ thing much greater than the catalogue described.” {The College- St. John’s College . Fall 200/ } Tom Williams {A51), a teacher of middle school math for 28 years, was introduced by president Chris Nelson, Williams has lived the philosophic life, said Nelson, because he spent his time leading young people to knowl­ edge. In addition to his many years of teach­ ing, Williams inaugurated the local St. Vin­ cent de Paul Society and helped with the last St. John’s fundraising campaign. “He supports the life of learning and the institu­ tions necessary for learning,” said Nelson. Williams attributed his interest in math to St, John’s; he said that after he finished high school math he celebrated because he didn’t think he would have to take the sub­ ject again. But he fell in love with it at St. John’s and ended up teaching it. �{Alumni Association Awards} 40 At Homecoming this summer andfall, five were named honorary alumni by the Alumni Association. Honorary Alumni Rjchart Lampert is president of the Library and Fine Arts Guild in Santa Fe. Under Lampert’s leadership, the Guild has grown from 123 members in 1996 to more than 250 today. Co-owner of Zaplin-Lampert Galleries, he provides a valuable resource to St. John’s for art history, appraisals, and general art information. He contributes to the college by serving as master of ceremonies at college-communi­ ty functions, providing his gallery for col­ lege dinners and receptions, and donating rare and collectible books and fine artwork for college auctions. Michael Rodriguez, director of financial aid in Santa Fe, has been with St. John’s since 1985. He works hard so that students can afford to attend, balancing the total amount of money available for aid with the strictures governing disbursement of money from St. John’s College grants, as well as from other sources. Sympathetic with the concerns of students, he is respected for his sensitivity and discretion, his spirit of cooperation, and above aU, his desire to help others. John B. Moore, Jr., Beate Ruhm von Oppen, and Nancy Lewis with Annapolis president Chris Nelson (SF70). Nancy Lewis, long-time registrar in Annapolis, was introduced by Sus3an Bor­ den (A87), who spoke about the former registrar’s “grace, elegance, kindness, care, senstivity, and intelligence.” Lewis served as registrar from 1976 until her retirement in 1999. She started the F-i Club for foreign students and is known for her tireless advocacy on behalf of all John­ nies. “When I was a student,” said Borden, “I thought of the campus as her home and her office as her living room. She was the gracious, graceful hostess who did every­ thing she could to make you feel welcome.” retirement in 1987 he has become involved in the cultural community, especially at St. John’s, where he is admired for the care and wit he has exercised in guiding the Mitchell Gallery and the Board of the Friends. John B. Moore, Jr., founding chairman of the Mitchell Gallery Board of Advisors and a past president of the Board of the Friends of St. John’s, was introduced by Jeff Bishop, vice president in Annapolis. After a career in engineering and business, Moore served with the U.S. Commerce Department and then in Maryland state government, where he established the Division of Cultural Affairs. Since his Beate Ruhm von Oppen, a tutor at the col­ lege since i960, was introduced by Elliott Zuckerman. He described her as one of the tutors who “brought to the college some­ thing of a different and wider world” and talked about how she had been moved many times during the first half of her life “by what we take to be the darkest and most dreadful events...” A scholar who doc- {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall aooi } Michael Rodriguez umented the resistance of the German peo­ ple to Nazism, von Oppen continues to “insist upon accuracy, as opposed to the glib generalizations we all encounter.” This and a love of language, added to her love of music (especially that of Bach and Mozart), she conveyed to students at the college over the course of many years. �{Campus Life} What I Did on My Summer Vacation They didn Y scoop ice cream and they didn't wait tables. They weren Y lifeguards or temps or bookstore clerks. Instead, these Johnnies set offon their own kinds ofsummer adventures. By SuS3AN Borden, A87 Musical Interlude spent my summer doing one of the sweetest jobs I can think of,” says senior Mirabai Knight, “I played violin, trumpet, and bas­ soon for the Bigfork Sum­ mer Playhouse in Bigfork, Mon­ tana.” This was Knight’s fourth season with the Playhouse’s pro­ fessional repertory musical the­ ater company; she started right out of high school. It was her first job ever, but one she was well-qualified for: she’s played violin since she was four, trum­ pet since fifth grade and bassoon since sixth. Although she had never intended to play profes­ sionally, her trumpet teacher (who had worked at the Play­ house before) suggested she take the job, one which Knight found to be both fun and easy, at least for the musicians. “They audition actors from all over the country-17 of’em have appeared on Broadway since-and put them through frigging boot camp: 4 musicals and i play up in about a weeks each. But we pit musi­ cians hardly break a sweat,” she says. And for what she considered minimal effort, Knight earned $200 a week plus free lodging at the edge of the biggest natu­ ral lake in Montana. “Bigfork is an hour from Glacier National Park and a spit and a jump from four rivers and two mighty mountain ranges,” she says, explaining that she spent much of her free time swim­ ming and hiking. During performances, when she wasn’t playing, Knight sat in the darkened theater and read by the light of her music stand lamp. Her reading list included War and Peace and she made an attempt to reread the junior lab manual. “It was fun work,” she concludes of the four summers at the Playhouse, “at least during those moments when I didn’t have ‘June is Busting Out All Over’ stuck in my head.” ’***S Erin Hanlon(SFo3) Mirabai Knight (SF02) performing in “Fiddler on the Roof” Easier Than Aristotle Junior Erin Hanlon spent the summer working with scientist Mac Post at the Environmental Science Division of Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. Hanlon investigated the effects of elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide on soil sam­ ples. Her work will eventually play a role in establishing a scientific understanding of issues addressed by the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty for environmental protection. Hanlon’s work used soil cores that Post had previously buried in the Oak Ridge PAGE (Free-Air COa Enrichment) Site. The site, a sweetgum plantation, is provid­ ed with controlled amounts of elevated car­ bon dioxide to simulate conditions that are predicted to occur within a few decades. Hanlon and Post retrieved the buried soil cores, took samples, and then returned the cores to their previous positions. Samples were prepared and analyzed. Then it was up to Hanlon to determine what the data meant. “There were some interesting {The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } results,” she says. “The general trend was what we were expecting: a decrease in carbon in the isolated soil cores while the surrounding soil carbon levels remained steady.” Hanlon explains that microbial respiration was most likely taking carbon dioxide out of the soil and releasing it into the air. While this does not happen in all types of soil, it has implications for the Kyoto Protocol’s car­ bon dioxide credit program, where coun­ tries producing excess carbon dioxide can pay other countries whose production falls below maximum levels for their credits. Hanlon’s internship was part of the Global Change Education Program. The program gives undergraduate and graduate students research experience in fields related to global change (commonly referred to as global warming) and intro­ duces them to the work environment of the national labs. What equipped the liberal-arts educated Hanlon to work in an internship for science majors and students already studying sci­ ence on the graduate level? St. John’s lab and seminar. “There were times when I wished I had taken a statistics or a bio-geochemistry course, but that was generally when I wanted to have the knowledge handy in my brain and not have to read another paper to get the information I needed,” she says. “Freshman lab and Aristotle were def­ initely helpful, though. Anything is easier to read than the Metaphysics^ �4^ {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Surveys can be great, but they are always less than half of a conversation. I am hop­ ing that this letter can continue the conver­ sation started by a recent college telephone survey of alumni. The primary purpose of the survey was to find out what alumni wanted to see in the new college web site­ coming sometime in aooa. The data helped give a profile of who our alumni are today and how they think about the college and their relationships to it. One of the most interesting findings was that alumni, like you, wanted to be more involved in the college today. Memories of experiences past are wonderful, and the opportunities to extend and expand connections with the college are even better! The college provides many different ways for alumni to stay in touch with each other, with the Program, and with their friends on both campuses. A new CollegeWide Alumni Strategy has been developed to examine and improve opportunities for alumni to continue their life-long partici­ pation in the college community. It out­ lines the current programs that are avail­ able and suggests new avenues for making the most of our common history and cur­ rent interests. Here are just a few of the ways that you can participate in St. John’s College today. Enjoy a face-to-face meeting with other Johnnies who live in your area. Alumni Association Chapters are available in many large cities. The Chapters meet regularly for a variety of events. Seminar, food, drink, chat, and career networking are a few of the most frequent activities at Chap­ ter meetings. Baseball games, theater, and general revelry also find their ways into Chapter plans. If you live in an area that has a Chapter, check it out. If you are not one of the “geographically privileged,” consider starting a Chapter in your area or take advantage of other opportunities to connect. The on-line presence of Johnnies is expanding quickly. In addition to the web sites and listserves (both those officially sponsored by the college and unofficially run by tech-sawy alumni), alumni around the country are participating in on-line conversations with other Johnnies. If you want to get involved, drop me an e-mail, and I will point you to one of the “electron­ ic coffee shops” that are springing up around cyberspace. The college and the Alumni Association host three homecoming events each year (Croquet Weekend in spring in Annapobs, Homecoming in Santa Fe in summer, and Homecoming in Annapolis in fall.) These are great times to visit the campuses to catch up with old friends and make new ones. You might also enjoy the two weeks of Alumni Summer Programs in Santa Fe. During the weeks before and after Homecoming, alumni gather to read and talk about a topic. The topics are suggested by the Association Board. If you have one that you’d like to have considered, drop me an e-mail. There are also wonderful opportunities for you to support the college with your time and talents. The Alumni Association Board is always looking for Directors to help plan and implement Association activ­ ities, alumni members to serve on the Board of Visitors and Governors, and nom­ inees for Honorary Alumnus or Award of Merit. Philanthropia (the Alumni Develop­ ment Council) offers the opportunity for alumni to be involved in fundraising efforts. The Placement Offices need alum­ ni who will provide information about career opportunities and graduate schools. The Admissions offices need alumni to contact prospectives and provide the “inside look” at the college and its pro­ gram. Both campuses are expanding their summer internship programs to provide current students with chances to explore career opportunities prior to graduation. You may be able to offer such a rich experi­ ence through your own professional con­ nections. If you are interested in any of these opportunities, or if you think of another way that you’d like to participate in the college community, check out the college web site to find out who to contact. {The Colleges?. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } Or, you can drop me an e-mail, and I’ll for­ ward it along to someone who can guide you. As alumni we know the joys and chal­ lenges of the St. John’s approach to learn­ ing. Each of us has integrated those experi­ ences into our lives, and the college provides us many opportunities to contin­ ue our life-long journey of learning in com­ munity. Some of us choose to build on our personal relationships. Some pursue the intellectual challenges. Some focus on financial support. Some find the time and energy to support the college as volun­ teers. If you are among the Johnnies who want to reconnect or maintain your con­ nection with the college, you can choose the ways or combination of ways that suit you at this time in your life. When you do, you benefit, the college benefits, and so do all of your fellow alumni who share your love of books, of conversation, and of the institution that brings the two together in such a unique and powerful way. For the past, the present, and the future, Glenda Eoyang SF 76 Eoyang@chaos-limited.com President St. John's College Alumni Association ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Whether from Annapobs or Santa Fe, under­ graduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program or New, graduated or not, all alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s Col­ lege Alumni Association. The Alumni Associa­ tion is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The Board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the Association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates Alumni Association news and events of interest. President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary-Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team ChairTom Geyer, ABB Web site - www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapobs, MD 21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. �{AlumniAssociationNews} First All-Alumni Art Show By Elizabeth Pollard Jenny, SF8o The Santa Fe campus Fine Arts Gallery hosted its first All-Alumni Art Show this July, coinciding with Homecoming. The multi-media show was eclectic and reflected the many artistic viewpoints of the partici­ Billy Lieb, a scupltor from the Annapolis CLASS OF 1957, CAME BACK TO St. JoHn’s FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HIS GRADUATION TO EXHIBIT HIS ART IN THE ALUMNI SHOW. pating artists who represented both cam­ puses. Twenty-five alumni, spanning class years from 1959 through 2001, were able to connect with the college in a new way. Some alumni who participated are profes­ sional artists, while others are art teachers or enthusiastic dabblers in such media as ceramics, drawing, fiber, glass, mixed media, mosaic, photography, sculpture, and painting. Artistic styles were as varied as the media, and included conceptual, rep­ resentational, abstract, impressionistic, and a multitude of other approaches. As I consider the work in the show, it occurs to me that while we were in school we were encouraged to develop an original­ ity of mind as well as of conviction - that we had a right and a responsibility to develop our opinions. We also were encouraged to cultivate the learning skills that serve to enhance the reservoir of experience neces­ sary for creative inspiration and insight. I think these qualities of mind explain both the diversity and harmony apparent in this year’s show. One observer, tutor Cary Stickney (A75), beheves that art rounds out a liberal educa­ tion. In his opinion, there is a mimetic quality to art that allows one to render a subject without quite knowing how one did it. To him, this is delightful and gratifying. Perhaps this explains, in part, the addition of studio art to the senior year curriculum in Santa Fe. Mr. Stickney also said that the All-Alumni Art Show provided an interest­ ing addition to the college community shows that are held annually on the Santa Fe campus. I hope that a conversa­ tion will emerge among St. John College alumni about how, if at all, the St. John’s educational experi­ ence has influenced their artwork. This year the art­ work spoke for itself. We hope those who partici­ pated this first year will be joined by other under­ graduate and graduate alumni in the All-Alumni Art Show in July 2002 on the Santa Fe campus. Thanks to the following 2001 participants: Karen Andrews SF91 (Mixed Media) Joseph Baratta A69 (Printmaker) MaryBeth Bliss SF76 (Glass) Beatrice Butler SF80 (Painter) Jennifer Chenoweth CI SF95 (Sculptor/Photographer) Steve Conn SF98 (Collage) Donna Contractor SF80 (Tapestry) Rebecca Einsig A86 (Photographer) Beatrice Eleftheriou SF82 (Glass) Elizabeth Faulhauber SF85 (Sculptor) Cinda Graham Kelly A62 (Sculptor) Liza Hyatt SF85 (Printmaker/Mosaics) Margaret Inbody GI SF90 (Printmaker) Elizabeth Ivers SF82 (Painter) Elizabeth Pollard Jenny SF80 (Painter) Billy Lieb A57 (Sculptor) Ebby Malmgren GI A88 (Ceramics/Printmaker) Abbey McAndrew A78 (Painter) Frank McGuire GI SF69 (Sculptor) Kay Maureen Moses GI SF82 (Painter) Christopher Quinn GI SFoi (Photographer) Roberta Razafy SF74 (Painter) Vivian Ronay A65 (Photographer) Ken Vaughn SF87 (Painter) Nancy Westheimer GI SF94 (Painter/Calligrapher) {The College -St John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } 43 CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-^^75-9012 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin 410-280-0958 AUSTIN Jennifer Chenoweth 5x2-482-0747 BALTIMORE Roberta Gable 410-626-2531 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 CHICAGO Lorna Anderson 773-338-8651 DENVER Elizabeth Pollard Jenny 303-530-3373 LOS ANGELES Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 NEWYORK Fielding Dupuy 212-974-2922 NORTH CAROLINA Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 215-465-0244 PORTLAND Dale Mortimer 360-882-9058 SACRAMENTO Helen Hobart 916-452-1082 SAN DIEGO: Stephanie Rico 619-423-4972 SAN FRANCISCO, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Jon Hodapp 831-393-9496 SANTA FE: John Pollak 505-983-2144 SEATTLE Amina Stickford 206-269-0182 WASHINGTON DC Jean Dickason 301-699-6207 ISRAEL Emi Geiger Leslau 15 Aminadav Street Jerusalem 93549 Israel 972-2-6717608 b0azl@cc.hu3i.ac.il A special thank you goes out to the Library and Fine Arts Guild Arts Commit­ tee for its enthusiastic support of the idea for an alumni art show; to Ginger Roherty, Art Gallery Director, and Maggie Magalnick. Art Gallery Assistant Director, and to Glenda Eoyang, president of the Alumni Association, and to the Association for their generosity in helping to make the show a resounding success. All alumni interested in being involved in next summer’s show to be held in July 2002 on the Santa Fe Campus should contact Maggie Magalnick byphone: 5O5-g84-6tgg, or by e-mail: maggie@mail.sjcsf.edu; or by mail c/o St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 8’^5os-45gg. �44 PaulT. Beisser Class ofig42 Paul T. Beisser, a retired produce broker, died in August. Born in Reading, Pennsyl­ vania, Mr. Beisser graduated from St. John’s in 1942. He was a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard and a member of the Knights of Columbus. After working as a produce broker in St. Louis, he retired to Lampe, Missouri. Surviving are his wife, Winnie; three sons; three daughters; 20 grandchil­ dren; and four great-grandchildren. Robert O. Davis Class ofig48 Robert O. Davis, a writer and editor who was a member of the class of r948, died in May. He was Chief Editor of Reports and Publications at the U.S. Steel Research Laboratory in Monroeville, Penn., from 1967 to 1982. Following retirement, he was active as a freelance editor and writer for the Association of Iron & Steel Engineers and other technical societies. He graduated from McKeesport High School in Pennsylvania in 1938. A naviga­ tor in the 8th Air Force in World War II, he received the Air Medal and a Presidential Unit Citation. After service, he attended St. John’s. Active as a sportsman and envi­ ronmentalist, he was a past president of the Fort Pitt Retriever Club and the first chair of the Pittsburgh chapter of Friends of the Earth. He is survived by his wife, June, and by a son and daughter, two granddaugh­ ters, and a sister. Robert Moody McKinney Member ofthe Board Robert McKinney, financier and publisher of the Santa Fe New Mexican, died in July. Born on the dining table of a church par­ sonage in Shattuck, Oklahoma, in rpro, Mr. McKinney went on to become a major play­ er in the financial world, an advisor to pres­ idents and senators, the ambassador to Switzerland, an authority on the uses of atomic energy, and the publisher of the Santa Fe New Mexican. He was instrumen­ tal in bringing St. John’s College to Santa Fe and served on the Board of Visitors and Governors from r953 to 1968. In a tribute to McKinney written shortly after his death, David Boren, U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, said, “The history of Robert’s hfe reads like an adventure story.” From humble beginnings, Mr. McKinney put himself through the University of Okla­ homa. Determined to make his own way, he set out for New York in 1932. His luggage {Obituaries} was stolen, and with the small amount of insurance money he received, he started investing. Within a decade he had attained financial success by purchasing solid assets from bankrupt companies. He served on the boards of many companies including ITT, TWA, Martin-Marietta, and the Rock Island Railroad. He served in the Navy dur­ ing World War II, where he helped develop the Tiny Tim rocket. After the war, he served as ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, ambassador to Switzerland, and in posts in the Treasury Department under Johnson and Nixon. McKinney learned about St. John’s when as a young naval reserve officer he led a suc­ cessful drive to forestall the Naval Acade­ my’s expropriation of the Annapohs cam­ pus for expansion in the mid-i94os. He later served on the Board. He led Richard Weigle to Santa Fe and arranged for him to meet John Gaw Meem, who donated land for the new campus. Lucille Murchison Member ofthe Board Lucille Murchison, who served on the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1988 to 1994, died in July. Born in Dallas, Mrs. Murchison became a passionate advocate for the arts in that city. She married John Murchison in 1947. The John and Lupe Murchison Chair at the Santa Fe campus is the result of a 1979 challenge offered by the couple. Mrs. Murchison also served 18 years on the University of North Texas board of regents and was co-owner of the Dallas Cowboys from 1979 to 1984. Hilyer Shufeldt Class ofig55 Hilyer Gearing Shufeldt, an elementary school teacher in Annapohs for 30 years, died in October. Born in California, she traveled with her Navy family as a child, liv­ ing in many cities before settling in Annapolis. She graduated from Annapolis High School and attended St. John’s for one year. She married and while her hus­ band pursued an academic career, she raised four children. In 1967 she moved back to Annapolis fol­ lowing a divorce and taught at Anne Arun­ del County elementary and middle schools. She completed her BA degree in teaching at Bowie State University and earned a master of arts from the Graduate Institute in 1983. Surviving are her sons, one broth­ er, and five grandchildren. {The College -St John ’5 College • Fall 2001 } Samuel V. Stiles Class ofig54 Samuel V. Stiles, Jr., a longtime supporter of the college, died at the age of 75 on August 3. He served as the president of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Alumni Association from 1993 until his death. A resolution of the Alumni Association says: “The leadership that he provided the group was not only efficient and organized; he was indeed the heart, soul and spine of the chapter. As a discussion leader his pres­ ence was subtle, gentle and profound, encouraging and validating all points of view. He loved books and he loved to understand. Even when his illness made it hard for him, he seemed to thrive in the meeting of the minds around the discus­ sion table. His manner was always gentle and reserved; he set the tone for the group to have thoughtful discussion.” He was a native of Louisville, Ky., and a resident of Rockville, Md. He served in the Navy in the Atlantic during World War IL He graduated cum laude from Emory Uni­ versity before attending St. John’s. He received a master’s degree in political sci­ ence from the University of Indiana and taught that subject at the University of Kentucky before moving to the Washing­ ton area to work at the National Institutes of Health. He also worked in the Peace Corps and was deputy administrator in Togo. He retired in the mid-eighties from the Public Health Service, after working as an administrator of the Volunteers in Ser­ vice to America. His hfe was dedicated to helping others. He is survived by his wife, Sally West­ hofen Stiles, and two sons, David and Steve. Rev. David Streett II Class ofig$o The Rev. David Streett, a retired Episcopal priest, died in August. Born in Baltimore, Father Streett graduated from City Col­ lege. He served in the Navy during World War II in the Pacific. After being dis­ charged, he earned a BA from St. John’s in 1951 and an MA in theology from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1954. He served at churches in Baltimore and Cumberland and founded the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Ruxton. He moved to Georgia in the rpBos and worked with Planned Parenthood and anti­ poverty programs. Later he was the clinical chaplain for the Augusta State Medical Prison. He retired in 1993 from the Missis­ �{Obituaries} sippi State Prison at Parchman. He is sur­ vived by his wife, Betty Lou; three daugh­ ters; two brothers; two grandchildren; two stepdaughters; and two stepgrandchildren. Charles H. Watts II Member ofthe Board Charles H. Watts II, former president of Bucknell University and a member of the St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors for many years, died in September. Born in Bronxville, New York, he earned a bache­ lor’s degree and doctorate in American lit­ erature from Brown University and a mas­ ter’s from Columbia University. He taught English at Brown from 1953 to 1963. At the age of 37 he became president of Bucknell University. He served for la years, handling a variety of situations including the protests against the Vietnam War. In 1975 Mr. Watts returned to Boston and became general director of Beneficial Finance Corporation, which was founded by his father. He served on the boards of academic, corporate, and civic institutions. He was a member of the Audubon Society and the New Hampshire Forest Society and was devoted to conservation causes. At St. John’s he was known for his straightforward analyses, common-sense questions, and persevering attitude. Most recently, he served on the Search Commit­ tee for the president of the Santa Fe cam­ pus. Mr. Watts was made an honorary alumnus, class of 2000, by the St. John’s Alumni Association. He is survived by his wife, Patricia; two daughters and a son; and six grand­ children. In Memory Of Robert Arne, SFGI83 Last autumn many in the St. John’s College community lost a friend, Robert Arne, SFGI83. Diagnosed with a swiftly acting terminal illness, Robert Arne faced the last few weeks of his life as he had lived much of it - reading Plato in Greek and discussing politics and philosophy with the numerous friends who visited him. Although his last days were painful he took only the mildest doses of medication so as to remain lucid in order to converse with his visitors and, as he said, “to experience as fully as I can this passage.” It may surprise some who knew Robert that his first passion as a young man was art, and he attended art school before studying engineering at Berkeley to honor his father’s wishes; but the emphasis on practicality in engineering left his budding interest in theory unsatisfied, so he switched his major to physics. It was while pursuing a graduate degree in physics that he met philosophy in the person of one of those rare beings-a genuinely philosophi­ cal soul who is also a splendid teacher. It changed his life. He studied and loved clas­ sical Greek, philosophy, and particularly Plato. His life from then on was governed by these loves. Anything that did not serve these ends was jettisoned. He lived austere­ ly; his habits were simple and his dress was plain. Hoping to make his living teaching philosophy he pursued a PhD, but a degen­ erative retina problem diagnosed some years earlier worsened, and he was declared legally blind. With effort he could still read, but only slowly; he was forced to leave the program. He taught at private schools for several years, but his condition required him to seek a community where he could attend to his needs by walking; furthermore it had also to be intellectually stimulating. He learned of Santa Fe and St. John’s College. For the sheer joy of the conversation he earned yet another mas­ ter’s degree through the Graduate Institute and taught Greek privately to any who were interested; for several years he taught Greek to Institute students through the auspices of the college. Always the conver­ sationalist, he was instrumental in forming a weekly reading group which was one part of what became the Santa Fe Chapter of the Alumni Association. Five days before he died Robert put down the dialogue he had been reading for lack of strength to make sense of the text. It was the Parmenides. To the end he was trying to understand. —John Carroll Pollak, SFCI80 In Memory Of Constance Darkey It is a melancholy pleasure to write about Connie Darkey, who died last May at the age of 84. We had known each other for 44 years. Her husband. Bill Darkey, was my co-leader in 1957 when I was a freshman tutor. It was a memorable freshmen semi­ nar-some of its members have been life­ long friends-and to top it off, every Thurs­ day after seminar Bill would take me to his house. There, over a glass of wine with crackers and cheese (I remember the hos­ pitable details vividly over the decades), I was initiated into the college as a living community. Connie took a strong part in these con­ {The College -Sr. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } 45 versations. She had played a role in this world for a dozen years before I came, as bookstore manager and faculty wife. In those early days the bookstore was the veri­ table center of the college, located right next to the coffee shop, and the manager knew a lot of what went on. Connie was very much on the inside of the place. She was passionately interested in the way the program worked on students and in the effect the faculty had on them. It would not be too much to say that her keen observa­ tions, censorious and generous, excited and penetrating, first showed me that I was committed to become part of a quarrel­ somely loyal working family, that the absorbingly intellectual program of the college was carried on by a band of glori­ ously human colleagues. No young tutor could have undergone a more candid and therefore a more engaging induction to this college. When Bill and Connie moved to Santa Fe as part of the founding generation of that campus, I discovered before long that Con­ nie kept an eye on my doings and writings from afar. Eventually part of the pleasure of producing anything was to send it to her. Before too long would come a letter with illuminating questions followed by that most gratifying compliment a reader can give: an appreciative pouncing on the sen­ tences closest to the writer’s heart. Connie was the most empathetic of readers. Of course she was that much the more a discerning reader of great books. It was delightful to talk to her about a novel, or any book. I would have loved to have been in seminar with her as I once was with BiU. We might have had some blazing battles for the benefit of our students as well as moments of perfect concord. I always thought of her as a fellow tutor and the three of us almost always got together for a couple of hours of conversation when I was in Santa Fe; even in the last years, when she wasn’t well, she hadn’t lost her spirited acuteness. I shall miss her, and I think often of Bill’s loss. — Eva Brann Also noted... Alfred Franklin, Class of 1951, died in August. Mary J. Navratil, SFGI71, died in May. Samuel Schenker, Class of 1939, died in September. Dr. Francis Townsend, Jr., Class of 1938, died in August. �46 {Alumni Voices} COURTLY LOVE On the intimate experience ojplayinp basketball. By Jane McManus, A93 M y one regret after my mother died was the archon of the athletic department, took my mother aside. “Your daughter,” he said, that she never saw me play basketball. I choosing his words carefully, “she’s a very player.” She got a big kick out of never played in high school and parents tenacious that, and so did 1.1 liked to think of myself don’t generally travel hundreds of as the Bill Laimbeer of women’s intramural hoops. miles to see their kids play a game of College was my first experience playing basketball, though we fielded no intercolle­ college pick-up. They don’t pack the giate teams. Never formally coached, I like to think of myself as a pure player, which sideline at the YMCA to watch their adult children in knee only means I don’t know many plays. I don’t braces and with taped fingers pretend to be 18anyagain. have memories of suicide sprints or Pulling my basketball shoes out last Janu­ ary, two weeks after she died, lacing them up slowly, I tried to clear my mind of all the thoughts that had kept me inert on the couch all morning. The local Y sets aside two hours a day starting at noon for basketball. I figured it was time I worked on my shot. I had been constantly by my mother’s side in a hospice watching her gradually deterio­ rate. I’d talk to her about local games I’d seen. She seemed to find a pleasant diver­ sion in my words. Maybe she just hked lis­ tening to my voice, and I was desperate to find something to fill the stale air in her room. After all the necessary things have been said and done, there is little left but make vain attempts to give comfort. She took her comfort in the mundane details I supphed. Those days ran together. I stayed up late unable to sleep. Nothing else mattered. And then suddenly, but expectedly, my days were empty in late December. Friends, proverbially well-meaning, dis­ pensed awkward words and half-meant invi­ tations to get out of the house. Their plans took too much energy. I drew in, spending all my time thinking about what was lost, no conversation could alleviate any part of my sadness. My worn leather ball had gone flat in the months I hadn’t played. At St. John’s Col­ lege, the game had been as much a part of school as class. We chmbed on the roof to Jane McManus and her mother break into the gym on summer nights to play pick-up. During the school year there were games every night. We’d play until well after midnight, exhausted and with sweat drip­ ping into our eyes. The gym was built in 1909, and its insides look like one of those courts on old reels of grainy basketball footage. Hot in the sum­ mer, cold in the winter, the gym was filled with outdated equipment; balls bounced funny if at all. The ceiling beams were exposed, ehminating the half-court shot and the cross-court pass. The weekend I graduated, Leo Pickens, {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } dribbhng exercises. The concept of a pick was a revelation. I’ve worked hard on my game, but I’ll take whatever credit I come by. When I tell peo­ ple I played in college, sometimes they assume I mean St. John’s the university and not the college. Admittedly, I don’t always go out of my way to correct them. I figure a couple of permanently jammed fingers justi­ fy any fack of clarification. Basketball has become so much a part of who I am it is hard for me to imagine a time I didn’t play. I bought an official leather ball when I graduated. It seemed a huge expense at the time but it was an investment. Last winter brought the first prolonged period of time I didn’t play. The gravity of trying to finish graduate schoof, look for work and bury my mother so overwhelmed me that I sat still all day, never exactly tired, but unable to get up. My stepfather called to tell me I should come over and go through my mother’s things; jewelry, photographs and clothes still fresh with her scent. Get up. That January day I dragged myself to the Y and started practicing foul shots in another ancient gym. I was trying not to think about anything, just the rim and the ball and the muffled sound of a runner on the overhead track. The ball felt too heavy and my first shot dinked off the front of the rim and landed hard back in my hands. A few other people wandered into the gym and began to warm up. A game of half-court three-on-three was organized and I was the �reluctant sixth. I felt self conscious, but as the game got going the familiar competitive tweak returned. January bled into February, I spent weeks doing httle but going to the Y to play ball. The routine was the only thing that made me even shghtly comfortable again. The rules don’t change once you think you have them down. The structure of the game, things hke clearing the 3-point hne after a change of possession, checking the ball, the sound of four bodies coUiding for a rebound, all of it was ingrained. And unhke other social situa­ tions where people tried to be helpful or consoling, the guys at the Y just wanted to know if 1 was up for another game of 21. ''Built in igog, the gym had exposed ceiling beams, eliminating the half-court shot and the cross-courtpass. 1 usually was. Just on the off chance that, although tired, I might make the open shot or get a rebound against someone with a couple inches on me. Something that made me feel hke everything was working and order had returned. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } There is something immensely soothing about a game of pick-up with a regular group of people you don’t know well. You know their game, who always takes the shot, who always passes, who blows the layup. At the end of two hours, knees aching, 1 would walk out into the grey afternoon without my coat on and, before the sadness returned, 1 felt for a moment that there was nothing but my face and the cool air. And that, more than anything else, was exactly what I needed. Jane McManus is a sportswriter at The Journal News in Westchester County, New York. �48 {St. John’s Forever} uring the Second World training of the intellect that happens in War, students at St. the learning and practice of the manual John’s received some use­ arts as well as the liberal arts. Also, ful education. According Buchanan knew that one learns quite a bit to Winfree Smith’s histo­ of physics if one acquires a full under­ ry of the New Program (A standing of all the transformations of Searchfor the Liberal College, energy 1985), they that take place in the internal com­ were offered a three-hour, oncebustion a weekengine.” course in radio. There was a course in Franz Plunder spent the summer of navigation. And Franz Plunder-a sculp­ 1942 designing and building new desks tor, marine architect, and boat-builderand beds of walnut to outfit dormitory taught a course on the gasoline engine. rooms (he also made the Coffee Shop “No one knew which St. Johnnie might be tables). Said a student in the yearbook: stranded in a tank somewhere on the bat­ “The desks, when swept clear of all intel­ tlefront, where there would be no hard­ lectual material, made excellent bars. The ware store and mechanics for him to turn beds were designed without head or foot to,” explains a student in the 194a Year­ and thus made excellent daybeds; they book. Winfree Smith’s account adds: gave, as it were, a range of two-hundred “Actually the course was in line with and seventy degrees of attack.” [Scott] Buchanan’s view that there is a D {The College - St. John’s College . Fall 2001 } Franz Plunder in the WOODSHOP WITH THE WALNUT BEDS HE MADE FOR DORM ROOMS. St. JoHn’s �■ s {Alumni Events Calendar} a On a prefect southwestern July day, Santa Fe alumni enjoyed their perfect southwest­ ern RELAXED PICNIC. Croquet Match April 37, aooa, i p.m., Annapolis A stunning comeback is predicted for the 15 and 4 Johnnies who unexpectedly lost last year’s match. Will revenge be sweet? 8 T TIC June 30 - July 5, Santa te • Arts and Letters of New Mexico; Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in. America July 7 - la, Santa Fe Plato, The Republic, The Qur’an and the life of Muhammad i—Santa Friday, July 5 - Smd^, juiy 7 Reunion classes: 1972,1977,198a, 1987, 199a, and 1997 imecoming, aooa-Annapolij Friday, October 4 - Sunday, October 6 Reunion classes: 193a, 1937,194a, 1947, 1952,1957,1963,1957,1962,1967,197a, 1977’ 1982,1987,1993,1997 Secontfl LShi Santa 1iSia The show will take place during Homecoming aooa. If you’re interested in par­ ticipating, please contact Maggie Magalnick (505-984-6199) or Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (303-530-3373). For information on events, contact the Offices of Alumni Activities; Tahmina Shalizi Director of Alumni and Parent Activities Santa Fe-505-984-6103 tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu Roberta Gable Director of Alumni Activities Annapolis-4io-6a6-a53i alumni@sjca.edu {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2001 } �STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE Published by the Public Relations Office Box aSoo Annapolis, Maryland 21404 address service requested Periodicals Postage Paid � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator 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 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 2001 Description An account of the resource Volume 28, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2001. 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 2001-09 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. 28, Issue 1 Fall 2001 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Borden, Sus3en (assistant editor) Ducker, Susanne (graphic designer) Mulry, Laura J. (Santa Fe editor) Johnson, David Morrison, Marissa Hancock, Evan Randall, Thomson Idema, James Pastille, William Sanfilippo, Mark Gable, Roberta Eoyang, Glenda H. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/224088bb518fa8ce7b0936a38db2b71a.pdf c199bdee8c7fc5fe1ed91288e7a2fc14 PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis f a l l • 2 0 0 3 Santa Fe Virgil A n d t h e Pow e r of Language �On Virgil n the introduction to his celebrated verse translation of the Aeneid, Allen Mandlebaum acknowledges he came late to Virgil, having been influenced by other great minds (Mark Van Doren and Samuel Coleridge among them) to think that Virgil was less worthy of serious attention than others in the canon. Mandlebaum, who spoke at Santa Fe’s commencement this May, writes that Virgil often loses out in the Homer-Virgil-Dante triangle, but he makes a case that Virgil’s poetic voice is one worth listening to, something he discovered in the six years he worked on the translation. Virgil “speaks of a time of peace achieved, and no man ever felt more deeply the part of the defeated and the lost,” writes Mandlebaum. Publius Vergilius Maro was born near Mantua in Northern Italy in the year 70 BC. He was the son of a small farmer, but the family lands were confiscated by the Triumvirs, later restored to Virgil, and then lost again. By this time, however, good connections—particularly his friendship with Octavianus, the future Emperor Augustus—gave Virgil status and financial means to pursue the life of the poet. Virgil’s first biographer, Aelius Donatus, writing in the fourth century, described him as “large in person and stature, with a swarthy complexion, a peasant’s brown, and uneven health, for he commonly suffered from pain in his stomach, throat, and head; indeed, he often spat up blood.” Because of his status with Augustus, Virgil had it made, says Donatus: “No matter what he asked of Augustus, he never met with refusal. Every year he supported his parents with gold in abundance.” Like Homer, Virgil didn’t lack for detractors—including those who labeled him as a political opportunist or propagandist for Augustus. Donatus pictures Virgil as a careful critic and editor of his own work: “It is handed down that, while he was composing the Georgics, he usually dictated a great number of verses which he had thought out in the morning, and would, in revising them throughout the day, reduce them to a very small number...” Samuel Johnson recommended Virgil’s method to the writers of his time. Virgil’s Eclogues, or Bucolics, completed in 37 B.C. in Rome, celebrate rural life, a theme he continued in the Georgics, completed in 30 B.C. Virgil next turned to the Aeneid, which consumed the last 10 years of his life. He died in Brindisi in 19 B.C., his plans to revise his work cut short. The story is that on his deathbed, Virgil ordered that the Aeneid be destroyed, but it was saved from the flames and protected by Augustus—giving Romans more than a work of literature—an enduring hero and a national epic of a scale appropriate to their role in history. In this issue of The College, we consider Virgil in the context of language, specifically Latin. The 1949 Bulletin of the college is a good document to consult if you want to understand a little about language and its place in the Program. That was the year Latin, originally part of Barr and Buchanan’s New Program and taught at the College for more than 200 years, was dropped to make way for two years of Greek. Language, according to the Bulletin, is “man’s most intimate external possession. The trained language sense extends man’s imaginative powers. We therefore move on it with an organized strategy. The effects are in sustained powers of imagination and therefore in increased attention and powers of analytic thought.” I —RH The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, md and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, md 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, md postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, md 21404-2800. Annapolis 410-626-2539 reharty@sjca.edu Rosemary Harty, editor Sus3an Borden, managing editor Jennifer Behrens, art director Advisory Board John Christensen Harvey Flaumenhaft Roberta Gable Barbara Goyette Kathryn Heines Pamela Kraus Joseph Macfarland Jo Ann Mattson Eric Salem Brother Robert Smith Santa Fe 505-984-6104 alumni@sjcsf.edu Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor Advisory Board Michael Franco David Levine Andra Maguran Margaret Odell Ginger Roherty Mark St. John Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �fall 2003 Vo l u m e 2 9 , I s s u e 3 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 12 Living Languages d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • Johnnies in linguistics contribute to human understanding. • • • 16 Johnnies and Latin page • • • Sona si linguam latinam ames. 18 A Moment of Glory 11 page 12 page 27 28 What goes into preparing commencement ceremonies in Santa Fe and Annapolis? Plus, speeches, serious and light-hearted. John Balkcom Steps Down An Extraordinary Gift Tales from the Tour Guides Making Room in Annapolis Rankings, Ratings and Plaudits Increasing Diversity Sharon Bishop Leads Board letters bibliofile alumni P RO F I L E S 29 Lovejoy Duryea (A67) and the eidos of design 30 Tony Miller (class of 1961), Hot Wheels designer 22 Santa Fe Comes Home 37 Geoff Marslett (SF96), animator and page college instructor 40 The pioneering class of 1968 was among those returning to campus in July. from the bell towers Kitty Kinzer (AGI87) Jimmy Matthews (HA99) Vernon Derr (Class of 1948) page 18 24 Hobbes in Prison obituaries page 42 campus life Great books authors provide croquet commentary Alumnus Mark Lindley (A67) takes great books discussions behind prison walls. 44 tutors Grant Franks’ (A77) odyssey on Shadowfax 48 page 38 on the cover Virgil Illustration by David Johnson st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} Moving On Santa Fe’s President John Balkcom, SFGI00, Steps Down In early June, after much soulsearching, Santa Fe President John Balkcom decided to step down, just short of three years in office. The college community responded to the news with shock, dismay, and questions—chief among them, why would someone who seemed so perfect for a job walk away from it? But for Balkcom, a huge weight was lifted from his shoulders. After months of feeling that he wasn’t doing the job he had hoped to do, his decision was firm, and he had gained a measure of peace. As he met with Annapolis President Christopher Nelson and Sharon Bishop, chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors, Balkcom decided to speak “plainly and truthfully” about his difficult choice. “I simply said, ‘I don’t like this job,’” Balkcom said. “I could not see my way clear to what I would find both excellent and satisfying. I could have gotten by and done enough things to be satisfactory, at least in the minds of many, but I wouldn’t be satisfied with it. And that decision would lack integrity.” On September 1, Balkcom’s term as the third Santa Fe president ended; Annapolis President Christopher Nelson became acting president and will serve both campuses while the board launches a presidential search. To explain the state of mind that led to his decision, Balkcom reaches for the analogy of The Ed Sullivan Show act in which a performer juggles spinning plates. “I felt as if I had plates spinning on a lot of poles and I was dropping too many of them,” he said. “In recent months, I didn’t have a sense of gaining on the job.” A successful management consultant who had risen to partnership in a major Chicago firm, Balkcom was a popular choice, particularly among Santa Fe faculty who found both a scholar and an able businessman in Balkcom. He had earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Princeton and an MBA from the University of Chicago. After accompanying his daughter Rachel (also SFGI00) on a visit to St. John’s in Santa Fe, Balkcom became intrigued with the college. He enrolled first in the college’s Summer Classics program, then the Graduate Institute, and in 1995 joined the college’s board. Balkcom began his duties soon after his November 2000 appointment. He won respect on campus by postponing his inauguration ceremony, initially scheduled for three days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. When the college lost its natural gas because of a pipeline problem, he invited students to his home, Hunt House, to do their laundry. Students were drawn to his friendly manner and sincere interest in them. By 2002, faculty salaries were finally equalized with those of Annapolis and a campus master plan was nearly complete this spring. But Balkcom felt a growing unease and frustration. By way of an example, Balkcom describes a campus meeting that seemed interminable; every possible solution to what Balkcom saw as a black-andwhite issue was being analyzed and debated. “Why can’t we wrap this up?” he was thinking to himself. “I came to see that much greater patience is essential for a president at St. John’s. teri thomson randall by Rosemary Harty Carol and John Balkcom expect to remain involved in the life of the college. Students, faculty, staff—these are not three bodies that automatically agree.” An article in the Santa Fe New Mexican questioned whether the college’s structure, in which the dean is given authority over matters of instruction, rendered Balkcom powerless to make some important decisions. Balkcom firmly dismisses this idea, along with questions about whether the Management Committee structure of the college or domination by Annapolis contributed to his departure. This July, Balkcom was scheduled to take over leadership of the Management Committee from Nelson. Balkcom is pleased that in Santa Fe, the college has enjoyed three straight years of operating surpluses, an accomplishment he quickly shares { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } with Santa Fe Treasurer Bryan Valentine. He’s pleased that the Santa Fe campus has an excellent advancement team, led by Vice President Michael Franco, in place. There’s no question that the presidency is a challenging job. “It’s a hard job, a complex job, a seven-daya-week job, a thrilling job. There’s no question that it can be done here and it can be done well,” he says. The hardest thing Balkcom has to do, he says, is to walk away from the students. He has enjoyed his conversations with them more than any other aspect of his job. “The greatest sense of loss I have is with respect to the students. I’ve loved hanging out with them, going to dinners and waltz parties, I love going down to the continued on p. 3 �{From the Bell Towers} 3 “An Extraordinary Gift” Alumnus Ronald H. Fielding Gives the College $10 Million St. John’s College has received a $10 million gift from investment fund manager Ronald H. Fielding of Rochester, N.Y., a 1970 graduate of the Annapolis campus and member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. It is the largest single gift from an individual in the college’s 300-year history. Fielding, who built a $3 billion mutual fund group by ignoring Wall Street conventions and persisting against the odds, has directed his gift to an endowment for need-based financial aid. “Part of the reason for this gift is to thank the college for having provided me with financial aid at a critical time in my life,” said Fielding. He has also remained grateful that the college’s rigorous program prepared him to succeed in business.“My St. John’s education has been invaluable in meeting my investment career challenges more than a quarter-century after completing business school,” he said. The third of six children raised in a modest home, Fielding began earning money delivering newspapers at the age of 7. He set his sights on a prep-school education and won a nearly full scholarship to the prestigious Putney School in Vermont. He had applied to four colleges, but passed over St. John’s because two older brothers (Richard, A66, and Robert, A68) attended. Though he got into Reed College, his first choice, the financial aid Reed offered fell short. So Fielding applied to St. John’s on his high school graduation day. Already keenly ambitious, he spent a summer riding the train to Boston and working in a menial job at MIT, wondering about his future. He was greatly relieved when his acceptance letter, conveying a full-tuition financial aid package, arrived from St. John’s. Still, Fielding expected to transfer after his freshman year. He applied to Reed again and this time received enough financial aid. But by then, he had fallen in love with the Program. He stayed. “It wasn’t a particular book or tutor. I was hooked on the learning experience,” he explains. Fielding came to St. John’s expecting to pursue a career in science, but reading Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations steered him to the business world. After graduating from St. John’s, he went on to earn a master’s degree in economics and an M.B.A. from the University of Rochester. He worked in financial analysis and portfolio management in banking before launching his own enterprise, Fielding Management Company, in 1982. He built from the ground up a high-performing bond group that caught the attention of OppenheimerFunds Inc., which bought his firm in 1996 for an estimated $80 million. Fielding is now senior vice president and portfolio managRonald Fielding’s $10 million er of OppenheimerFunds’ gift makes a promising start for municipal bond division. the college’s next fund-raising In announcing his gift at campaign. the July board meeting in Santa Fe, Fielding described a conversation he had the previous night with a Johnnie who was thinking about an investment career. “I told him not to worry that he may lack certain practical investment buzz words or operating tips. Ultimately the St. John’s education is perfect in providing students with the mental tools to face new problems and provide logically sound solutions to issues and opportunities which only emerge after business school classes and texts are completed.” Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) applauded his former classmate’s generosity. Nelson and Fielding both served on student government together, Nelson as president, and Fielding as treasurer. Fielding’s gift is a promising start to the college’s next capital campaign, expected to begin in 2005. “I think Ron has done what so many of us alumni wish we could do: give something meaningful back to the school that changed our lives,” Nelson said. “In his case, this extraordinary gift will in turn change the lives of many, many more to come.” x Balkcom dining hall and just sitting down and joining in their conversations. I think they’re fascinating, engaging, brilliant, and fun.” As of late summer, Balkcom’s next steps were undecided. His wife, Carol, was committed to completing her work as a volunteer coordinator of the Tecolote Group, an independent program for public school teachers created by Tutor Steve Van Luchene and hosted by the Santa Fe campus; for that reason, the couple expected to be in Hunt House through September. Balkcom had already received several job inquiries by late summer, accepting none because he prefers to take time to read, think, and watch some of the baseball movies (he’s been a Cubs fan for decades) that were farewell gifts from Nelson and the board. He and Carol expected to move back to their home in Evanston, Ill. He has also offered to contin- ue to serve the college by coleading weekend seminars— such as the seminar he expected to co-lead with Tutor Michael Rawn in late September with representatives of the Santa Fe Institute and the Boston Consulting Group—and assisting with fund-raising efforts. He and his wife Carol will host a reception for prospective students on Saturday, November 8, in the library she had built for him during his last term in the Graduate Institute. He’s also { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } hoping to return to the G.I. in the summer of 2004 to take the history segment. Even though he has the degree, Balkcom is still curious, still eager to learn something new, looking forward to discussing great ideas with his classmates, and still committed to the board’s vision of assuring “this brilliantly conceived small college” (a phrase he borrows often from Tutor Emeritus William Darkey) has another 300 years in its future. x �4 {From the Bell Towers} Tales from the Tour Guides that there are no electives. You’ll spend the whole tour with them, talking about the Program, and later on they’ll ask ‘what kind of visual arts classes do you offer?’” Jenna Questions that indicate you’ve got a lot of explaining to do: “Some of them just can’t handle the altitude in Santa Fe, so we don’t always make it to the gym. I just point it out.” Jenna “So this is a liberal arts school?” Siobhan “Is this a liberal school?” Roseanna “Is this a Catholic school?” Siobhan “How do you decide what a great book is?” Molly “What do tutors do?” Roseanna “What were your SAT scores? What was your GPA? It’s hard to explain scores and grades and all the things from high school that you leave behind when you come to St. John’s.” Siobhan “Some of them can’t fathom No. 1 parent question, hands down: “What are you going to do when you graduate?” Siobhan, Jenna Brutal honesty: “I tell them the chairs are uncomfortable.” Roseanna “Sometimes they will ask ‘what don’t you like about it here?’ I could cite specific readings, but I also talk about why we can’t do things like study abroad. And it’s too small a community to offer a really diverse experience.” Jenna dave trozzo They don’t always wear sensible shoes. They don’t dress formally, wear t-shirts with the college logo, or pin on a name badge. But they are infinitely patient with questions from prospectives, parents, and sometimes people just passing through town on their way to a college they really plan to apply to. They’re diligent in responding to querulous e-mail questions and always give the honest answer, not necessarily the viewbook line. They smile a lot. This summer, on the Annapolis campus tour guide duties fell to Siobhan Aitchison, a rising junior from San Diego, Calif., and Roseanna White, a rising senior from Wiley Ford, W.Va. In Santa Fe, rising senior Jenna Beck, of Bishop, Calif., and Molly Wright, rising junior of St. Joseph, Mo., led tours. Each gave at least a tour a day, traveling the same pathways and describing the Program for three months in the summer. By August, they sounded a little weary, but still managed enthusiasm for Euclid, Barr and Buchanan, the Great Hall, and the view of Monte Sol. Here are some of their observations: Above, tour guides Siobhan Aitchison and Roseanna White led tours in Annapolis. Molly Wright and Jenna Beck shared the duty in Santa Fe this summer. “They won’t look you in the eye.” Roseanna “The roughest tours are when the student isn’t really interested and no amount of telling them how excited you are about the Program will do any good.” Molly remember Faraday’s name. I think I ended up saying, ‘this guy.’” Siobhan “I had an alumnus take over my tour. He just walked up to the group, started talking to them about various hiking trails, all kinds of things. Then he trailed off and I took the opportunity to end the tour.” Molly “The brochures all make a big deal of there being no tests and there is the music quiz and the algebra quiz.” Roseanna When you know you’ll be seeing them at Convocation: “And ‘no textbooks’—our lab manuals are like poorly bound textbooks.” Siobhan “When they say, ‘I’m applying here and nowhere else.’” Roseanna “I love the fact that I get to talk to people who are excited about the Program.” Molly “When they ask good, hard questions about the Program. Those are the people who will make the best students in seminar.” Molly “One woman gave me a bag of jelly beans.” Roseanna It’s not the heat, it’s the altitude: “When they ask, ‘is it really as good as it sounds?’” Jenna You know you’ve lost them when: Most embarrassing moment: “They don’t ask any questions.” Siobhan “I fell down a flight of stairs during a tour of Santa Fe Hall. I just got up and continued the tour.” Molly “Their parents ask all the questions.” Roseanna “One girl just couldn’t get over the math in the Program. I tried to tell her how I didn’t like math, but how sophomore math was beautiful. It’s not like high school math. But she just couldn’t get over the math. Siobhan “I had a tutor come up to me while I was giving a tour and ask, ‘oh, is this your family?’” Roseanna “I was giving a tour of the labs in Mellon Hall and describing the Faraday experiment where you put your friends in a cage and electrify it. I couldn’t { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } Perks of the job: “The more I give tours, the more I appreciate what I’ve done here. No, I don’t remember everything I did in freshman laboratory. But I realize how [the Program] has affected me and how glad I am that I came here.” Siobhan Strangest e-mails: “I had such fun with one e-mail that asked whether we harbor creative, cutting-edge thinking. My first response was ‘what do you mean by cutting edge?’ The ideas that are popular today or the timeless ideas that are and always will be cutting edge?” Jenna “One person asked, ‘how do you treat people with green hair?’” Siobhan x �5 {From the Bell Towers} Announcements Four new tutors have joined the faculty of the Santa Fe campus: DEBORAH GARFIELD received a B.A. in English from Agnes Scott College and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1990. Her dissertation was titled “Emersonian Eros: Women, Privation and Power in the American Novel,” and she has a work in progress: “Alternative Origins: American Culture, Female Narrative and the Aesthetic of New Beginnings, 1871-1936.” JONATHAN HAND received a B.A. in political philosophy from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His dissertation was titled “Tocqueville’s ‘New Political Science’ a Critical Assessment of Montesquieu’s Vision of a Liberal Modernity.” ERIC POPPELE is a 1989 graduate of St. John’s College, Santa Fe. Poppele received a master’s in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a Ph.D. candidate in civil engineering at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. His thesis is titled “The Cohesive Strength of Biofilms.” A 1993 graduate of St. John’s in Annapolis, JOSEPH WALTER STERLING pursued graduate studies in the Department of Philosophy at Emory University and expects to receive a Ph.D. from Emory in the fall of 2003. His dissertation is titled “Exigencies of the Political.” For the last four years, he has been working as an adult learning instructor for Project H.O.M.E., designing, implementing, coordinating, and teaching adult learning programs, and integrating educational services with special needs of homeless, mental health, substance abuse, and low-income populations. In addition, Tutor MATTHEW DAVIS has taken the post of assistant dean in Santa Fe. A 1982 graduate of St. John’s College, Annapolis, Davis holds a master’s from Dalhousie University and a Ph.D. in political science from Boston College. x Agresto to Baghdad Former Santa Fe President JOHN AGRESTO has been selected as senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. He assumed his post in Baghdad in early September. American occupation authorities named Agresto to the post of senior adviser, an 18-month assignment that could be extended. Iraq’s former Minister of Higher Education, who was No. 43 on a most-wanted list published by the United States, was captured earlier this year. Agresto is also president of Agresto and Associates, an educational consulting firm. He served as president of the Santa Fe campus from 19902000. x New Alumni Director Roxanne Seagraves (SF83) of Tucson, Ariz., has been named director of Alumni Activities for the Santa Fe campus, replacing Tahmina Shalizi, who stepped down last spring to pursue other career avenues. In addition to her St. John’s degree, Seagraves has a master of divinity from the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, Calif., and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union, also in Berkeley. Most recently she served as a prevention specialist at a Tucson elementary school, providing intervention and counseling support for students and their mary ruffin New Faculty in Santa Fe Aspiring Musician Wins Cooke Scholarship Junior TIMOTHY KILE is one of only 30 undergraduate students nationwide to land a Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship for undergraduate study. Kile attended high school in Amherst, N.H. For three years during and after high school, he played with a band called Arcade Fire and recorded an album of original songs that received radio airplay. Kile also spent a year studying literature at McGill University in Montreal, but after a semester, he began to feel “that there were personal and philosophical questions I needed to confront before beginning my life’s work of music.” Kile felt that only St. John’s College could offer him the continued personal challenge he seeks. He enrolled at St. John’s in Santa Fe, where he spent two years. He transferred to Annapolis this fall. “In Santa Fe it’s outrageously, absurdly beautiful, but I’ve got the East Coast in my bones,” he says. In his essay for the Jack Kent Cooke scholarship, Kile wrote of the modern implications of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, discussing the destruction of the world’s single greatest archive of knowledge in the context of the few remaining works of Plato and Aristotle. Why are the great books so important to someone who plans to make music his life’s work? “The yearning that drove me to St. John’s to confront philosophical and personal questions is indistinguishable from my yearning to create meaningful music,” says Kile. During his first year at St. John’s, Kile received the award for best freshman essay. An essay he wrote his sophomore year, “On Love, Knowledge, and the Shield of Law: Understanding the Book of Job,” netted Kile an acknowledgement of excellence at this year’s commencement exercises in Santa Fe. While holding a work-study job with buildings and grounds, Kile sang with the St. John’s College Chamber Choir, participated in a Hebrew study group, and played guitar and piano. Although writing and playing music are still a part of his daily life, Kile has cut back on performing. “St. John’s is a time commitment, much more than McGill. I often feel that the thing at stake in this education is my own life, as thinkers from Plato to Nietzsche constantly force me to ask myself, what is the life that is worth living?” x families. She has extensive experience in various other community-based and educational organizations, having held key administrative roles in such areas as public relations, fund raising, coalition-build- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } ing, finance, and event planning and execution. Seagraves also has worked as a professional storyteller, freelance artist, and stand-up comic. She begins her new job Sept. 29. x �6 {From the Bell Towers} Quaint 1BR apt. Walking dist. to City Dock. W/D, window AC, gas heat. Modern int. in 200 yr. old bldg. $895/mo Quaint comes at a high price these days in Annapolis. Soaring property values mean higher rents, apartments in the historic district are dwindling as property owners convert buildings back to single-family dwellings, and even one-bedroom apartments in nearby suburbs command rents approaching $1,000. All this has meant more students in the spring housing lottery each year. About 60 students each year end up on the waiting list for campus housing. And as anyone who’s ever been unlucky enough to share a cramped triple in Humphreys can attest, dorm space is tight on the Annapolis campus. Not only have more doubles been turned into triples, and singles into doubles, but common space also has been sacrificed to make room for beds. The housing crunch prompted the Annapolis Campus Planning Committee to kick new dormitory projects into high gear this year. In July, construction began on the first of two new dormitories on the lower campus. The first will house 48 students; the second 32. After the completion of the first building, the college will be able to house about 75 percent of the student body on campus. The new complex is situated north of the steam plant, parallel to College Creek. Intended to alleviate another chronic campus problem, a parking structure is the third component of the project. The total cost of the project is about $20.3 million, including $2.7 million in renovations and updates to existing dorms on campus. Construction on the second dorm and parking structure will begin when the college has raised enough funds to ziger/snead New Dorms Slated for Annapolis complete the project, says Steve Linhard, assistant treasurer. The dorm project also recognizes that housing more students on campus isn’t just a matter of economics: A community of learning works better if fewer students are heading to their cars after seminar and Friday lectures, says Assistant Dean Judith Seeger. “Our students in this allrequired program are here to talk to each other, and they love to do so,” Seeger says. “Part of our job is to do all we can to support their ongoing conversations.” The new dorm will be the first new residence hall on the Of Rankings and Ratings What’s a Hot College to Do? St. John’s was a top pick for several college guides this year. Yes, we completely ignore those who would rank us. We delete their e-mails, we withhold data, we politely tell them we don’t believe that rankings really serve students making one of the most important decisions of their lives. And yet they persist in saying nice things about us. In its annual college guide, U.S. News & World Report singled out St. John’s to exemplify the intellectual aspects of college life. The three-page article titled “The Life of the Mind” touched on all we at St. John’s hold dear: the value of genuine dialogue, the inte- grated nature of an allrequired program, the power of an opening question. For the better part of a week reporter Dan Gilgoff immersed himself in the culture of the Annapolis campus, visiting seminars, labs, and tutorials. In his article, Gilgoff concluded: “There’s no other place quite like St. John’s (except perhaps its sister campus in Santa Fe, N.M.). Yet its singleminded approach to academics gives a window into the undergrad experience at the dwindling number of colleges where the life of the mind reigns supreme.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } The first new dormitory in 50 years will be ready next fall. campus since Campbell Hall opened in 1954, and the first new building since the Harrison Health Center was completed in 1971. The two-story buildings each feature a spacious common area with communal kitchen, a combination of single and double rooms, and a resident apartment. Baltimore architectural firm Ziger/Snead has designed the brick buildings to reflect both the modern features of Mellon Hall and the colonial buildings on campus. x Newsweek-Kaplan’s How to Get into College guide chose St. John’s as one of its “12 Hottest Schools,” gracing the college with the label “Most Old-School.” (Reed got “most quirky.”) Says the story: “The curriculum, with its focus on classical education, is unique and relentless.” Santa Fe was number 25 in Outside magazine’s “40 Best College Towns,” a feature in the magazine’s September issue. The high-desert location and proximity of the mountains were noted; the great books curriculum made it into the last paragraph. And our vote for most quirky: The Princeton Review, which placed St. John’s atop those academies that encourage classroom discussion. x �7 {From the Bell Towers} Admissions and Diversity, East and West by Rosemary Harty job is to let students know what the Program is like and encourage them to ask the right kind of questions. Baca, of Hispanic origin, was born in Santa Fe and lived outside nearby Espanola for most of his adult years. “I know that I feel very privileged to have been a student here,” says Baca, whose family wasn’t enthusiastic about his seeking a liberal arts degree. Baca’s convictions about the St. John’s Program tend to command attention. Recently, he was able to sit down to a feast with leaders of the Jemez Pueblo and discuss seminars and great books. “One of the Pueblo governors was an assistant dean at Stanford; he really didn’t know much about St. John’s,” Baca recalls. “I guess he’ll still send some students to Stanford, but now I think he’ll be on the lookout for the Native American students who would love St. John’s.” Tutor Victoria Mora has also been engaged in the diversity initiative in Santa Fe. She met with minority upperclassmen to discuss how best to pursue recruiting and retaining minority students. With their input and that of the dean, assistant dean, and Instruction Committee, Mora fashioned an advising program for all incoming freshmen, a version of which is in place for this academic year. Mora has been involved in outreach efforts to prospective students, parents, and New Mexico high school students. She’s traveled as far as Tsalie, Ariz., to involve alumni in spreading the word about the college. And this year she plans to step up outreach efforts to high school teachers, beginning with Albuquerque, Bernalillo, and Santa Fe. “As a native New Mexican who didn’t hear about St. John’s until two years into an undergraduate degree at the University of New Mexico, this initiative is very close to my heart,” says Mora. In Annapolis, where minority enrollment ranges from 6 to 8 percent of the student population each year, the admissions office has pursued many different avenues to present the college to more minority students. Some have been effective, and others have yielded not a single application, says John Christensen. “We’ve attended many fairs for African-American students and joined many partnerships. For several years, we joined in a partnership with the Northern Virginia public school system and hosted groups of students as young as ninth grade to talk about how to afford private college and how to apply to college in general. We never got any response,” he says. A promising avenue Christensen is pursuing is the large, urban high school—particularly magnet schools or preparatory schools with highly motivated students, an emphasis on the liberal arts, and diversity in the student body. He’s found such schools in Louisiana, Philadelphia, and Massachusetts, and has been successful in bringing their graduates to St. John’s. Although no minorities were among them yet, he still believes the audience is primed for the college’s message. “We think those places offer the best forums to meet minority students. And whenever we’re in a city, we’re trying to find out if there are other schools like that: diverse environments where students are interested in the liberal arts and willing to go out of state to college,” he says. x teri thomson randall A new initiative to recruit more minority students to the Santa Fe campus is off to a good start. The percentage of minority students, which has hovered at about 10 percent every year, has risen to 17 percent, the highest in the history of the campus, says Larry Clendenin (SF77), director of admissions in Santa Fe. Of this year’s freshman class of 142, 15 percent are minorities. Clendenin attributes the increase to the Opportunity Initiative, an effort to devote more resources to recruiting from among the state’s minority students. The initiative is funded by a gift to the college from a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. What the grant has given the college is more time to talk to students on New Mexico’s reservations, in small-town high schools, and at college fairs. Among other expenses, the grant provides salary and travel expenses for Joaquin Baca (SF95), assistant director of admissions. “One of the big challenges in New Mexico is how spread out it is,” Baca says. For example, it’s nearly four hours to Gallup from Santa Fe, but last year, Baca was able to make three trips to Gallup, one of the biggest reservation high schools in the state, and several trips to smaller schools such as Tohatchi and Pine Hill. With a limited recruitment staff, it was more difficult to do focused recruitment and follow-up in New Mexico, says Clendenin. Adding Baca to the staff has meant six more weeks of recruitment time and at least 20 more high school visits. “We see in college fairs that 90 percent of the Hispanic and Native American students go straight to the state university tables,” Clendenin says. “Our A spirited game of Spartan Madball during Reality Week marks the end of the spring semester in Santa Fe. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �8 {From the Bell Towers} “I Just Never Let Go” Sharon Bishop, A65, Leads St. John’s Board For nearly 30 years, Sharon Bishop has been one of the most committed and involved of St. John’s College alumni. But had she been the type of person to hold a grudge, the college might have had to do without her service as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, president of the Alumni Association, and now, chair of the BVG. In the late 1960s, Bishop was an underpaid social worker in the city of Philadelphia. She had borrowed her way through St. John’s and was burdened by loans. Her employer paid for graduate school, and Bishop was preparing to apply to Bryn Mawr College. “St. John’s would not release my transcript because I still owed them about $500,” Bishop recalls. “I tried to explain that if I had the master’s degree, I would make more money and be able to afford to pay the college.” The story has a happy ending: St. John’s accepted her repayment plan and sent out the transcript. Bishop thrived in graduate school, went on to a successful professional career, and helped establish an enormously successful consulting firm, of which she is now vicepresident. She has never stopped giving back to the college since her first $1,000 donation, made as soon as her professional salary allowed, in 1974. The following year, she was asked to run for one of six elected alumni positions on the Board of Visitors and Governors by an Alumni Association eager to draft more women for the board. In 1976, she attended her first board meeting. “When I was a student, I remembered thinking that the BVG were mostly old, rich people who would give the college money and it wasn’t clear to me that they knew anything about the college. By the time I got on the board I found other alumni who were, along with non-alumni, deeply committed to the welfare and wellbeing of St. John’s College as an institution.” After earning her master’s, Bishop went to work for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where she became a principal. In 1983, she took a chance by leaving a well-established firm to join Gerald Croan in an enterprise he started in his basement in Northern Virginia. Their firm, Caliber Associates, has grown from just the two of them to more than 300 employees, occupying six floors of an office building in Fairfax, Va., and working for government agencies including the Department of Education and the Department of Justice, nonprofits such as AARP, and private firms. “We do work in the child/family/ community studies arena, studies of child welfare systems, evaluations of programs focused on juvenile justice, and operate technical assistance and training centers for victims’ assistance programs,” to name a few, Bishop says. Bishop is a good choice to lead the board at a time of transition; she was involved in choosing three presidents over her many years of service. In her initial term as alumni representative, 1976 to 1982, she served on the search committee that recruited Edwin Delattre to the presidency. In her 1985-90 term as a regular elected member, the board voted for a two-president structure. Bishop was a board member when Michael Riccards was chosen president for Santa Fe and William Dyal Jr. for Annapolis. In 1992, she was elected president of the Alumni Association, a post she held until 1998. She stepped down from the board in 2002 because of commitments at Caliber, then agreed to return to the board as its chair earlier this year. What motivates such commitment? “This absolute belief that what you’re doing is worthwhile and needs to be done. It’s very rewarding to work with really fine people on behalf of something you care about.” One of the helpful attributes Bishop will bring to the board is an ability to “talk people into doing what they don’t want to do,” says Ray Cave (A48), who just finished his term as board chair. “About two years ago, Sharon and I were on the nominating committee and it was time to look for another chair. Sharon said, ‘Ray I think you’d be an ideal chairman.’” Cave firmly rejected the proposal. Bishop persisted, and Cave became board chair. “I found myself saying, ‘all right,’ and it was all her fault,” Cave says. Cave describes his successor as well-organized, skilled in managing people, and able to make difficult decisions. “She came in at a very tough time, just when John Balkcom resigned. And to watch the way she handled that was to see what a good manager she is. She really cares about people.” teri thomson randall by Rosemary Harty Sharon Bishop chairs the Board of Visitors and Governors. Alumni should be pleased with the college’s board, Bishop says, because about 60 percent of its members are alumni. The rich assembly of talent and experience of BVG members has always impressed her. “Ultimately, the board is responsible to ensure the survival of the college,” says Bishop, “and the college is in good hands.” Bishop’s family would have been happy if she’d gone to college to be a teacher, but once she’d heard about St. John’s she saw “this was the only worthwhile thing to do.” “The whole concept of beginning with Euclid and ending with Einstein, beginning with Plato and ending with War and Peace—and it was the way it was done, the small groups, the seminars, the discussions,” Bishop says. “You were to think for yourself. I just glommed on to St. John’s and never let go.” x Presidential Search The Board of Visitors and Governors has appointed a search committee to oversee selection of the next president of the Santa Fe campus. The committee is chaired by Michael E. Uremovich of Santa Fe, board member and Graduate Institute student. The committee comprises the deans of each campus, David Levine in Santa Fe, and Harvey Flaumenhaft in Annapolis; a faculty representative of each campus: Victoria Mora, Santa Fe, and Nancy Buchenauer, Annapolis; and four board members: Thomas R. Krause (SFGI01), Robert Bienenfeld (SF80), Mikael Salovaara, and Julia Wilkinson (HSF94). x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �9 {Philanthropia} Senior Class Gift Learning and community. Wisdom and fun. These are the legacies of the 2003 senior class. In Santa Fe, 65 seniors contributed $3,459 to build an adult swing set near the new Student Activities Center. In Annapolis, 64 seniors contributed $6,100 for the digital re-mastering and transcription of classic lectures that now exist only on audiotape. The Senior Class Gift is one of the ways that Philanthropia, the alumni organization dedicated to alumni fund raising, increases awareness of the college’s needs among younger alumni. Class Gifts introduce students to the opportunity to support St. John’s and seniors carry that sense of philanthropy with them after graduation. Marguerite Pfoutz, a member of the Senior Class Gift Committee in Santa Fe, says that Erin Hanlon (SF03) supplied the idea for the swing set. “She wanted to have a playground that would be suitable for tutors’ children so that we could build stronger bonds as a community,” says Pfoutz. “And it’s also been a longstanding tradition to drive around Santa Fe looking for swingsets in parks to play on. We need to exorcise—and exercise— our demons.” Pfoutz says she wishes the playground had existed during her years at St. John’s, but vows to come back to play on it as an alumna. Right now she’s applying to the Peace Corps and hopes to teach elementary school at the British Educational Institute International in the Sudan while her application is processed. Alexander Wall chaired the Annapolis Senior Class Gift Committee. The idea for the transcriptions came from his experience listening to tapes of old lectures. “I’ve taken them out and some of them are in terrible condition,” he says. “But those that were already transcribed were very useful. It’s nice to hear what someone has to say about a book that isn’t being read in seminar.” Despite How Aristotle Would Explain the Annual Fund College financial reports can be confusing to the uninitiated. There’s tuition—more than $27,000 this year. There’s the endowment. There are wonderful gifts, like the $10 million from Ron Fielding (A70) for financial aid endowment. There are expenses like building projects, tutor salaries, and financial aid. A key component in the total picture is the Annual Fund, the money raised from alumni, friends, and parents that is used to help meet annual expenses in the college’s operating budget. Tuition covers about 70% 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. During fiscal year 2003 (which ended June 30), even in the face of a tough and uncertain economy, St. John’s alumni, friends, and parents supported the college’s Annual Fund. The college met its Annual Fund goal of $2.148 million—which constitutes about 6% of the operating budget for the campuses. The college received more than 2,700 alumni gifts, meaning that 34% of alumni supported the college this year. That is an all-time high for one year and the most significant indicator of the future health of St. John’s. For the first time, St. John’s is their questionable audio quality, Wall managed to listen to a number of lectures by Leo Strauss as well as several on the Gorgias, the topic of his senior essay. When he told his classmates his idea for the gift, the response was overwhelming. “It was nice to see how excited everyone got about giving something back to St. John’s,” Wall says. “Everyone wanted the gift to be something that would show how St. John’s had helped them in their learn- ing, how they cared about the Program. Most people thought that the library was key to their time at St. John’s and they liked the idea of giving a gift to the library that was a bit more individual than just giving money for books.” The time Wall spent struggling with the poor audio of the tapes seems to have paid off beyond its intrinsic value. He is now enrolled in a Ph.D. program in political philosophy at Harvard University. x Visitors to the Peterson Student Center might think they’ve stumbled across George Plimpton asleep in a wing chair, but this new addition to the Santa Fe campus is actually a sculpture by J. Seward Johnson. Johnson’s remarkably lifelike sculptures of ordinary people doing ordinary things grace many American cities. Johnson’s son, J. Seward Johnson III, is an alumnus of the class of 1993. This piece, “After Lunch,” was donated to the college by Mr. and Mrs. Rick Levin, residents of Santa Fe. approaching the gift levels of other liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore, Oberlin, and Franklin and Marshall, where around 40-60% of alumni make a gift every year. Philanthropia, the group of alumni volunteers who are working to increase financial support for the college among their peers, has emphasized the importance of the alumni participation rate. When the group began in 1997, St. John’s alumni participation rate was 19%. “It was clear that alumni felt strongly about the college, but { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } they weren’t demonstrating that,” says Barbara Goyette (A73), vice president for advancement in Annapolis. “The Philanthropia volunteers have worked hard to make connections with their classmates and to deliver messages about the college. What many people don’t realize is the importance of participation. This could even be explained in Aristotelian terms: When an alum makes a gift to the Annual Fund, it is the actualization of a potential positive force, carrying the college forward.” x �10 {From the Bell Towers} Hans von Briesen: A Tribute When Hans von Briesen Jr. came to St. John’s College, he was already a man with an impressive—if unusual—history. He held a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in physics; had taught at Stanford, the University of Rochester, and Northeastern University; served as treasurer and coordinator of the Lama Foundation (a spiritual community and educational center in Northern New Mexico); and worked as a journeyman plumber and gasfitter. In 1979 he overcame his unease with academe to leave plumbing and accept the position of director of laboratories in Santa Fe. When he retired this spring, he left to us in Santa Fe a legacy of trust, ingenuity, and excitement in the laboratory. Hans realized that if he put responsibility in our hands, we would inevitably meet any challenge. Hans says he didn’t feel it was his place to make any changes to the laboratory program, but it’s widely acknowledged that the program developed significantly during his tenure. He computerized the lab manuals so he could make additions and corrections as soon as the tutors requested them. He tapped his plumbing experience to fix equipment and reinforce the value of “recycling” in the scientific method. “His 24 years as lab supervisor have made my as-many years as a lab tutor purely pleasurable,” says tutor Glenn Freitas. “He has taken constant great care to develop better and better practica [and also] develop experiments and demonstrations that were relevant and powerfully related to the textual arguments of the classes.” Nowhere else on the Program do students, whether assistants or class members, receive this kind of hands-on learning. “He opened up a new world of problems—and I mean that in a good way,” says Devin King (SF03). Perhaps the most significant development that Hans made to the lab program was through relationships with student laboratory assistants. When he came to St. John’s, Hans increased the number of assistants and added to their responsibilities, providing for a richer experience for those of us fortunate to be named laboratory assistants. Under his tutelage, we gained knowledge and experience from those who had come before us; we then passed that knowledge along to the students who followed us in these positions. This tradition calls for an exchange of ideas that is integral to the Program and essential to the laboratory assistantship. On a more practical level, Hans was the man who could help us fix anything. If we had it, he knew how it worked and where to find it. Rumor has it that among tutors his notes are a valuable commodity. But despite being “the man with all the answers,” he put an amazing amount of trust in us, his student workers. He let us work out our own problems, even if that meant a certain amount of frustration and even pain (largely mental pain, if occasionally a bit of physical pain). These are the most valu- able lessons that student enthusiasts of the St. John’s labs will ever learn. Cobalt Blue (SF92, EC97) reminded me that the amount of faith that Hans puts in his workers inspires them to work harder. We want to finish jobs and solve more problems than we ever would if he hadn’t believed in our ingenuity, creativity, and diligence. Hans realized that if he put responsibility in our hands, we would inevitably meet any challenge. As a student, this will always be the way I think of and remember Hans von Briesen. I love the St. John’s Program, and one of the bigger reasons is the opportunity I’ve had to be a laboratory student and work as an assistant under such a director. Hans symbol- teri thomson randall by Megan Sielken, SFo3 Megan Sielken and Hans von Briesen on the Santa Fe campus. izes so much of what the lab program is, from freshman biology to senior genetics, from cat dissections to the blender experiment. I will always remember the crazy white hair, the strict recycling policy for equipment, and the plumber’s ingenuity that defined my own career as student, assistant, and head freshman assistant. x More Santa Fe retirements: GLENN FREITAS joined the college in 1969, bringing with him a background in Biblical studies and a mastery of Greek, Latin, French, and German. An early supporter and participant in the Eastern Classics program, he spent five summers learning classical Chinese. He served as assistant dean for three years and acting dean of the college for one year. His favorite author is Montaigne. A tutor since 1985, ROBERT RICHARDSON earned a doctorate at Yale. After directing and teaching in university programs designed to foster thought about ethics and technology in engineering and science, he left academics and worked as a carpenter and milk tester for many years before coming to St. John’s. He still writes about farming, enjoys writing fiction, and indulges in golf. RALPH SWENTZELL came to the college in 1966. He put together junior mathematics and sophomore music tutorials, and was crucial in forming senior math and laboratory curricula. About 10 years ago, he scanned every character in Mathews’ Chinese Dictionary to prepare a computerized lexicon that even beginners could use. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �{Letters} Greenhouse Picture Tells A Second Story The College Spring 2003 report, “Community Building in Santa Fe,” has two texts—the article and the photograph. Both merit careful attention to what is said and not said. Without saying whether the greenhouse used pressure treated lumber or might have, the article creates its ideological strawman by asserting without evidence that “one piece of pressure treated lumber…represents a significant expense of petroleum in the course of its harvest, transport, milling, delivery and installation.” “Community building” is the virtuous alternative, the implication being no use of petroleum. Certainly kudos go to the volunteer laborers and the sense of community developed along the way. I assert, equally without specific evidence but with long knowledge of economics and manufacturing, that petroleum expense in timber production, pressure treated or not, is much less than trivial on a per piece basis. Then there are the questions implied by the story and the photograph. Was the local timber harvested and the boards and pillars cut without power tools? Was it taken to the college without using petroleum? My guess is that recycling the glass required heat, efficient production of which typically involves petroleum, natural gas or coal. Or was the heat generated using wood, an inefficient source? Further clues appear in the photo. The roof is metal, produced most likely by a firm organized as a corporation. Skylights typically are plastic of some sort, which means made from petrochemicals, a big company product. More information comes from a quick visit to the greenhouse. The door fixtures look quite conventional, meaning they were made by a corporation (that capitalist word, again) and perhaps purchased from a big box build- ing materials retailer of the sort that provides large selection for low prices. Did the community building team walk or ride a bicycle or horse to the retailer to buy the door fixtures or did they drive? The same questions apply to the screws holding the building together. The bricks on the floor appear manufactured rather than formed by hand. “The greenhouse is a worthy project, perhaps possible only with volunteer labor. A straight tale would have been nice.” My conclusion is that the project used economically efficient high production technology when convenient and trashed technology and economic efficiency when convenient, a situational morality worthy of a seminar. Annoying as are the smug, precious, ideological assertions, a bigger problem lies in the appearance of such a rampantly politically correct tract masquerading as a straight report in a college publication. Through the publication, the college in effect embraces the ideology, something I hope wasn’t on purpose. The greenhouse is a worthy project, perhaps possible only with volunteer labor. A straight tale would have been nice. Harold Morgan (SF68) Praising Brann This letter heartily seconds the praises sung in Barbara Goyette’s review of Eva Brann’s Homeric Moments (“Rediscovering Homer,” Spring 2003). Ms. Goyette qualifies her apt review with two somewhat selfeffacing disclaimers: that she “can’t do an honest review” because she so much admires the author’s intellect and imagination; and, as an “insider” employed by the college, is rendered incapable of giving an “honest appraisal.” She need not have been so diffident about her commendation of the high achievement, and thoroughly charming qualities of Homeric Moments. As an alumnus who was a student of Ms. Brann’s, with more than 40 years of friendship following, I too might disqualify myself as a biased “insider.” I have, however, been privileged to review books of Ms. Brann’s in publications other than those of the college (e.g., What, Then, Is Time?, reviewed in 28 Interpretation 173, Winter 2000-2001) without such trepidation. Having been instructed by Aristotle during my student days that “while both are dear, piety requires us to honor truth above our friends” (Nichomachean Ethics, I, 6), I have not been shy—when I thought it conveyed some truth—to criticize, for example, hardships encountered in some of Ms. Brann’s writing. Homeric Moments, on the other hand, is simply as delicious a work as a lover of Homer might wish. It not only refreshes delights experienced from prior readings of the Iliad and Odyssey, but through recollections stimulated by Ms. Brann’s novel survey, it exquisitely expands those pleasures by its exploration of Homer’s most supernal points of light and dark; passion, pathos, and tragedy; lyricism and drama; comedy; and complex humanity. With Homeric Moments, Eva Brann has given us as much of the poetry of reading Homer, as anyone is ever likely to offer readers in one compact volume. Harrison Sheppard (class of 1961) The Tutors Who Stayed The Winter 2003 issue of The College, page 32, refers to John { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter/Spring 2002 } 11 Kieffer as “one of only two tutors who remained at the college after the New Program was instituted in 1937.” There were more than two: Mr. Kieffer, of course, was one. Two others were my tutors during my freshman year (1941-42): Ford K. Brown (mathematics) and Tench Tilghman (Greek). I am almost positive that Mr. Brown had been on the St. John’s faculty for many years. My recollection about Mr. Tilghman is less clear, but the personal sketch about him on the jacket of his The Early History of St. John’s College in Annapolis says that “from 1934 to 1942 [he] was an Instructor in English and later tutor at St. John’s.” …The following appears on page 28 of J. Winfree Smith’s A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St. John’s Program: “Some of the faculty left right away, some stayed for a few years, and four continued to the end of their teaching careers: George Bingley, a mathematician; Ford Brown, a former Rhodes Scholar and an authority on the Evangelicals in the Church of England; Richard Scofield, another Rhodes scholar who had previously taught art and English and very quickly proved the breadth of his interest and ability by the excellence of his teaching within the new program; and John Kieffer.” Edward W. Mullinix (class of 1945) The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis MD 21404 or The College Magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: reharty@sjca.edu. �12 {Johnnies on Language} LIVING L ANGUAGES At St. John’s we spend four years talking, reading, and writing. What more can we do with words? Four Johnnies discuss their work with language. By Sus3an Borden, A87 ome 50 years after his family had left Germany, Walter Kissinger was asked why he did not share his famous brother Henry’s heavy German accent. “I,” he replied, “am the Kissinger who listens.” S —from www.anecdotage.com This bit of linguistic legend is well known to Jim Stone (class of 1955). During his 33-year career working with State Department language training for government employees, the linguistic tendencies of Henry Kissinger were often a source of speculation for him and his colleagues. “When we were thinking about how to evaluate language skills, we thought about different odd cases. Kissinger was an extreme case; his brother speaks ordinary American. I think he has chosen to maintain that German-professor style to a great extent,” says Stone. “People do, consciously or unconsciously, choose their styles to fit in where they want to fit in. I know Southerners who have carefully moved away from their Southern accents and others whose accents have gotten stronger and stronger from year to year. It’s a matter of displaying your allegiance.” Linguist Mark Mandel (A69) is personally familiar with this phenomenon: “My daughter, who is in literary criticism and is very languageconscious, asked me a number of years ago, with some apparent annoyance, why I seemed to change my language into a much more guy-style in certain situations like at gas stations. I explained that language does many things; it is not just to convey information. We also use it to express concepts of affiliation: ‘I’m a member of this, not that. I’m better than you, you’re better than me. I’m like you, I’m not like you.’ Those are the uses you hear when I unconsciously or half-consciously change my style when I go into the gas station and ask the attendant to check the oil. “Every native speaker of a language uses many different styles and registers them fluently, but they’re not always aware that they do,” says Mandel. “A lot of what linguistics involves is analyzing, making explicit, understanding, and systematizing the tacit knowledge we have as native users of languages.” Mandel’s current project, biomedical information extraction for the Linguistic Data Consortium, demands such analysis. Mandel and his team are developing a suite of computer programs that will read an abstract or full-text article in electronic form to extract facts that will be placed into databases in a uniform format that researchers can query. The project’s Web site (www.ldc.upenn. edu/myl/ITR) gives this example: We want a program that will read a phrase like Amiodarone weakly inhibited CYP2C9, CYP2D6, and CYP3A4mediated activities with Ki values of 45.1—271.6 ?M and add to a database a set of entries whose ordinary-language presentation is amiodarone inhibits CYP2C9 with Ki=45.1—271.6 amiodarone inhibits CYP2D6 with Ki=45.1—271.6 amiodarone inhibits CYP3A4 with Ki=45.1—271.6 That example manages to both clarify and mislead. While it aptly defines the project’s goal, it hides the complexity of the endeavor. “In order to get the relationships between items in a database, you need to understand sentences, know what words are. You need to { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �howard korn 13 Does the language used at St. John’s change according to the class? In seminar, students tend to convey their points seriously and with conviction. “Linquistic knowledge extends beyond written and spoken language.” Jim Stone, class of 1955 know syntax, shallow semantics, syntactic annotation,” says Mandel. “Native speakers, and I include signers in that category, are constantly applying a zillion kinds of real-world knowledge to speech. This ranges from assuming that my friend knows where I live when I give directions as if starting from my house, to knowing that ‘bush,’ if it is the first word of a sentence, is likely to be a public figure rather than a shrub, although that was not the case 50 years ago.” Stone adds to the complexity that Mandel describes, pointing out that linguistic knowledge extends beyond written and spoken language. He describes elements of communication that aren’t—or shouldn’t be—spoken. Stone recalls, for example, Vienna-born tutor Viktor Zuckerkandl, whose sense of conversational space was so different from his own WASP sense that the esteemed tutor once backed Stone all the way through the coffee shop in the course of a conversation. He recounts a situation he encountered more than once during his numerous visits to India: “I’ve seen Indians really blow up about our thank-yous: ‘These Americans, they keep thanking me! What do they think I am? What’s wrong with them?’ They find our thank-yous really offensive and I’ve never been able to find out why. It’s something so basic in their culture that it’s hard to verbalize, a kind of behavior that’s so offensive they couldn’t mention it. “The gestures that are obscene in one culture are ordinary in another. From the Middle East all through India, you can’t point the sole of your shoe at anybody, that’s filthy, the whole room will begin to squirm.” Stone has encountered cultural taboos on a number of communication practices: making comparisons between people, engaging in role-playing, even smiling. And he’s managed to break some of his own taboos in order to enter other cultures: “When I was in Libya I found I had to hold hands with men. Two men walking down the street in conversation hold hands. I tried putting my hand in my pocket or carrying something, but the Arabs I was with would get very uncomfortable. One day the ambassador saw me crossing the plaza holding hands with the commanding general. He didn’t know what to think about that.” While Stone crossed cultural barriers by following the customs of other countries, Michael Sloper (SF79) seeks to bridge these barriers through language itself. In the summer of 1990, Sloper was about to embark on a career in international teaching. His first stint would be two years in Israel and he planned to follow with a number of two-year stints in countries around the world. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �14 {Johnnies on Language} Esperanto class when he learned that the Esperanto League for “When I was preparing for the job, I decided that two years North America was looking for a director. Sloper put in his applicawould not be enough to learn Hebrew, and then the next two years tion and was chosen for the job. He spent every day of the next would not be enough to learn Japanese. Instead of getting a little seven years speaking and writing in the language. Part of his work taste of this and a little taste of that, I thought, ‘There are Esperanwas encouraging the United Nations to adopt Esperanto as its to speakers in Israel and Japan and Brazil. If I’ve got an internaofficial language. tional job, I should learn the international language.’” The U.N. seems a perfect fit for Esperanto. With six official Sloper took an intensive three-week Esperanto class at San languages and more than 400 interpreters and translators, Francisco State University before he went to Israel. At his first logistics could be greatly simplified and costs reduced if Esperanto meeting with the Esperanto club in Tel Aviv, he found out he were adopted. Sloper cites other benefits. “So much of politics hapcould converse, albeit not deeply or profoundly, about anything pens outside of official chambers where you can’t have interpreters; and everything. you need to have a common language.” “You can learn as much Esperanto in a year as Spanish or French And, Sloper adds, there are advanin four years,” he points out. “What if tages to official conversation in a laneverybody in the world took a semesguage that is native to no one: “When ter or a year of this international lanyou’re speaking a language that doesguage? It makes incredible sense to n’t identify you as a member of a have a common language for diplonation, you treat your fellow man as a mats and tourists, even if you don’t member of the human race. master it.” Michael Sloper, SF79 “The inventor of Esperanto, Sloper’s stint in Israel ended early Ludovic Zamenhof, created a word— when he was sent back to the U.S. at the start of the first Gulf War. Back in homaronismo—which means, basicalSan Francisco, he was taking another In tutorials, the language is often looser, as students ly, member-of-the-human-race-ness. “It makes incredible sense to have a common language...” howard korn focus on understanding. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �{Johnnies on Language} 15 In historical linguistics, David says, texts and spoken words only This word expresses a philosophical concept that says that any pertell part of the story—history also yields some clues. “You need an son’s identity is, most profoundly, as a member of the human race. awareness of who lived next to whom and their interactions over “If people had access to tools to get beyond nationalism, the the years. Who was the conqueror, who was conquered? Who was world would be a much happier place,” Sloper says. “Every utterthe slave and who was the master? These are among the external ance in Esperanto is advocacy for putting aside nationalism, and factors that affect how language changes.” recognizing that internationalism is the path to peace.” These historical changes, David explains, gives the world PidIt is the path of war, however, that linguist Anne David (A86) gins and Creoles: languages that arise when people who don’t sometimes uses to reconstruct the languages she studies. Her field, speak a common language are thrown together and create a new historical linguistics, traces the changes in languages through war language. and peace, conquest and trade, enmity and amity to determine the “Adults in these situations speak just to common roots of related languages. make do,” David says. “They don’t use a lot Historical linguistics, David explains, of vocabulary or form a full-fledged lanbegan at the end of the 18th century when guage. They speak what we call a Pidgin. But the English tried to impose their law on the next generation, their children, speak a parts of the Indian culture. Knowing that full-fledged language, which we call a the best way to impose the law would be to Creole. They can’t make do with the limited meld it with the culture, an English judge, Mark Mandel A69 Pidgin language. It’s not sufficient for their Sir William Jones, learned Sanskrit so he linguistic needs.” could study the laws of Manu, an ancient The natural linguistic needs and abilities of children are the subSanskrit law book that helped form the basis of Hindu law. James jects of both science and legend. “I saw a great slogan: ‘children was also well versed in Greek and Latin, and as he studied, he saw catch languages the way they catch colds,’ ” says Mark Mandel. too many similarities between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin to believe “When we’re born, we’re language-learning machines. Learning they were coincidental. our native language is not something we learn in the way we’re used A whole field of linguistics sprang from his observations, and to thinking about learning. Any American first grader, with the since then, linguists have attempted to establish a system of correappropriate caveats, knows more English than any adult can learn spondences among certain language families (including Indo-Iranof English in two years, or maybe in six or seven years.” ian, Hellenic, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Celtic, Italic, and As for second languages, Mandel says, “if a second language is Germanic) that connects them to their original form. The hypothelearned through immersion, as in the case of an immigrant family ses of what that original form was is called the Indo-European that speaks its family language at home, the child will grow up comHypothesis, and historical linguists have spent the last 200 years pletely bilingual.” filling in the blanks in that system. Which brings us back to another linguistic legend: David’s work is with the Dravidian languages of South Asia, Shortly after nominating Henry Kissinger as his secretary of which include Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada—about 24 state, President Richard Nixon met with his Israeli counterpart, major languages that go back at least 1,000 years. The Dravidian Golda Meir. Both leaders, Nixon observed, now had Jewish forLanguage Hypothesis, which came out soon after the Indo-Euroeign ministers. “Yes,” Meir replied, contemplating Kissinger’s pean Hypothesis, is way behind in filling in its blanks. David made heavy German accent. “But mine speaks English.” x her contribution to the Hypothesis with her doctoral dissertation on infinitives in Dravidian. “A typically esoteric linguistic dissertation,” she says of the work, which she successfully defended in 1999, earning her a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. READING LIST After four years away from formal academia (she’s raising two The Loom of Language daughters—Guenevere, 8, and Rosalind, 4—with her husband, by Frederick Bodmer and Lancelot Hogben St. John’s tutor Amirthanayagam David, A86), David recently won On Language: Chomsky’s Classic Works Language and a grant from the American Institute of Indian Studies for further Responsibility and Reflections on Language in One Volume work in Old Tamil. She and her daughters are now in Madurai, in by Noam Chomsky, Mitsou Ronat South India, for six months as the first part of a project to study Old Course in General Linguistics Tamil verb forms in poetry. “Poetry tells us more about how the by Ferdinand De Saussure, et al language sounded,” she says. “Shakespeare tells us things about The Story of Language by Mario Pei Elizabethan English that prose wouldn’t tell us.” The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker There are about 32,000 extant lines of poetry in Old Tamil, as Spoken Soul by John Russell Rickford and well as long commentaries—five lines of poetry might generate two Russell John Rickford pages of commentary. Her time abroad, therefore, will mainly be That’s Not What I Meant: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships by Deborah Tannen spent gathering texts and reference books, and consulting with regional scholars. Her trip will also help her gain a sense for the area’s geography. “When we’re born, we’re natural language machines...” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �16 {The Program} FOR THE LOVE OF L ATIN hristine Kalkavage, visiting tutor, freely acknowledges that as far as languages go, ancient Greek was her first love. “I always loved reading the Odyssey in Greek,” Kalkavage says. Latin came second—an equally thrilling and rewarding relationship—but if she had to choose, Homer wins out over Virgil, hands down. But here is Kalkavage on a summer morning, leading a group of erstwhile students through a kind of Latin boot camp. Eight weeks of Latin, three days a week, four hours a day. A mix of graduate students, recent graduates, and undergraduates, the class is translating sentences about women with torches, lazy sailors, and enraged queens. Their textbook, Moreland and Fleischer’s Latin: An Intensive Course, is aptly named. It features a punishing set of exercises that this group has been working through daily after shifts at restaurants and other summer jobs. “There are a slew of these sailors in these exercises,” Kalkavage acknowledges, but she reminds the class that a great reward awaits them. “We’re going to be reading the Aeneid in six weeks.” Among the students is Hayden Brockett (A04), whose notebook bears the signs of many erasures and corrections. Why is he, after just completing a rigorous junior year, taking on the extra work of studying a language bounced from the Program more than half a century ago? “Well, for it’s own sake of course,” Brockett says quickly, as if dave trozzo C that should have been obvious to anyone. “It’s also a good foundation for going to school in the classics. And it’s easier than Greek. It doesn’t have so many nuances.” Most of the students share similar motivations, with one reason dominant: They want to read works like the Aeneid in its original language, just as sophomores follow Antigone’s angst in ancient Greek, and Eastern Classics students in Santa Fe take on Sanskrit or classical Chinese. For several years now, Kalkavage, who has a Ph.D. in classics from Johns Hopkins and has also taught Greek to G.I.s, has been leading these summer workshops for Latin devotees. The language of Virgil was a fundamental of St. John’s College for much of the college’s 300-year history. The three-year-college program in 1792 began with Livy; Horace, Longinus, Epictetus, and Quintilian were among the subjects for upperclassmen. Barr and Buchanan included Latin in their New Program, along with Greek, French, and German. Latin, studied by sophomores in language tutorial, was the first to go, to make way for a second year of Greek; German hung on until 1962. “With some regret, because of the role of Latin in the genesis of the English language, the decision was made in favor of two years of Greek,” wrote J. Winfree Smith in A Search for the Liberal College. “The reasons for this were the greater ‘flexibility and expressiveness’ of Greek and the more important part that books originally written in Greek have played in human thought.” Christine Kalkavage, visiting tutor, on a summer morning spent with Latin grammar and 10 diligent students. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } dave trozzo by Rosemary Harty �17 {The Program} dave trozzo Between Latin and Greek, middle of the fall readings. the choice was an easy one: Lucretius and Tacitus are on Few of the seminar books are the Program, but Horace Latin, many are Greek says and Ovid are not, though Annapolis Dean Harvey they turn up in an occasional Flaumenhaft, who studied preceptorial or extracurricLatin in high school, and ular study group, Tuck says. French and German in colAs a doctoral student in lege. “Not only are Latin English literature, Tuck took works derivative, but as a an intensive Latin workshop, body of literature, they are then followed it up with the also not as profound as study of Greek. “I started it Greek works,” says Flauto support the work I was menhaft. “The greatest doing in English Renaisworks of literature, science, sance writers and became and mathematics were writmore and more interested in ten in Greek. The Romans’ doing these things for their genius was in law and adminown sake. If I’d stayed at istration. Virgil recognized Berkeley any longer, I probathat Homer was his master,” Matthew Gates (A04) labors on a translation for a summer intensive bly would have become an says Flaumenhaft. “And workshop in Latin. In both Santa Fe and Annapolis, students seek Egyptologist or studied SanHorace wrote that the outside opportunities to learn languages not on the Program. skrit. You always want to find Greeks took their ‘captors the roots of things.” captive.’” It was much the same for As for why French and not German? “It Christine Kalkavage. As an undergraduate was felt that French had a larger, more constudying English literature at Penn State, tinuous tradition,” Flaumenhaft explains. she developed great appreciation and interIt all goes back to the simple fact that we est for epic poems written in Greek and can’t do everything in four short years. Latin. By declaiming short poems in their Nevertheless, Latin has always found a original language, she found “you can hear place on campus. Like an underground more of the poetry.” movement, tutor and student groups have “Horace’s lyrical poetry really taught me sprung up to pursue Horace, Virgil, or Ovid, says Tutor Jonathan how to read English lyrical poetry,” says Kalkavage. Tuck, who has participated in faculty study groups and led workUltimately, why make a choice between Greek and Latin? Anyone shops in Latin grammar at the request of students. Tutors Nancy with enough time on his hands should study both, she says. Both Buchenauer and Eric Sangeng also have led Latin groups. languages share the important trait of preparing their students for While agreeing with the sentiment that Greek poets are superior whatever comes next: law school, graduate school, or a deeper to the Romans, Tuck still believes Latinists are too readily dis- understanding of almost any work. “The mind is trained to undermissed by the Hellenists of St. John’s. He noted that Virgil’s Aeneid stand logic,” Kalkavage says. “It carries over into being attentive in once kicked off sophomore seminar, but is now buried in the other areas of your life.” x Latin was dropped from the curriculum to make room for two years of Greek. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �18 {Commencement} FOR ONE MOMENT O F G L O R Y, A YEAR OF PL ANNING by Rosemary Harty “On the STAGE, give yourself the TIME to revel in the moment. Consider the saunter instead of the lope.” – Instructions for Degree Candidates, Santa Fe. “Mortarboards should be worn parallel to the ground, after the fashion of Euclid.” — Commencement Protocol, Annapolis ich with tradition, guided by protocol, commencement at St. John’s College is no casual affair. Commencement planning at both campuses begins soon after first semester opens, and preparations kick into high gear about the time seniors begin donning their gowns and sitting for their orals. Advance planning? The registrar in Annapolis takes measurements for caps and gowns when freshmen register. Efficiency? In Santa Fe, marshals and the first in line for master’s and bachelor’s degrees are given detailed instruction on how to march and where to go so that they may lead the others, precluding the need for a formal rehearsal. The mace and chain of office are polished. A rubber band oneinch in diameter secures each rolled diploma before black and R orange ribbons are tied artfully together in the “St. John’s knot.” Each diploma—signed by the campus president—is slipped into a compartment of a box made just for this purpose and trucked across campus for the big moment. There’s a job for everyone: garment-bag handlers, hooders for the platform, restroom pointer-outers. On the morning of the ceremony in Annapolis, the names of each tutor, graduating senior, and G.I. graduate are written on masking tape and arranged in the Great Hall, creating the serpentine path that will allow 200 people to line up in a crowded space and emerge in the requisite order. On the second floor of Peterson Student Center, bachelor’s and master’s candidates in Santa Fe consult an alphabetized list of candidates to arrange themselves for a stately march across the Placita. At both campuses, much labor goes into peparing a rain venue, with chairs, microphones, and a large-screen television for remote viewing prepared well in advance. In Annapolis this year, it looked as if this fine effort might have to be crammed indoors, but a decision to take a risk turned out to be the right one. Not a drop of rain fell on the ceremony. In Santa Fe, it was hot (86 degrees in the shade) and bright, but the strawberries and lemonade looked as fresh as always on black-and-white tablecloths. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �{Commencement} 19 dave trozzo dave trozzo teri thomson randall teri thomson randall Commencement is a labor of love for St. John’s (clockwise from left): Antonio Bacas prepares some 2,500 strawberries for the Santa Fe reception; in Annapolis, fellow graduates William Young and Elizabeth Cummings help Jenny Windstrup don her academic regalia; Sid Phipps, chief of Annapolis Buildings and Grounds, lines up chairs with precision; and Thomas McBee (SF04) carries the New Mexico flag to the podium. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �20 {Commencement} COMMENCEMENT 2003 Annapolis: “The Courage of Thought” Magazine editor Lewis Lapham spoke to Annapolis graduates; below, renowned translator Allen Mandlebaum delivered the commencement address in Santa Fe. On May 21 in Annapolis, 122 undergraduate students—the largest graduating class in the history of the New Program—and 27 graduate students earned degrees. published 14 books on subjects from Manet to Auschwitz, and was planning 20 other projects when he died at age 66 in 1995. He never became wealthy, but Friedrich pursued his quest for knowledge as far as he could take it. “Otto believed that we are all caught up in the telling of stories (some more complicated and more beautiful than others, many of them incoherent, a few of them immortal), and he assumed that no matter how well or how poorly we manage the plot, we are all of us engaged in the same enterprise, all of us seeking evocations or representations of what we can recognize as appropriately human,” Lapham said. Though he has yet to meet “an educated citizen,” Lapham finds great hope in a “self-educating citizen,” one who doesn’t hesitate to proclaim his own ignorance and voice his questions. Santa Fe: “A Perilous Journey” On May 24 in Santa Fe, 81 undergraduate and 24 graduate candidates received their diplomas. ome of the most memorable speechmaking in Santa Fe this year came at dinners: a hilarious tribute to graduating seniors by tutor-turned-soothsayer Michael Rawn, delivered at the senior dinner; and a poignant toast to the Graduate Institute by G.I. Director Frank Pagano, offered at the G.I. Dinner for graduates and their families. Rawn’s stated goal was to open graduates’ eyes “to the perilous journey they must embark upon to reach this realm of philanthropic bliss, a journey through S teri thomson randall I “Idealism rescues cynicism, and the continued comfort of the party of things-as-they-are depends on the doubts placed under their pillows by the party of things-as-they-mightbecome. The future turns out to be something that you make instead of find. It isn’t waiting for your arrival, either with an arrest warrant or a band, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next sketch for the painting of a life portrait that might become a masterpiece. The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation you can make of it what you will.” Note: the full text of Lapham’s speech is available on the St. John’s College Web site: www.sjca.edu dave trozzo n a speech that focused on a central figure in his life—writer, editor, and historian Otto Friedrich—Harper’s Editor Lewis Lapham presented a passionate defense of the humanities in his commencement address, a speech that also touched on the war in Iraq, on tyranny and freedom, and fear and ignorance. The humanities are essential to life, not luxuries, Lapham said. “I can think of no other set of studies more relevant to our present circumstance,” he said. “Our technologists bear comparison to the sorcerer’s apprentice, producing continuously improved means toward increasingly illdefined ends. Unless we look to the humanities to clean up the mess, we stand a better-than-even chance of killing ourselves with our new toys.” Humanism, he continued “is about the passion of thought and the will to understand, about Darwin sailing for the Galapagos or Dostoevsky in trouble with the police, about Condorcet dying in a garret and hunted by agents of the guillotine, writing his outline of human progress so that he might hearten mankind by his vision of its possible perfections.” In describing Friedrich, for whom he worked at the now-defunct Saturday Evening Post, Lapham drew from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King to celebrate the unquenchable intellectual he found in his mentor. Merlin, he explained, proffered this cure for young Arthur’s melancholy. “There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never dream of regretting.” Lapham described Friedrich, as one who “joined a scholar’s love of learning with a journalist’s boundless curiosity.” Friedrich { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �21 dave trozzo {Commencement} economic destitution, through socio-pathological alienation, a journey through an underworld more terrible than the one encountered by Aeneas and Dante and Odysseus and Mr. Rogers.” He took the liberty of predicting the future for several seniors—futures all heavily influenced by a St. John’s education: “Mr. [Michael] Santillanes will have a bleak economic future selling Sigmund Freud action figures”; “Ms. Alexandra Poole…will develop the next generation of Prozac-based sedatives, called Ephemera, whose only deleterious side effect will be strong unsubstantiated feelings of the unity of science and morality”; “Mr. Austin Hall will return to the college in 20 years, under the pseudonym Johannes de Silencio, having copyrighted a performance piece called the Seminar Moment. It will be a CD that one can play prior to seminar to prepare for epiphany, not unlike the rainforest CDs insomniacs play before bedtime.” Toasting the Graduate Institute, Pagano spoke of youth and age, old and new. “Everyone in the college still calls the undergraduate program the New Program, and I call the Liberal Arts Program the New Program. The New Program is now in its late 60s, and the Graduate Institute in its late 30s. By the standard of a human life, the New Program is old, and the Graduate Institute approaching middle age. And yet when I read Plato in the college he seems to be young. Who gave Plato back his youth? A dean in Annapolis, Jacob Klein. As Plato says of Socrates, the whole purpose of the New Program is to make the best thoughts of the past young and beautiful. We attempt to bring them into the present. “The students in the Graduate Institute are older than most of the undergraduates. And yet they represent the present rather more than the undergraduates. You have seen the world and felt it as it is, and it is already old. To know this is to know what youth is. Youth in the world is the expectation that the good will prevail. Yet this is not the most powerful view in the contem- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } Meredith Barton, flanked by Christopher Bareford and Amanda Bell, shows her delight on graduation day in Annapolis. porary world. The world has the cynicism of old age that the worst is coming soon. In this respect the undergraduates are not yet young. They do not know the world. You are young. You are because you have returned to us to find the good. You have brought to us the expectation of youth.” During the 2003 Commencement exercises an address to the graduating class was given by the great translator of classic works Allen Mandelbaum, W. R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University, and professor of the History of Literary Criticism at the University of Turin. Mandelbaum delivered several readings, along with extensive background material on each piece. Preceding closing remarks, sincere thanks and remembrance was proffered to four retiring faculty members in Santa Fe: Glenn Freitas, Robert Richardson, Ralph Swentzell, and Hans von Briesen. x �22 {Homecoming} CL ASS OF ’68 PIONEERS RETURN by Andra Maguran assie was on the air, Lyndon Johnson was president, and 23,000 troops were positioned in Vietnam. The Beatles made their television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the Warren Commission determined that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. It was 1964, and in this transition from Camelot to the turbulent war years, the inaugural freshman class of St. John’s College in Santa Fe—84 in number—arrived at a brand new campus carved out of juniper and piñon at the edge of a quaint and quiet town. L In July, members of the class of 1968 reconvened, along with alumni from years latter and recent, to take part in Homecoming 2003. Ask Vida Kazemi (SF68) to compare today’s St. John’s with life on the Santa Fe campus in 1964 and she likens it to answering “questions about another planet, using the framework of this planet.” “The experience of being at a college with no upperclassmates, about 20 or so faculty and staff, lots of space, in a town where the options for seeing films were the college and the Three Cities of Spain coffee shop on certain weekends, was so different from anything familiar that I can’t put it in another context,” she explains. Kazemi’s parents were in Iran, she was in boarding school in the U.S., and her college choice was up to her. She had seen a promotional film in which an eager prospective named ‘Ernest Groper’ toured the campus, but nevertheless chose St. John’s, in part for its location. She originally planned to transfer to a more established institution such as Wellesley after her freshman year, but the Program took hold and she decided to stay. There was no gym, few diversions and terrible food, she acknowledges, but “we also had opportunities that no other class has had, and buildings that had never been Class of 1968 students process to the dedication of the Santa Fe campus in October 1964. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } used.” There were very few cars on campus, Kazemi adds—a stark contrast to today’s packed parking lots. “Allison Karslake was one of the few students with a car, which she generously loaned to everybody and which was at one point painted decoratively by other students and called ‘the Angel,’” says Kazemi. As the fighting escalated in Vietnam, the turmoil in the country affected the tiny campus, Kazemi says, “It was a strange time to be pondering eternal questions when the temporal seemed so urgent.” “When one of ours went to war, we struggled with our respective moral choices. The influence of those times still informs the lifestyle and choices of most of us.” The faculty of the new campus comprised 10 intrepid tutors, seven of whom came from Annapolis, including Ford K. Brown, who smoked a pipe in seminars. Antigone Phalares remembers Brown laying down protocol right off the bat. “Let’s begin with the Greek alphabet. It begins alpha [pointing to himself], beta [pointing to the students], here [indicating the classroom],” Phalares recalls. �23 teri thomson randall teri thomson randall {Homecoming} The class of 1983 in a playful pose at the Homecoming picnic, and alumni and their families enjoy the President’s Brunch at Hunt House on Sunday morning. teri thomson randall In contrast to today’s coed dorms was the prohibition against men and women visiting one another in their single-sex dorms after curfew. Julie von Erffa (SF68) is still proud of her class’s success in helping to ease the dormitory visitation restrictions. “We had a sleep-in and got the hours extended until midnight. If you were in a boy’s dorm past midnight you had to stay over because the guards might catch you going out.” With her enlightened notions about living arrangements, von Erffa went in 1967 to live among the founding members of the famed New Buffalo Commune, near Taos. But as Cervantes wrote, “time ripens all things.” Now a doctor of Oriental Medicine, von Erffa says that after spending eight years as a farmer, in order to become an acupuncturist she had to get back to her intellectual roots and re-apply what she’d learned at St. John’s—to go fearlessly into unfamiliar territory. Browsing through college materials while on campus, Elsa Blum (SF68) experienced “an intense memory of… the excitement and gratitude I felt at the seriousness of the dialogue this college wanted to have with me. I remember scribbling late into the night to answer the questions I felt were so vital to me.” The class Homecoming seminar, on Wendell Berry’s short story “Pray Without Ceasing,” revived the spirit of those longago seminars for Blum. “It was the best kind of relaxed collective effort, no posturing or heavy-handed stuff that we are subjected to in the ‘real’ world. This experience, along with the pleasure of being together after so many years, seemed to cast a benign glow on our class’s time together this weekend.” The Santa Fe campus may have been new, but the Program was almost 30 years old, and the works they read timeless. “St. John’s was one of the most important things that happened to me, both in terms of personal maturity and spreading intellectual horizons,” says Harold Morgan (SF68). “The college has matured into an important part of Santa Fe and New Mexico. I’m proud to have a connection.” x The pioneers from the class of 1968 at the President’s Brunch during Homecoming. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } HOMECOMING HIGHLIGHTS • Laboratory Director Hans von Briesen, who retired this year, and Kathy Mizrahi, director of Residential Housing, were selected to become honorary alumni by the Alumni Association. • Gloria Page (SF76) delivered a lecture as part of the Meem Library’s Speaking Volumes Lecture Series. Her talk, “Dream On: Creating an Art Business That Works,” was based on her recent book outlining her journey from a home-based creative endeavor to the Smithsonian bookshop. • Alumni Awards of Merit were presented to Alfred Grant (SFGI83) and Eric Springsted (SF73). (More on these awards on page 47). • Homecoming prank: The Class of 1993 staged a “redneck-style” barbeque outside Peterson Student Center, replete with pick-up truck, pirate flag, straw hats, Southern rock music, and beverages. They sported white t-shirts and muscle shirts with the message “I’m with stupid” (written in Greek), and an arrow pointing to each person’s left. �24 {Outreach} HOBBES IN PRISON Mark Lindley (A67) Brings Great Books to Prisoners by Rosemary Harty “Attention all visitors: As a part of the routine search that must be conducted before you are allowed to enter the institution, you will be required to open your mouth. Those who refuse shall be denied entry.” ules and regulations greet every visitor to the Maryland Correctional Institution-Jessup. Don’t move through a moving door until it has stopped moving. No double visits on holiday weekends. If asked, open your mouth for inspection. Mark Lindley (A67) pulls out his driver’s license and a Department of Corrections volunteer I.D. and tries to usher a group of volunteers into the regular Wednesday morning session of Touchstones, an Annapolis-based project based on reading and discussing passages from great books. A few weeks before, Lindley had forgotten his license and was turned away. Today one of his visitors isn’t on “the list” from the principal of the prison school. Speaking patiently and diplomatically to the guard behind the glass, he asks that the principal be called for permission. “Every couple of weeks, there’s a new procedure and an old procedure goes by the wayside,” Lindley comments as his group waits by a row of lockers. Several minutes go by as a guard calls the prison school to check if the unlisted visitor can enter. Several more minutes go by until the guard who called decides to tell the guard behind the glass that the visitor has been approved. Lindley shows only gratitude as he waits for his turn through the metal detector, then leads his group into the prison yard and to the building that houses the prison school. About a dozen chairs have been set in a circle. Dion, a slim, bespectacled R young man in dreadlocks, has placed a copy of the Touchstones text—a selection of short readings culled from many of the books of the St. John’s Program—on each chair. The reading is a two-page passage from Leviathan, rendered into simpler prose and shorter sentences, but keeping Hobbes’ major ideas intact. Participants— initially five inmates and the Touchstones group—are reminded of the rules for discussion and directed to the reading. Dion announces the opening question, a rather broad one: “What is the nature of man?” Discussions cross lines of race and class, education and experience, freedom and imprisonment. In the next 45 minutes, the conversation will face long silences and diversions. More questions are generated as inmates wrestle with the philsopher’s view about law, order, and chaos: Should we live our lives in fear? Is it possible for two people to compete for the same thing and not try to destroy each other? “The nature of man,” offers one of the inmates, “is to seek what makes him happy or content.” In some cases, he says, it’s a big car, a nice house, a good job. Adds another inmate, a quiet man: “You can only find peace when you look at what’s inside yourself, be true to yourself.” Sometimes one or two people dominate the conversation; often the participants struggle to express a thought. Some conversations have been volatile. But nearly every time, says Lindley, the discussions cross lines of race and class, education and { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } experience, freedom and imprisonment, to touch on questions of humanity: Is it possible to obtain peace living in our society today? The Touchstones Discussion Project— created in 1984 by tutors Howard Zeiderman (A67), Geoffrey Comber (HAGI95), and Nick Maistrellis, based in Annapolis and independent of the college—has been in Maryland prisons since 1996. Designed to help individuals of all backgrounds develop skills such as problem solving, questioning, listening, and cooperating, the project was already in schools, nursing homes, corporations, and organizations. The idea to take it to prisons came from a community college teacher in Santa Fe who attended a Touchstones workshop. After a program in the New Mexico State Penitentiary got under way, Zeiderman began working on bringing it into Maryland’s prisons. His initial meeting was with nine men serving life sentences at the Maryland House of Corrections. “They had three reasons they thought Touchstones would be helpful for prisoners: It would humanize the environment; they would take themselves more seriously as individuals; and they appreciated that ideas like justice, integrity, and truth would be helpful to talk about.” The nonprofit organization had to overcome some bureaucratic roadblocks, but it’s now in four prisons in the state. More than 1,000 prisoners have gone through the program, which over the years has gained credibility in the Department of Corrections. The parole board now accepts Touchstones certificates as part of an inmate’s record. And Zeiderman hopes one Mark Lindley finds uncommon wisdom and insight in the conversations he shares with prisoners through the Touchstones Discussion Project. Lindley is one of dozens of Touchstones volunteers in Maryland prisons. �{Outreach} “Seeing people come to life who have been completely shut down— it’s very exciting.” Mark Lindley (A67) { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } 25 �26 day to bring the program to the prison’s guards. When he first began leading discussions in prison, Zeiderman wondered where conversations with a group of men serving life sentences would lead. One week, the group discussed the Bible story of the sacrifice of Isaac. “They’re talking about God and what God is like through the sacrifice of Isaac. It’s really quite breathtaking because they’re all lifers, convicted of committing the crime of murder. The discussion had a kind of intensity and honesty you’re not going to experience anywhere else,” Zeiderman adds. Lindley is one of about 80 volunteers involved in the Touchstones prison project. For the last year, he has invested up to 20 hours a week in leading groups, training inmates, and lately, paving the way for new programs at other correctional institutions. Lindley retired from an executive post at AOL-Time Warner, where he capped a career that started with teaching, led to computers, and involved launching several start-up companies. As his technological abilities grew, he also learned to thrive on challenges. Even when he took a job with General Electric, he found his niche in the company’s cutting-edge projects. When he left to go to AOL, “this crackpot startup,” some of Lindley’s colleagues told him he was derailing his career. “It was geek heaven,” Lindley says of his years with AOL, where he climbed to the post of senior manager of AOL Technologies. He says skills he learned at St. John’s, particularly “fearlessness in the face of total confusion,” helped him succeed in a fast-paced and rapidly changing environment. “It [St. John’s] also influenced my approach to problem solving,” Lindley says. “I was working with a lot of people who had been to engineering school, and I was one of the people who always said, ‘let’s sit down and talk about it.’” Zeiderman recruited his former classmate when Lindley came back to Annapolis for his 25th reunion and joined Zeiderman and his wife, Margaret Winter (A66), for a luncheon. Lindley decided to retire from {Outreach} A group of inmates share their thoughts in this Touchstones session. AOL after the Time-Warner merger. “I could see where things were headed,” he said, and he and his wife, Nancy (A58), moved back to Annapolis. In his corporate life, Lindley enjoyed seeing talented young men and women thrive when given new challenges. His work in the prisons isn’t that different, but he’s very aware that this group of men started out with none of the advantages— stable homes, good educations—that his young workers had. “In my career, I gained a lot of personal satisfaction out of guiding folks into careers and pointing out directions I thought they could go in. But in some sense that was easy, because I was able to pick and choose the talent I was hiring for my department. Here [in the prison], you’re working with people who have been pretty much disadvantaged, largely before they were born.” Touchstones gives prisoners a voice they didn’t know they had, Lindley says. “There was a young man who had started in the More than 1,000 prisoners have participated in Touchstones. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } program maybe nine months or so ago. He was obviously a very bright kid, but out of control, kind of a wild man. He would disrupt the class, speak out, and talk about irrelevant things—not really be active in trying to make the group work.” Within a few weeks, the young man began to participate in a very rational, quiet way. He talked less and listened more. “Nobody clued him in, but at some point he had a breakthrough—he’s responsible for himself. He has a self. He can make a difference in his own life,” Lindley says. Lindley believes that he’s gaining something valuable from his time spent with these imprisoned men. “One of the lovely things about Touchstones is that you’re always discovering things about yourself—gifts that you may have not valued or areas of your personality that you develop—and you get to do that working with people. And in an institution like this, seeing people come to life who have been completely shut down—it’s very exciting. It’s very satisfying.” As of late August, the group had its third discussion leader in as many months. There were the usual rumblings that the program could lose support in the Department of Corrections. Lindley showed up one morning only to be turned away again; the inmate who filled out the paperwork had put the wrong date on the form. Lindley got back in the car without a fuss. But the pat-downs, the bureaucracy, the passage through metal detectors and sharpshooters all gave him impetus to speak up recently when prisoners discussed a short passage from the Iliad. Rendered in simple prose, the passage described Priam begging Achilles for Hector’s body. “The question was, ‘have you ever had to humble yourself?’ And I think they were going to skip right over me, but I had a lot to contribute. You know every time you come into the prison, that the guard with the gun has power over you. That gives you something in common with the inmates. Love, hate, anger, truth, revenge—we’re all human, and ultimately we have the same issues to talk about.” x �27 {Bibliofile} land stories, but he plans to pursue more serious literary ambitions when he retires in a few years. He also wants to work harder on the “rich and famous” goal. “Local crime is fine, and I’ve enjoyed it,” he says, “but what I need to do is write something along the lines of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” Before he does though, he wants to complete a final “legacy to the public”—a 2,000-page index of murders and disasters in the Cleveland area. Tales of Cleveland Woe THE KILLER IN THE ATTIC By John Stark Bellamy II Gray & Co., 2002 By Rosemary Harty J ohn Stark Bellamy II (A71) had a simple goal when he sat down to write the first of his books on murder and mayhem in his native Cleveland. “All I ever wanted to do was to be rich and famous in my own hometown,” Bellamy explains. After penning four books with titles such as The Corpse in the Cellar (“includes 104 spine-chilling photographs”) and They Died Crawling, Bellamy has achieved a modest fortune and certain notoriety. His books have sold briskly in the Northeast Ohio region. Bellamy leads trolley tours through the city, pointing out sites of horrific crimes and tragic fires, shares his collection of tales on radio and television, and brings a slide show detailing the stories in his books to various eager audiences. Bellamy earns his living as the history specialist for the Cuyahoga County Public Library. But his fascination for lurid spectacle and human treachery was nurtured at a young age. “I grew up in a family of journalists where it was considered perfectly appropriate to discuss the latest torso killing around the dinner table,” Bellamy explains. “It was not uncommon to have family meals interrupted by the scream of fire engines. We would just abandon what we were doing and follow the sirens.” In his latest book, The Killer in the Attic, Bellamy confesses to a compulsion to keep churning out the tales: “…I have discovered that I could not stifle my melodramatic tale-telling even if I wanted to—and the frank truth is that I don’t.” After four books, his favorite story remains that of Eve Kaber, who arranged for the murder of her well-to-do husband, Dan. “Long about 1918, her husband suddenly became very sick—she was systematically poisoning him by adding arsenic to his food—but she lost patience after a while and hired two goons to stab the invalid in his bed. “The amazing thing was this woman had the complicity of both her daughter and mother,” Bellamy muses. “She was a formidable woman and she almost got away with CONICS, Book IV Translated and annotated by Michael Fried Green Lion Press, 2002 John Stark Bellamy II chronicles crime and chaos in his native Cleveland. it. It’s shocking to me that no one has made an opera out of this story yet.” As a historian, Bellamy believes his tales contribute to a better understanding of the social history of Cleveland. In stories such as “They Died Crawling,” he describes the 1916 Waterworks Tunnel explosion, in which 70 men—many immigrant Irish and German laborers—lost their lives after being ordered into a gas-filled tunnel. Bellamy writes about the heroes who were never acknowledged and the series of blunders that cost the men their lives. Growing up in a newspaper family gave Bellamy a love for books, and at his mother’s urging he applied to St. John’s. “I was precocious and maladjusted and looking around desperately for some kind of niche I could fit into,” he says. Although he left after a year, Bellamy says, “there is not one aspect of my life that hasn’t been changed by exposure to the program at St. John’s. It gave me an intolerance for sloppy thinking and for the second-rate.” After earning a graduate degree in history and discovering he didn’t want to teach, Bellamy went on to earn a master’s in library science. Working in Cleveland libraries, he began to collect clippings and photographs of sensational stories and shaped them into books, writing between 11 p.m. and 3 in the morning. Each book features the fast-paced, cynical, and melodramatic style of a tabloid newspaper. “They’re tremendous fun to write,” he says. Bellamy is working on a murder tour guide and a calendar featuring his Cleve{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } Michael N. Fried (A82) has made important contributions to the study of Apollonius’s Conics. Together with Sabetai Unguru, he wrote Apollonius of Perga’s Conica: Text, Context, Subtext (Brill, 2001). The volume contains primarily an “historically sensitive interpretation” of the Conics—seen through its individual books, and as a whole. Particular attention is placed on the areas of the Conics hitherto—neglected Books V-VII. Fried and Unguru hope to offer a “long overdue” alternative to previous scholarship, which will be of interest not only to historians of mathematics, but also to other historians, philosophers, and linguists, as well as “open-minded mathematicians.” More recently, Fried has published a translation of Book IV of the Conics (Green Lion Press, 2002). Book IV deals with the ways in which conic sections can meet in a plane. It is the last of the Greek books, as well as the last part of what Apollonius called a “course on the elements of conics.” (The remainder of the books after IV survive only in medieval Latin and Arabic translations.) In the introduction, Fried himself sums up what he has done: “In reading and translating book IV, I have tried to give Apollonius a fair chance, to keep modern algebraic ideas about conics at a distance, and to view the text with eyes trained only on the mathematical and philosophical concerns of Apollonius’s contemporaries and on the geometrical character of the previous three books of the Conics.” “…for one like Apollonius, whose work with curves is always governed by a fundamentally geometric outlook, the plural-singular nature of the opposite sections makes them an object of fascination, but it also duly gives rise to a certain uneasiness with them….” x �28 {Alumni Notes} 1940 OSCAR L. LORD writes: “My wife, Patti, and I attended a ceremony recently at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colo., when our son, Gen. Lance W. Lord, assumed command of the first Air Force Space Command. We were pleased to meet the Secretary of the Air Force and his wife who attended the ceremony and were pleased to learn of his past association with St. John’s.” 1941 Last November VERNON PADGETT was elected to a second term as director of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which provides water and sewer service to 65,000 homes in several small cities west of Los Angeles. 1944 GEORGE LEVINE is celebrating his 40th year as director of American Telephone Consumer Council. ot a good story from the early days/weeks/ months of freshman year? Send it to sus3an.borden@sjca.edu for an article we’re working on. Santa Fe stories are currently in short supply; if you spent your first year on the Western campus we especially urge you to take a trip down memory lane and send us a travelogue. x G 1962 RICHARD M. FRANK reports, “I’m older. Otherwise nothing new— alas!” JOHN FRANKLIN MILLER was elected president of the board of the Library of American Landscape History, a voluntary position, in 2003. 1953 ROBERT G. HAZO is writing a book ROD WHETSTONE is contacting class of ’44 survivors: “Using the Alumni Register as a base, I would like each of you to verify that (1) you are still around and (2) that your address and phone number are correct in the Register. A phone call or post card will allow me to make my own updated and, hopefully, accurate register for our class. I will then send a copy to all of you and solicit ideas and suggestions for our reunion in the fall of 2004, as well as an indication of your interest in attending. A letter will, of course, be welcome. Though my address and phone number are correct in the Register, I will repeat them here: 3103 S. Park Road, Bethel Park, PA 15102; 412-835-8986. Incidentally, I believe our 55th reunion was quite successful. We had 15 attending out of 34 I was able to reach. The original number was either 90 or 91.” 1945 You Must Remember This 1949 “In my ‘old’ age,” LAWRENCE LEVIN writes, “I’ve become an active tenor singer in the Oratorio Society of Queens; we’re doing the Verdi Requiem in May and I love it.” 1948 GEORGE TRIMBLE was invited to give three lectures on the “Evolution of Electronic Computers” at Princeton University in honor of John von Neumann’s 100th birthday. 1963 titled Minority Rule. CHARLES POWLESKE sends this update from New York: “In late 2001, I helped form InterPlan Consulting Inc., which was incorporated a year ago. My associates are business friends from earlier years at the Business Council for International Understanding, who, like me, are (allegedly) retired. InterPlan’s chairman formerly headed a Fortune 500 engineering company, responsible for building and operating power plants and refineries around the world. Our current projects include refineries, both existing ones in need of expansion and new ones. We are also working on projects that range from solar energy (India and Sri Lanka), a proposed rice plantation in Africa, and an existing hotel complex in Barbados in need of equity for modernization under a new management.” He notes that he spent April in his favorite vacation condo in Puerto Vallarta. 1960 JOHN LANE retired a year ago and is thoroughly enjoying life. 1961 CYNTHIA BLEDSOE-DALEY recently celebrated a return to health on her bicycle, completing a trip of 3,135 miles across the country – eight states, 62 days (21 across Texas), Pacific to Atlantic Ocean. “The trip was immensely satisfying to the eye, as we traveled through small towns in deserts, mountains, and beaches, from San Diego to St. Augustine. A great way to start off the summer!” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } BEVERLY W. BELL is a teacher and tutor of children with learning differences, and her husband, Dr. D. Bruce Bell, is the army’s expert on military families and is currently doing research on desertion and first-tour attrition. Son David, 29, is an opera singer and mathematician in New York City and daughter Toby, 26, is a medical social worker and milliner in Northern Virginia. All are thriving. MARCIA HERMAN-GIDDENS writes, “I am still happily living in rural North Carolina, teaching, consulting, and doing research in pediatric issues and child maltreatment. Imagine my delight and amazement when my daughter married a St. John’s tutor (Jonathan Badger, Annapolis) last year! Life is full of delicious wonders.” 1964 JAN CALDWELL THORPE has a psychotherapy practice in San Francisco and Berkeley, and is at work on a book about clinical work with dreams. “My husband is in law practice in San Francisco, and my eldest son and daughter-in-law are both lawyers in my husband’s practice. My youngest son is in the Navy, and my grandson is busy being six!” 1965 JESSICA HOFFMANN DAVIS is the Patricia Bauman and John Landrum Bryant Senior Lecturer on the Arts in Education and the director of the Arts in Education program at the Harvard Graduate �29 {Alumni Profile} Teaching the EIDOS of Design by Sus3an Borden, A87 ike many alumni who have become teachers, Lovejoy Duryea (A67) uses St. John’sstyle teaching techniques in her classroom. At first, her students are uncomfortable with her approach; they hadn’t signed up for Socratic questioning or Aristotelian causation. That’s not, after all, what they were looking for when they applied to study interior design. But Duryea, who is chair of the interior design department at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, says that St. John’s is the best training a designer can get. “St. John’s is about asking questions, not giving answers. That’s what I’m trying to do—teach students how to think on their own, to solve problems, to be critical thinkers. I ask my classes: ‘What is a chair? Does it have to have legs? Does it have to have a back? What is chairness?’ If you’re going to design something important, you have to get into the eidos of what that something is.” When Duryea graduated from St. John’s, she didn’t know she’d someday put her education to work in the world of construction drawings, textile science, and sustainable environments. Instead, she started out in advertising, writing commercials for products like Ivory soap, Tide, Gleam, Crisco, and Duncan Hines cake mixes. “I was the queen of cake mixes,” she recalls. “They sent me to the test kitchens at Procter & Gamble and taught me to make pie crusts, fry chickens, and bake biscuits. Then they sent me on a radio talk show tour across the southern U.S. People would call in and ask me their cooking questions. That was my first experience after getting out of St. John’s: I was the baking lady.” When her tour ended, Duryea returned to the offices of Compton Advertising where someone dropped a bottle of the newto-market acetaminophen (brand name: Nebs) on her desk and told her to write a commercial for it. At the time, acetaminophen took a back seat to aspirin—its superior qualities were not well known outside of the world of research scientists. Duryea picked up the pills and headed for the library. “I found books on headaches, learned how the pill worked on the body, and drew up a list of questions for the scientists in the lab. No copywriter had ever asked to talk to them before. The average Award-winning designer Lovejoy Duryea uses logic in her work. L copyrighter is not even going to read the label. But I wasn’t intimidated by chemical formulas,” she says. “I discovered that acetaminophen was superior to aspirin and buffered aspirin. It was a great product that was not being well promoted. Even the name—Nebs? Before we were through, acetaminophen became the largest painkiller on the market.” In 1976, Duryea (née Reeves) married William Duryea and stayed at home to raise four children. When her youngest was six, she returned to work, but this time as an interior designer. “I hardly missed a beat going from professional writing to design. I didn’t even consider it a stretch,” she says. “Because of St. John’s, I saw the unity and not the disunity. There’s an underlying logic in design and also a logic in selling. The St. John’s method of trying to find the underlying logic or order of something— that’s really what design is about.” Duryea’s residential design business took off almost immediately. She began with a project for a neighbor and her reputation spread quickly as she built up a Park Avenue practice—glamorous clients with big spaces and budgets to match. In 1987 Duryea was asked to teach at the School of Visual Arts and was offered the chairmanship of the school’s new interior design department in 1990. “I had a definite concept of what students should know when they graduated. I wanted them to have confidence about problem-solving.” As in philosophy, Duryea says that there are no right answers in design. “Some { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } answers are more right than others, and there are criteria you can bring to evaluating answers, but it’s not black and white. There’s a fiery pluralism in design that can be confusing to students. One teacher will say ‘this is a great design,’ another will say something completely different. I can’t tell my student what direction the design world is going, but if I teach them to be good thinkers, they’ll have the tools they need to figure out whatever they’re given to solve.” Last March, the Design Committee of the National Arts Club awarded Duryea a gold medal for her work as a designer and educator. Although she still does some work in design, her current focus is teaching, running the department, serving as chair of the State Board for Interior Design, and improving the certification process for interior designers. “We’re establishing standards for education and for practice, which brings us into more St. John’s kind of questions: What do interior designers do? What do they need to know? What kind of education should they have? Everything gets back to St. John’s,” Duryea says. “It’s the perfect background for a designer.” x EIDOS of Couch “For we should not be content with saying that the couch was made of bronze or wood or whatever it might be, but should try to describe its design or mode of composition in preference to the material; or, if we did deal with the material, it would at any rate be with the concretion of material and form. For a couch is such and such a form embodied in this or that matter, or such and such a matter with this or that form; so that its shape and structure must be included in our description. For the formal nature is of greater importance than the material nature.” —Aristotle, ON THE PARTS OF ANIMALS, Book I �30 {Alumni Notes} School of Education. Husband WILLIAM DAVIS (class of 1964) is a director at Credit Suisse First Boston and just stepped down as chairman of the board of the Berklee College of Music, which gave him an honorary doctorate in music. They send love to all. 1966 IAN HARRIS (A) reports that his daughter, Jessie WashburneHarris, was married to Michael Lieberman last October in Paradise Valley, Ariz. McFarland and Co. published a second edition of Ian’s book, Peace Education, written with Mary Lee Morrison. He is a professor of education policy and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 1967 LARRY (A) and HAZEL (A69) SCHLUETER announce the birth of a second grandson, born to CHARLES (A90) and his wife, Kaya, named Kaden Douglas, on January 18, 2003. Larry has retired from U.S. Customs where he was an inspector for over 32 years, and is helping his grandson have fun. Hazel has a new CD out, Jam Session, and is playing with her band Hazel and the Delta Ramblers at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival—her 28th year at the festival. 1968 BRUCE R. BALDWIN (SF) writes that his daughter, Marisa, graduated from Johns Hopkins in May, and son, Ian, graduated from West Point in 1999 and is now a captain in the army, presently serving in Afghanistan. DONALD A. BOOTH (A) sent along this list: “I’ve recently returned from a year in Hong Kong, working as an architect on major projects including the CCTV (Chinese television) competition in Beijing. In 2001 I completed restoration of a historical house on Hanover Street in Annapolis, Md. (I’m a registered architect in Maryland.) Tony Miller (A61): The Big World of Small Cars I “Grandson Lyw Westrick learned to read last year—another one boards the bus!” writes SARAH B. FISHER (A). CHARLES B. WATSON (A), sends a suggestion: “Listen to your local NPR station to hear events of the day and especially Ivan Watson reporting from northern Iraq near Moult, Kerkuk. In fall 2002 and February, March, and April of 2003, he was favorably impressed by the citizen soldiers and the beauty of the Kurdish-held areas of exile protected for 10 years by the Northern No-Fly Zone.” Tony Miller’s design career has run the gamut from action figures to Hot Wheels. By Roberta Gable, A78 n 1945, when he was five years old, Tony Miller’s parents submitted an application to St. John’s on his behalf. Advised that their suit was premature, they bided their time until he was of the age to make such applications for himself, and then they tightened the screws: although he was wild to study automotive design, they insisted that he spend at least a year in Annapolis before they’d endorse any other education. The would-be car designer accepted his lot, and came to St. John’s. No doubt to his parents’ delight, he was sufficiently hooked by the end of his freshman year to return as a sophomore. Push came to shove by second semester time, however, and he decided that perhaps it was time to follow his heart: He returned to his native California and enrolled at the Art Center (now called the Art Center College of Design) in Pasadena, the preeminent institution for training industrial automotive designers. He left there after two years, again without a degree, got married, and went to work as a draftsman and design engineer for Douglas Aircraft. I’m currently based in Cambridge, Mass., working for a landscape architecture firm.” Then destiny tapped him on the shoulder. “Aerospace in general is a place for methodical people who don’t need excitement and stimulation—it’s very slowpaced.” Finding himself to be more of a fun-lover, he was gladly recruited to be a project manager for Mattel. There he worked on a variety of toys, including an action figure called Big Jim. As a project manger he was responsible for each item from the moment it was added to the line: engineering, design, child testing, cost, the whole shootin’ match. After a while on the design side, he moved into marketing, the antithesis of engineering. “At St. John’s I gained a tolerance for finding out about stuff I didn’t think was interesting instead of believing that I already knew what was interesting. The discipline of being at St. John’s showed me that I have more tolerance for checking out things I don’t know anything about.” Although his three-year stint in marketing wasn’t a time of unmitigated pleasure, the experience gained there informed his long career with a variety of toy companies: Zee, Tomy, Aurora, Lakeside Games, Tona, Galoob, and his own design consultancy, Red Racer Studio. In the end, he came back to Mattel, and back to his first love, cars. This year he’ll retire from his position as the vice president for design for Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels. They bill themselves as “The World’s Coolest Car Company,” and the claim goes largely undisputed. Since 1968 they’ve made more than three billion cars—they’re currently selling at a sevencars-per-second clip. You may think of the product chiefly as little 1:64-scale die-cast cars, just the right size for a boy to carry in his pocket, but wait! There’s more. Tracks, devices to hurl the cars through space, computer games, skateboard peripherals, auto show sponsorships: It’s a lifestyle cavalcade of cardom. Miller supervises the group of 30 designers from whose whimsy must come the new toy ideas. “It’s sometimes like watching a basket of puppies.” The Hot Wheels people say that all the Hot Wheels cars produced in the last 35 years would, if placed end to end, circle the earth five times. Says Miller: “That’s the one statistic that I challenged…and I did re-calculate it myself. I probably have Euclid to thank.” x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �31 {Alumni Notes} From Sweden, RICK WICKS (SF) sends this update: “After a long effort to develop the field of social economics at the university here (Goteborg U.) I’ve finally met with some success: the granting of a licentiate degree (which they describe as between a master’s and a doctorate), I continue working toward the Ph.D. and editing on the side as usual.” 1969 ELISABETH A. AIELLO (SFGI) recently participated in the Tecolote Group, Santa Fe Tutor Stephen Van Luchene’s colloquium for K-12 teachers in New Mexico. “Participating…was revitalizing, inspiring and professionally productive. I revised my Great Book Class curriculum for the 2004 session and will redirect my techniques to include more small group discussions.” JOHN D. GOODWIN (SF) recently became chief executive officer of Victory Enterprises Inc. of Las Vegas, N.M., also known as Victory Home Health, Victory Personal Care, and Victory Royal Express, specializing in non-emergency medical transportation. One of their largest employers is in San Miguel Country, and they have offices throughout New Mexico. BYRON E. WALL (A) has been appointed associate lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at York University in Toronto, as of July 2002. His son, ALEX, graduated in May from the Annapolis campus. 1970 RONALD H. FIELDING (A), a member of the college Board of Visitors and Governors, sent his older son off to Hamilton College this August, noting that “after doing a mandatory overnight at SJC, he told my wife he wouldn’t apply but respected his father more, knowing he had gone there. I continue managing the municipal bond fund group for OppenheimerFunds (9 funds, $13 billion ANA NETHERTON (A72) has found an unusual use D for his volume of Liddell & Scott: “I’m using it as I work my way through a photostatic reprint of an introductory book on Greek Orthodox church music (Byzantine Chant), which was published in 1821 by one of the three people who effected a major revision to the genre’s musical notation (and which was written in Greek, of course). I actually have a practical use for this study: I am learning to sing this genre of music in my church. I became a member of the Greek Orthodox Church in March 2002, when I was chrismated on my hospital bed the night before my successful triple bypass heart surgery (following about a month of angina). Now, I climb on my home treadmill several times a week, both for all-weather exercise and also for singing practice (while reading music written in Byzantine-chant characters and listening to (and singing along with) a Greek-American monk who sings the same music on a CD. Singing while walking briskly for a couple of miles works wonders for my breath control during services! My sophomore music tutor, the late Michael Ossorgin, was renowned in the world of Orthodox music (though Russian Orthodox of course, not Greek Orthodox). He was also incredibly patient with my sophomoric impatience in his class. If he is looking in on me, no doubt he is pleased—and quite probably stunned!” x in assets, 20 total staff). My wife and I are working on a design for a beautiful house in Kiawah Island, near Charleston, S.C. That will become our winter home in two to three years. Finally, but not least, I’m chairing the next capital campaign for St. John’s. So put some money aside while you wait for my call.” 1971 HELEN ANASTAPLO SCHARBACH (A) and J. SHIPLEY NEWLIN JR. (A67) were married in a private ceremony on July 25, 2003, in Saint Paul, Minn. THOMAS N. DAY (A) writes, “it’s been an interesting year working at the INS in the aftermath of 9-11. I’ve been busy integrating various databases and developing new ones. LOIS [ECKLER DAY] (A77) is looking forward to getting back to teaching after our youngest is out of college.” PAUL EITNER (SF) is happy to report that his daughter Laura is taking a big step toward her lifelong goal by being accepted for entry into Ohio State University’s veterinary program this fall. VICKY MANCHESTER (SF) was married in November of 2002 to Dr. John Garrison and is now Vicky Garrison. She continues to teach English and drama at the CIVA Charter High School in Military Springs, Co. CYNTHIA HANCOFF LEVY’S (A) latest CD for young children, Proud of You, won a spring 2003 Parents Choice Award. “You can listen to one of the songs on my Web site, www.music-makers.org. After 16 years of teaching music to kids and parents, I still love it!” 1973 LAURIE F. CALLAHAN (SF) reports that ANNALISA EWALD (A) is a classical guitarist with a studio in South Norwalk, Conn. JEAN FITZSIMON and LEE FISCHLER (SF68) are spending much of this year in New York City. Jean has a new job as a corporate compliance consultant. Compliance involves teaching companies to be ethical as well as responsible to an everchanging legal climate. In other words, she’s a “cop for hire.” When Lee is not writing marketing material for Jean, he takes { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } the grandkids to anti-war demonstrations. BARBARA ROGAN (SF) is pleased to report that her seventh novel, Hindsight, was just published by Simon & Schuster. 1974 RENATE LEWIS (SFGI) looks forward to moving back to Santa Fe this summer. JEFF (A) and Alla Victoroff are delighted to report the thrilling birth of Ivan on Dec. 17, 2002. ROBERTA FAULHABER-RAZAFY (SF) sends news from Paris: “Just thought I’d update fellow Johnnies on the latest development in my life. My husband, Jean-Pierre, was recently appointed ambassador of Madagascar (his native country) to France, UK, Spain, the Vatican, Israel, Portugal, and Monaco. I am currently living in an embassy in Paris not far from my former address in the same city, meditating on the authentic Aubusson tapestries and a strange Venetian chandelier that looks like miraculous frozen jellyfish as I type this in the living room. Although I feel something of an alien as a tall, blonde, and blue-eyed American Malagasy ambassadress, the situation’s potential is certainly intriguing. As life changes go, the surreal impact of this one will probably drive my work as a painter into some new configuration. In my new role, I encourage you all to visit Madagascar, with its unique flora and fauna, landscapes, excellent food (still organic!), and last but not least, the people and a culture based on nonviolent solutions to life’s problems and, of course, parties for the dead at the end of the world. You’ll enjoy it. Need info? Just email me at faulhabe@noos.fr and I’ll see what I can do.” 1975 BETSY BLUME (A), former director of the college’s Alumni Activities office, has taken a position as �32 {Alumni Notes} director of development for the Association of Science-Technology Centers, which represents institutions of informal science education worldwide. Among its member organizations are the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Maryland Science Center, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. ERIC SCIGLIANO (SF) is at work on a new book, on Michelangelo, marble, and the Carrara quarries, that draws inspiration from a junior preceptorial in Santa Fe. 1976 “My second novel, The Healer’s Keep, is now published in the U.S. and U.K. with German and Finnish editions due out soon. My third novel, The Oracle’s Light, will be published in spring 2004,” writes VICTORIA HANLEY (SF). “Greeting to my classmates,” writes NICOLE SCHLESS (SF). “I’m well, living in a beautiful spot in Connecticut, but am out to Santa Fe fairly frequently. I’m writing, carving, and contemplating the mysteries, making a living running a company here in Connecticut. I’ve been building a ‘barn’ for almost two years now and it’s close enough to done for visitors…well, hardy campers, anyway!” PHYLLIS HUFFMAN HERMAN (SFGI) has a private practice using the Feldenkrais method of somatic education, working with movement and awareness. 1977 GENE GLASS (A) and his wife, Susan, continue to live in Carroll, Iowa, where Gene has a private psychology practice. He also travels to Des Moines and Omaha, Neb., for his practice and for paid acting jobs. He’s looking forward to getting back to Annapolis soon during a homecoming and to spend time with good friends from St. John’s. “Our 20-year was a blast!” This is the first year that JIM and ANDREA HAM (both SF77) are without children at home since 1984. “Dylan (18 years) is a freshman at UC-Santa Cruz and Caitlin (16 years) is a Rotary exchange student in Belgium for the year,” reports Andrea. “We are proud of them and we miss them but are enjoying the time alone too. We would love to hear from our classmates!” VICKI PHILLIPS (A) received her Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University in 1997. She teaches at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Her husband, BARRY (A), works as a finish carpenter in historical renovations. 1978 RACHEL BARRETT (SF) has a new Web site, home.earthlink.net/~ rachelbarrett, showing what she has been doing, art-wise, for the last several years. Both her daughters graduated this June, Fiona from University of California Santa Cruz and Vanessa from Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandizing in Los Angeles. ERIC “TITO” COLEMAN (A) is back in Virginia after completing a six-year HIV-AIDS project in the Dominican Republic. Funded by USAID, his project was designed to build local capacity (NGOs and government agencies) to respond to prevention and treatment challenges in HIV through communications and policy initiatives: television, radio and print media development for public awareness; training, policy facilitation, and grants for interventions. “Now I am doing similar things but in the environmental field in Latin America. I’m also a challenged and proud parent of two bodacious daughters. I’m happy to hear from ‘past ghosts’ at tcoleman@ aed.org.” MARTHA MCGINNIS (SF) writes, “After 19 years in corporate life, I was thrilled to be ‘outsourced’ in December. I’m enjoying catching up with my girls, Amelia (12) and A NDREW WHITE (A81) will be in Athens on a Fulbright grant for the next academic year, completing a dissertation on Byzantine theater and ritual—the first of its kind in English. He will be living in the northern suburbs and dividing his time between the University of Athens Theatre Department and the American School for Classical Studies, where he will be an associate student. Andy has been incredibly lucky to find a brilliant wife, Laura Hjerpe, and now enjoys the company of a rowdy, sociable 6-year-old, Ian Richard, who is also looking forward to next year’s Big Fat Greek Adventure! Andy can still be contacted through e-mail at awhite@wam.umd.edu. x Molly (9), through soccer, volleyball, chess club, Brownies, and chairing our charter school council. Once I catch my breath I will begin a new career in freelance graphic recording and facilitation.” TERRY C. SCHULD (A) has been married 20 years this fall to Peg, an animal and wildlife artist. He works as a Web applications specialist for ADI, a division of Honeywell, and lives in the Long Island Pine Barrons. “After eight years in the Navy, I have transferred to the U.S. Public Health Service, working in vaccines and biologies,” writes ANN SCHWARTZ (A). “My two sons, Adam (20), and Caleb (19), are in college at Dickinson College and Gettysburg College, respectively. I am looking forward to a trip to New Zealand next year.” RITA BAHUS SATO (A) is currently director of administrative services for the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is married with a lovely 13-year-old daughter who is into horseback riding and competing and Ozzy Osbourne! The family also includes a crazed Shar-Pei, Cocoa, and a quarterhorse named Polly. (Mom rides her, too!) JAMES WALTON (SF) writes, “We wrapped up another movie this month in Albuquerque. This is the second movie I’ve worked on (since joining IATSE Local 480), an Alejandro Iñárritu production starring Sean Penn. Since the New Mexico legislature passed bills offering financial incentives, New Mexico is once more a very attractive place for movie making.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } 1979 The University Press of Florida recently published a book by CAROL COLATRELLA (A), Literature and Moral Reform: Melville and the Discipline of Readers. DENNIS SHERMAN (A) has been living in France for just over 20 years. He works in “gastronomic tourism” and is a wine broker based in Burgundy. 1980 LISA LASHLEY (SF) is teaching math at St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe, where her two children, Alex (11th grade) and Virginia (8th grade), attend. She is also involved with Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, serving as a Cadette troop leader and an assistant scoutmaster. She is also a docent at local museums and serves on the board of the Santa Fe Archaeological Society. SUSAN REED (SFGI) and her firstgrade son, Harry, have traveled to New Zealand twice, England once, 12 different states, and numerous cities, but otherwise lead a quiet life in the country. DEBRA A. RUTHERFORD (SF) and her husband, Larry, still work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Their daughter, Michelle, will enter Los Alamos Middle School in the fall. �33 {Alumni Notes} 1981 MONICA CREELMAN (SF) is working in New York City as a clinical psychologist in a private practice. She is also teaching graduate students. She was married three years ago to Karl O’Donoghue, and they have no children. EMI SARA GEIGER (A) has made some changes. “My husband and five children and I moved back to the U.S. one year ago to care for my aging parents. We miss our relatives and friends in Israel, many Johnnies among them, but we are glad to be with my parents. The kids, ages 2-10, provide the joy and the noise, and we clean up the mess. All in all a perfect arrangement for two 80-year-olds in need of a bit of excitement.” 1982 COMFORT DORN (A) writes from Middletown, Md.: “I am no longer married to ED GRANDI (A77), but I continue to live in Middletown and edit a community newspaper. I was pleased to see the topic of my senior essay, Montaigne’s ‘On the Education of Children,’ on the front cover of The College. As I continue to educate my own three children (Rachel, 18; John, 15; and Claire, 10) I am ever reminded that ‘only fools are certain.’” MAREA JENNESS (HIMELGRIN) (SF) writes, “I am living in Catalina, Ariz., on two beautiful acres and teaching high school biology. My amily and friends of MARTIN MILLER (A81), have set up an endowment fund in the memory of Mr. Miller, who died in January at the age of 45. The Martin Conrad Miller Book Fund will help students who could not otherwise afford to buy Program books. To contribute to the fund, contact the college Advancement office in Annapolis at 410-626-2507. x F husband, Doug, and I recently celebrated our second anniversary together with our son, Daniel Minh. We adopted him as a baby in Vietnam. He recently painted us a family portrait that shows a glowing energy ball between two long brush strokes. That just about sums up the joy and passion of our intertwined lives. I’m looking forward to visiting Santa Fe now that I am closer and would welcome visits from old friends. You can reach me at marearose@yahoo. com.” “I have a new position as a founding faculty member of the new (opening September 2003) Shoshana S. Cardin Jewish Community High School in Baltimore,” LESLIE SMITH ROSEN (A) writes. “I’ll be chair of the Humanities Department (thanks, SJC!) working on integrating a multi-disciplinary curriculum. My family (including children Marielle, 19, Alyssa, 16, and Samuel, 12) and I are well. I am looking forward to an Aspen Institute conference on Mortimer Adler at Wye River in June.” GAIL DONOHUE STOREY (SFGI) and her husband, Porter, bicycled on their tandem from Houston to San Diego, covering 1,700 miles in five weeks. It was their second tandem bike trip—the first was from Houston to Camden, Maine (2,400 miles in seven weeks). 1983 GINA CASASCO (SF) has a daughter, Alexandra, who was born on October 2, 2002. She moved to Hudson, N.Y., from New York City in May of 2002. She works as the financial manager for two commercial real estate LLCs, one in Maryland and another in Northern Virginia. DAVID HALSTED (A), having earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature, is working in the computer industry in Ann Arbor, Mich. His wife, Keely, is in the department of history and is director of Jewish studies at Michigan State University. They share a house outside of town with two wonderful children and a recently acquired cat. halstedd@ hotmail.com. love to hear from old classmates. trisha@howellcanyonpress.com. “I am happy and well, living in Portland, Ore. with my family,” writes ANNE MCCLARD (SF). “Zoe is ten and Soren is almost five. They are both flourishing and growing in spite of the lack of sun! Ken Anderson, my husband, and I continue with our struggle as anthropologists in the technical industries, loving and hating it at the same time. I welcome e-mail from Johnnie friends and former classmates. amcclard@ mindspring.com.” TIFFANY KNIGHT-JAN (SF) writes that she still loves living in Madison, that she’s “still doing the eyeball thing alternately with the mom thing.” News from RICHARD MILLER (A)and BARBARA COOPER (A): “We’re finishing up a year’s sabbatical in Paris. Then it’s back to work at Rutgers, where we both teach now—Barbara in the history of Africa, Richard chairing the English department.” KAREN ASTRID TOURIAN (A) and her husband, Rolf, took their second biking trip in Tuscany this past fall. She started bike racing this year, both time trials on the road and cyclocross (“Midlife crisis?” she asks). She’s worked a year at Wyeth and loves the work. touriak@wyeth.com 1985 ELBERT DELANO PORTER (A) announces the birth of Arno Xenophon Porter, born February 17, 2003. 1984 DR. WENDY A BROWN (A), daughter of DR. MICHAEL BROWN (class of 1951), was recently honored with a fellowship in the International College of Dentists and the American College of Dentists. These fellowships are conferred by peers for extraordinary contribution to the profession. JOHN L. BUSH (SF) received his license to practice architecture in Virginia in September 2002. He and his wife, Elizabeth, celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary by traveling to the Pecos Wilderness, Santa Fe, Taos, and Chaco Canyon, and had a wonderful time. He sends a special hello to Dan, Les, Joel, Brad, and “of course, ole’ Joe Tetrault.” After slaving away to write 11 books, TRISHA (FIKE) HOWELL (SF) is pleased that some are finally rolling off the presses. The Princess and the Pekinese (a children’s picture book with a surprise twist) and The Pekinese Who Saved Civilization (a humorous social and political commentary from the viewpoint of a toothless old dog) are making their debut through www.howellcanyonpress.com. Trisha would 1986 MELISSA (FISHER) FRIEND (A) is working and living outside of Geneva, Switzerland, with husband Michael and their children: Leo, 2, and Marina, 6. “We originally came to Switzerland from Washington, D.C., on a two-year posting for Michael’s job, but made the change to local hires about a year ago. So we’re here now for the foreseeable future. Life is good, we’re all healthy and happy.” ELISABETH M. LONG (A) has been busy with a dual life: “By day I codirect the Digital Library Development Center at the University of Chicago Library, and by night I am pursuing an MFA degree in Book and Paper Arts. I recently won first place in the Art of Math and Science show for two pieces of artwork. My SJC background is certainly informing my work. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s passing through Chicago.” LISA N. ROSE (A) is building a semi-underground living structure and a strawbale schoolhouse as part of a spiritual community project in central New Mexico. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �34 {Alumni Notes} Inquiries welcome. shafiyah@ mydroplets.com. MICHAEL RYAN (SF) writes, “I am a partner in an architecture firm in downtown Albuquerque, and am five-ninths of the way through the Architect’s Record Exam, with the goal of being a registered architect by October. I am engaged for the second (and last) time to a wonderful woman with two girls about the same age as my 7-yearold daughter, Chloe.” TAMMY LACHER SCULLY (SFGI) reports that she and her husband, Jack Scully, have started Easterly Wine LLC, distributors of fine wine with an emphasis on offerings from France, Italy, and Portugal. 1987 WARREN KING BUSS (SF) writes: “I am currently enrolled at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, working toward a BFA in Book Arts—after so many years of reading books, I am now learning how to make them. Finally, some relief from all the computer programming I’ve been doing for too many years! My wife Laura and son Matthew are well and thriving.” He can be reached at wakibu@ aol.com. JOE T. COXWELL (SFGI) is now chair of the science department at Northeast Lauderdale High School in Meridian, Miss. He recently received the 2003 Star Teacher Award from the M.B. Swayze Educational Foundation and the Mississippi Economic Council. He also is a part-time instructor of physical science and astronomy at Meridian Community College. CHARLOTTE L. GLOVER (SF) writes, “My St. John’s training has really come in handy while I lead book discussion groups at the library! Montana 1948 by Larry Watson has been the favorite of the group so far.” On May 16th my husband, Michael, and I welcomed Benjamin William Lewin into the world, writes SALLIE FINE LEWIN (A). “We have not yet found language adequate to describe the incredible joy we have discovered through parenthood. Benjamin and I are spending our summer days going to Mommy and Baby yoga classes, taking walks, and hanging out at the pool before I go back to teaching at the end of August.” In January, PEGGY O’SHEA (A) returned to St. John’s Santa Fe to finish her sophomore year, 18 years after leaving St. John’s Annapolis. She expects to graduate in 2005. 1988 ELAINE PINKERTON COLEMAN (SFGI) announces the birth of future Johnnie Emily Clementine Pinkerton, born October 3, 2002. “Grandmotherhood is even more fun than parenting,” Elaine reports. Coleman traveled to eight states promoting From Calcutta With Love and is now finishing a novel, Beast of Bengal. The novel is set in Calcutta during World War II. Chicago three years ago. John’s in practice at Harbor Hospital in Baltimore and I’m home with Lucy (4 1/2) and her little sister Beatrice (8 months). Our e-mail address is lucykate98@aol.com.” KIM PAFFENROTH (A) is the editor of A Reader’s Companion to Augustine’s Confessions (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2003), in which he has gathered 13 Augustine scholars, each writing an essay on one of the 13 books of the Confessions, each presenting his or her case for why that particular book is the most important of the 13. Kim lives in Cornwall on Hudson, N.Y., with his wife, Marlis (A86), and their children, Charles and Sophia. ELIZABETH (A) and ANDREW (A90) PENDERGRASS are pleased to announce the birth of their son, John Alexander, born in January of this year. LAURIE COOPER (A) and Dov Kugelmass gave birth to their son, Cyrus, in October 2002. Their daughter Carrie is three. (SF86) announce the birth of Hayden Martinez Merz in November 2002. Diana is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. Ted is the managing editor for the Americas of Bloomberg News. CLAUDIA (PROBST) STACK (A) and Joseph Stack welcomed a second son, Jack Matthew Stack, on January 29, 2003. They would like to hear from classmates visiting the North Carolina area and from those planning to attend the 15th-year reunion in 2003. Stackc@uncw.edu THERESA DONNELLY (SF) writes, “John (Irwin, SFGI89) and I moved back to Baltimore from THERESA SULLIVAN (A) married Daniel Mooney at St. Joseph’s Church in Denver, Colorado, on TED MERZ (A) and DIANA MARTINEZ Johnnie Plates in Maryland t. John’s alumni in Maryland can trade in their old license plates for a new set celebrating their alma mater. The Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles began issuing the St. John’s license plate this fall. The plates, which cost $25, feature the seal of the New Program and a fourdigit number with St. John’s College across the bottom. Sign up soon: We have a long way to go to catch up with all the Navy plates on Annapolis-area roads. The project was spearheaded by JOEL ARD (A98), who hopes it will catch on in other states that offer organizational plates. There’s no financial benefit to the college, Ard notes, “it’s simply an opportunity to celebrate the college everywhere you drive.” The Alumni Office in Annapolis is happy to work with alumni in other states who want Johnnie plates. Call 410-295-6926. x S { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } October 25. BURCH HARPER, KATARINA WONG, BENJAMIN KRAUSS, SHEILA MONEN VIRGIL, and JAMES O’GARA were a credit to St. John’s waltz parties as they danced all night to the Irish band. STEVE VIRGIL (A88) and James’ wife, Ellen, stayed home with the kids and were sorely missed. After nine years as a communications consultant at Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Ameritech in Chicago, Theresa moved to Denver in 2000 to attend cooking school. She went on to study with chefs in Provence and the Piedmont region of Italy, and became certified as a professional sommelier and chef of wine arts. The Mooneys live in Denver, where Dan works for OppenheimerFunds and Theresa is a marketing writer and caterer. The highlight of their Santa Fe honeymoon was a St. John’s Community Seminar with Patricia Greer on Yeats’ “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen.” She always loves to hear from old friends at tresullivan@aol.com or 303-639-1354. 1989 PATRICK CRINNION (SF) is finally looking through a telescope at the Galilean moons of Jupiter—great field experience to go with the readings. KURT REDFIELD (A) recently com- pleted his MBA at Columbia University’s School of Business and is the chief financial officer of the French software company Neartek. Kurt, his wife, Christine, and 4-year-old son Wilson live in Cambridge, Mass. LAEL GOLD (SF) married VANESSA CAMPBELL (SF) on December 14, 2002. Perhaps a bit more precisely, Alex Brown married Vanessa Campbell in a ceremony performed by Lael Gold. (She is also available for bar mitzvahs, baptisms, boat christenings and supermarket grand openings.) The wedding was held near Vanessa and Alex’s organic farm in the mountains outside Asheville, N.C. (St. John’s students interested in farming and prepared to work hard can contact Vanessa at full- �35 {Alumni Notes} sunfarm@earthlink.net concerning summer internship opportunities.) When not officiating at weddings in the North Carolina mountains, Lael teaches film and literature classes at U.C. Berkeley where she is in the Ph.D. homestretch. Vanessa and Lael send their fond regards to former classmates and long-absent friends. How IS everyone? REGINA LANDOR (AGI) served in the Peace Corps in Macedonia and Romania, where she met her future husband, a fellow volunteer. They now live in Peoria, Ill. CHRISTOPHER SULLIVAN (A) is traveling a lot between San Francisco and Heidelberg for his writing and design job for a software company, becoming nearly fluent in German. He continues to stay busy doing voice-overs in the Bay Area for phone systems, radio and TV ads, video games, and even animation—he performed a couple of voices for a short animation called “Metropopular” that showed at Sundance and toured with Spike and Mike’s Animation Festival. He reports, “No spouse, no children, no house, but—considering how disturbed and gaisquantialized the world is—not too terrible a life.” Former classmates can reach by e-mail at christophersullivan @email.com. GEORGE TURNER (A) writes: “Our second child, Lily Sarah, was born April 26, 2003. Everyone is healthy and happy.” The family moved to a new house in Costa Mesa, Calif., about a 15-minute bike ride from the beach. He also started his own law firm, Turner Green Afrasiabi and Arledge LLP, last year. Their Web site, www.turnergreen.com, is “either impressive or funny, depending on how well you know me.” NINDA LETAW (A) reports that she is the proud owner of Charlotte’s Home Cooking, a personal chef service in Raleigh, N.C. She would love to hear from classmates. 1990 1992 DAHRA LATHAM (A) graduated from MICHAEL BROWN (SF) is living in San Francisco and would love to hear from old friends: M1Brown@ aol.com; 415-734-9500. law school on June 16, 2003. GREY VALENTI (A) married Chris D’Amato in June. DEBRA JO WHITCOMB (A) is working full-time as a hospice nurse, doing a little massage therapy on the side and spending the rest of the time doing Tai Chi. She’s also a Tai Chi instructor 1991 STEVEN MCNAMARA (A) and ANGE MLINKO (A) welcomed their new son, Jacob, into the world on March 19, 2003. NATE DOWNEY (SF) finally got the answer to the question “what is hapiness?” after the birth of his son, Liam Nathan Downey, on January 6th, 2003. “I never thought I would be able to teach works studied in the Eastern Classics program,” writes RONALIE MOSS (SFGI, EC95). “But in spite of the Euro-centric nature of the Advanced Placement program, I have been able to teach some Chinese poetry, Noh plays and the Bhagavad Gita. The program is worthwhile for its own sake, of course!” ANDY SCHUCHART (AGI) writes: Charlotte and I became parents on August 1 with the birth of Maximilian Blaise and Veronica Joyce. We are living in Iowa. I am a professor of social science and humanities at our community college, and Charlotte practices internal medicine. LAKE (JAMES) PERRIGUEY (SF) is working as an attorney in Portland, Ore. He recently authored three amicus briefs to the Oregon Supreme Court arguing that the state constitution protects lap dances and sexual expression in live theatrical performances. He’s been a groupie to the British AMP Swan Lake, touring the world in awe of all male corps de ballet. Lake has never seen “Will and Grace.” { The College PATRICIA COXWELL (SFGI) is now teaching elementary and middle school general music for the West Lauderdale School District near Meridian, Miss. She specializes in traditional folk music and this year raised over three thousand dollars to purchase dulcimers for her classes. She is married to JOE COXWELL (SFGI87). They have one daughter, Joanna, age five, who will begin kindergarten this fall. ELYETTE (BLOCK) KIRBY (SF) has been living in England for two years with husband Jonathan, and children Benjamin and Bronwyn. They live an hour away from London and would enjoy hearing from Johnnies in the area. elyette@hotmailcom SIOFRA (RUCKER) NUGENT (SF) writes: “We are expecting our second child this September. I am teaching second and third grade at my daughter’s school, Delphi Academy. Delphi is a network of seven, soon eight, schools around the country. We both love it.” ALBERT REED (SFGI) is currently the dean of business and technology at Santa Fe Community College. 1993 J. CLAIRE DARLING (SF) is busy with environmental actions regarding safe water and nutrition. She is also completing training to become a Music Together teacher. Music Together is a “fabulous, fun-based program to informally teach basic music competence to kids ages 0-5 (and their fun-loving caretakers).” JULIA (GRAHAM) MESNIKOFF (SF) is working as a nurse practicioner with Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, “which is challenging as much because of financial cuts John’s College • Fall 2003 } to Medicaid (severely limiting what we can offer some patients) as because of the huge learning curve of diagnosis and treatment. I like and respect my patients and find that working with them makes me incredibly grateful for my own life and circumstances, warts and all.” GABRIEL PIHAS (A) received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in June 2003. He accepted a teaching position at the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin for the fall. This fall, JONATHAN PEARL (A) heads to Brno, Czech Republic, with his wife Cheryl and their son Rembrandt, age 1. “I have received a nine-month Fulbright grant to conduct research on the composer Leos Janacez and on the intonation and rhythm of spoken Czech.” He is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology. 1994 SCOTT ANDREWS (SFGI) married Jennifer Matson, a physical therapist, in June. He finished his seventh year of teaching history at a nearby preparatory school. They live in a small, quiet village on the shores of Cape Cod. “Meaningful work in a beautiful place with the one I love beside me – is life good, or what?” LEAH MULHOLLAND AUCKENTHALER, (A) is married and has a baby boy named Nicholas. She is living in Minneapolis, Minn., and is a stay-at-home-mom. News from BILL KOWALKSI (SF): “My wife, Alexandra Nedergaard, and I are delighted to announce the birth of our daughter, Kasia Alexandra Kowalski, on July 3, 2003, in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. Both Mama and baby are doing well after an arduous labor. I myself have also given birth: to a third novel, called The Adventures of Flash Jackson (HarperCollins, January 2003). I’m pregnant with a fourth, which I am hopeful will be delivered sometime in 2005. �36 {Alumni Notes} Earlier literary progeny continue to do well, including a short film co-written with Markus Griesshammer called Coyote Beach, which won the prize for Best American Short Film at the New York/Avignon Film Festival this past April.” JEFFREY SPENCER WRIGHT (SFGI) will be studying at the National University of Ireland, Galway, this summer. 1995 DINA DINEVA (A) and MILEN DYOULGEROV (AGI96) are happy to announce the birth of their daughter Maia on December 24, 2002. Dina writes, “Having the baby has given me a chance to slow down and reflect—a sort of return to a Johnnie state of being—for which, and for the many other gifts of motherhood, I am very grateful.” CHRIS DAVIS (SF) and CARMEN ELIZABETH HERING (SF) were married May 31. GEOFF GIFFIN (AGI) is now the publisher of a brand new Internet Yellow Pages in Annapolis and the greater Washington/Baltimore area. “Check us out as www. yellowpagecity.com. For the first time the look and feel of the traditional Yellow Pages is available on the Internet.” LAURA GIANNINY JOYNER (A) reports that Caroline Anne, her second child, joined the family on Nov. 1, 2002, and she is “experiencing all the challenges and joys of raising two children under the age of 3 in Hawaii.” BETH SCHAEFER (EC) retired at the end of 2001 after working for 25 years as an attorney for the state Department of Health in New Mexico. “I have been dividing my time since then between ice skating and Zen practice. What fun!” PETER LAMAR (AGI) currently serves as dean of academies at Holy Cross Academy in Miami, Fla. The school has implemented a great books curriculum based on the St. John’s model, beginning with the 2003-2004 school year. www.holycrossacademy.net Still living at the top of the world in Barrow, Alaska, MIKE LAYNE (SF) and his wife, Rachael, celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary in June, and the first birthday of their daughter, Audrey Rae, in February. He is working as a counselor at a local youth shelter, and may become more involved with grant writing. He may make the transition into a program coordinator position for their new Tobacco Prevention Grant program in the near future. JASON MCCREADY (A) writes: “I graduated from Georgetown Law School, realized I hated the large law firm environment, and moved back to my hometown in western Pennsylvania. I am working as a lawyer in a three-lawyer law firm, enjoying it immensely. Friends from St. John’s that I’ve lost contact with can contact me at jasonmccready@yahoo.com.” RONALIE A. MOSS (SFGIEC and SFGI91) reports that, despite the Eurocentric nature of the high school Advanced Placement program, she’s been able to teach Chinese poetry, Noh plays, and the Bhagavad Gita. TOM (A) and Marion SLAKEY report the happy news of three new grandchildren: twins Charlotte and Brendan, to Bill and his wife, Heather, in Placitas, N.M., and Noah Yarrow to Michael and his wife, Victoria, in Brittany, France. APRIL WALTERS (A) graduated from Towson University with a master’s in professional writing in May 2002. She currently works as the writing studio coordinator at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and freelances as a personal coach for writers. www.writingstudio.com 1996 DOUGLIS BECK (AGI) is enjoying mostly staying at home with 2year-old Veronica. He is pursuing { The College n update from DONA CUTSOGEORGE (SFGI96): “After leaving the Graduate Institute in 1996 with M.A. in hand, I was looking for ‘good’ work and, although some may disagree that this fit the bill, joined Amazon.com as a German language customer service rep, first assisting in the establishment of Amazon.de, I later went on to help build their U.S. program for independent authors, musicians, and filmmakers. After several years in the dot-com world, I no longer felt as enthusiastic about this career, and the bubble was on the verge of bursting, to boot. I switched gears and am now employed as a writer with The MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation in Seattle, Wash. I’m fortunate enough to work with a team of very dedicated and caring researchers and clinicians devoted to improving U.S. healthcare for the chronically ill. I’d love to hear from any local Johnnies or former classmates: donajgrl@yahoo.com” x A small projects on his own as Douglis Beck DesignStudio, and will be teaching art history and architecture courses at Webster University beginning this summer with a seminar on the Bauhaus. SCOTT FIELD (SFGI) and his wife, Jessica Field, had another baby boy last spring. Henry, 2, is very happy to have his little brother Oscar. JONATHAN ROWAN (SF) is studying for a Ph.D. in comparative literature at UC Berkeley. His e-mail address is jonathan_rowan@ hotmail.com. LUCILLE AND MARTY WALKER (both AGI) are now the proud parents of two sons, Reeseman Adams Walker (born October 5, 2002) and Ian Archibald Walker (born December 3, 1999). HANAN MIKLASZ (AGI) reports that she and her husband are celebrating the birth of their second son, Zane, on May 27, 2003. FRANCESCO GIUSEFFI (SFGI) has been enjoying teaching, coaching, and performing the duties of athletic director at Missouri Military Academy and has even facilitated a couple of independent study courses in Western philosophy. CHERYL HENEVELD (AGI) writes, “We have begun a community discussion group and vigilia against the war. Why can’t we use words instead of bombs and guns? We are also teaching a course (with my husband Ward Henevald) on Peace and War at Johnson State College—a required course for this state college. I can send the syllabus to others. Ridley’s Origins of Virtue is a required text. HEATHER ELLIOTT (SF) and SAUL LAURELES (SF92) were married in 2001 and bought a house in Houston Heights. They’re both lawyers; Saul practices with Mayer Brown Rowe and Maw, and Heather with Davis, Oretsky and Guilfoyle. John’s College • Fall 2003 } 1997 ELAINE ATABA (A) is starting a master’s program in traditional Oriental medicine in the fall. After completing the four- to fiveyear program, she will be able to sit for a national exam to become an acupuncturist. BENJAMIN BLOOM (A) says all is well. “I am starting my second semester at the University of Maryland. I hope to begin teaching an undergraduate English course next year. Best wishes to all.” “Instead of finding a summer internship with a large corporation, I decided to launch a company of my own,” writes DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A). “It is very exciting and scary. I borrowed $10K and have already raised $15K from other investors, but I still need to raise about $25K more before I can truly begin. At that point I’ll be able to finance the first print/run of a new board game called ‘Cluzzle.’ The game is �37 {Alumni Profile} Part Monkey, Part Robot Animator Geoff Marslett (SF96) bridges art and technology in his films by Sus3an Borden, A87 “Monkeys hit Robots with sticks. Robots shoot Monkeys with lasers. They both love their mothers. Why must they hate each other?” This is the question that Geoffrey Marslett raises in his two-minute animated film, “Monkey vs. Robot, ” a project that met with surprising and satisfying success: The film was screened at 25 film festivals, purchased by “Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation 2000,” included in PBS’ “Egg the Arts Show,” and recognized with awards and prizes at festivals. Marslett made the film for an animation class in his second year of film school at the University of Texas, taking his inspiration from a song of the same name written by his friend James Kochalka. The project took just a week and cost about $20, but Marslett says that’s only one side of the story. “The flip side is, I worked on it nonstop. Because I was a student I had access to computers and time to devote to it. At the worst point during that week, I showed up at the computer lab at 9 a.m., worked all day long and all through the night, then went to T.A. a class from 9 to noon and went right back to work.” Animation, it turns out, is part monkey, part robot. “There’s the low-fi end, writing the script and creating the art,” explains Marslett, “then you spend weeks and months fighting with machines to get it to come out in a format that can be mailed to everybody’s house, sent out on the Internet, or broadcast on television.” Marslett, who now teaches animation at the University of Texas, says that his students often come into class thinking that they will produce a few drawings and the computer will do the rest. “I always tell them that animation is not making drawings move; they’re going to have to draw motion. They have to look at the world and figure out how to draw things that create the illusion of motion. It takes a lot of work just to see the world around you. For the first assignment, I usually have them take still photos of motion, have them break it down frame by frame.” Frame by frame in most animated productions is to the tune of 24 frames per second. But that simple equation is misleading: a single frame usually requires several drawings. Marslett explains why, using as an example a scene where a monkey swings through the jungle: “You make several drawings: one that is the far background, another a couple of trees closer, another of more of the trees that you can use to shift perspective, drawings for the vine that’s swinging, the body, arms, anything in the foreground. If you have a rhinoceros run by, you need one rhinoceros body and ten or twelve drawings of legs for a walk cycle. Any given frame might have 10 or 20 layers to it.” In addition, the animator must add lipsynching. For each character, animators create a library of lips, consisting of 10 or 15 different shapes. After the script is recorded and edited, the animator takes the library and puts the lips in to match up to the sound. “It can get pretty tedious,” says Marslett. “If everything is already drawn so I’m only working with the lips, and the character’s not turning his head while he speaks, I can do one minute of monologue in a day.” Marslett did all the drawings for “Monkey vs. Robot.” But for his thesis project, a 24minute film called “Trip to Roswell,” eight artists worked with him. “Animation is always labor-intensive,” he says. “Even if someone is making drawings quickly, at five or six minutes a drawing, multiply that by 90,000 drawings for a feature film. That’s a lot of minutes.” After “Trip to Roswell” won the Best Animation Award at CinemaTexas Short Film Festival, Marslett was inspired to write a feature-length screenplay based on the film. The price tag? Marslett says $500,000 to $750,000—cheap for an animated feature. As he investigates sources of funding for the movie, Marslett is reworking the Roswell script as a television series. “I get more interest in it that way,” he says. “People can wrap their minds more quickly { The College John’s College • Fall 2003 } Geoff Marslett’s film “Monkey vs. Robot” met with surprising success. Trip to Roswell Deep in the Heart of Texas in the year 2020 AD, the suburbs have spread like weeds across the hill country. Everyone lives in a suburban rancho-style stucco house with a red tiled roof. They all park their Ford Lemmings next to their Toyota Replica, and absolutely everyone surfs the Internet incessantly. Frank is your average kid in this near dark future until his parents get him the latest in elective medical implants, the locotron. This device is supposed to allow him to access URLs just by thinking about the site—but Frank is special. He still practices the forgotten art of reading books, and the extra input transforms his implant into a sort of time machine that pulls him into whatever he’s reading about. The U.S. Senate Chambers in 1856, Pangia during the fall of the dinosaurs, Paris in 1969…eventually stranding a twenty-five-year old “damaged” Frank in Roswell, New Mexico during a 1947 flying saucer crash. around animation for adults as a TV series than as a feature film.” x To wrap your mind around other Marslett productions, check out his Web site: www.swervepictures.com �38 K {Alumni Notes} ATHY PLUTH (SF99) finished her master’s in theology from the Catholic University of America (CUA) in 2001. “Since then I’ve stayed in Washington, and I’ve been working, first as director of religious education in a local parish, now as a research assistant at the Life Cycle Institute at Catholic University. I’ve been able to do some freelance editing of philosophy and theology books for the CUA Press as well, and I have an ongoing part-time job tutoring a seminarian and future Catholic priest. In my spare time I write hymns. Two were recently published in a Catholic devotional magazine called Magnificat. I noticed when I was doing parish work that a lot of devoted Catholics are nonetheless terribly undereducated about their faith, so the hymns are my attempt to teach a little (I borrowed the idea from St. Ephrem the Syrian). This is definitely the most fulfilling work I’ve done since leaving St. John’s. If I had more free time, I would extensively study the works of Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and Hans Urs von Balthasa—great 20th century theologians.” x a lot of fun to play! Learn more about it on our Web site, www.cluzzle.com. P.S. Business school is very demanding. I can’t wait for it to end.” CHRIS ENGLISH (SFGI) and his wife, DIANE SHIRES (SFGI98), are expecting their first child, a boy, in June. “We’ve begun saving up for his St. John’s education now– Alumni ’25?” From SARAH JANE FRAUENZIMMER (FREMONT) (A): “After several great years in the Pacific Northwest, Matt, the dog, and I packed up and moved a little farther west to Japan, where Matt is currently stationed. We are enjoying plenty of sushi, feeling unusually tall, and the prospect of cherry blossoms in the spring. I’m teaching a bit of yoga and English, learning Japanese and am contemplating master’s programs. If you find yourself in the Tokyo area, drop us a line at sjfaraway@yahoo.com. JESSICA CAMPBELL MCALLEN (SF) writes, “I am living and working on my husband’s family cattle ranch in south Texas and I would love to hear from anyone in the area (jessielee4242@yahoo.com)! I would also love to hear from JEFF HUGGINS, BRIAN PARKINSON, and JACOB CURTIS who were here with me on spring break 1996.” LESLIE NORTON (AGI) served in the Peace Corps in Mongolia from June 2 through September 2003. Here’s what NATHAN SCHLEIFER (SF) has been up to: “J.D. Washington University School of Law, 2001; married to Brenda Nelson, 2002; B.S./M.S. biomedical engineering (biocomputing focus) expected 2004/2005. Currently, I’m general legal counsel for Automating Peripherals Inc. and an editor for the Biotechnology Review. 1998 News from LEA (A) and BRIAN (SF97) BROCK: “After rectifying our relationship to Santa Fe by means of completing the Eastern Classics program in 2001, we moved to Anchorage to teach in the well-known Atheneum School, which both supplies and utilizes many Johnnies. We currently tend an earthship in Taos while riding horses and playing music. We audit Sanskrit classes with MR. PERRY and various EC folks. Oh, by the way, as you might guess…we got married! We had a seminar on C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves after the wedding—it was great!” { The College JACQUELINE CAMM (A) announces her marriage to Robert Travis (a 1998 graduate of Columbia University) on February 8, 2003 in the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Fla. The Rt. Rev. John Howe, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida presided. AMY (NORMAN) MORGAN (A96) and her husband, Bill, provided music for the ceremony. “We have moved to Tennessee where we purchased our first home with the help of MILK KLIM (A02) of Columbia National Mortgage. If anyone would like to reach us, or is passing through Tennessee, please send us an e-mail: jacquelinecamm @hotmail.com.” GLENSCOTT THOMAS COPPER (AGI) has been awarded a Fulbright Memorial Fund Fellowship to Japan for next fall. He has finished construction on his own ceramics studio and fired his first pots. He still teaches creative writing, journalism and theater at Milwaukee High School of the Arts. SASHA MUDD (A) finished a master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School in June. She will spend a year at Cambridge before starting doctoral work at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. LUIS ALEJANDRO SALAS (A) has just received a master’s degree in classics from Rutgers University. This fall, he moves to Texas to complete a Ph.D. at the joint program in ancient philosophy at the University of Texas-Austin. 1999 SHELBY BLYTHE (A) relocated to Philadelphia where he is enrolled in the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s studying the early embryonic development of frogs this summer. He’d be glad to speak with students and alumni who are considering careers in the biomedical sciences regarding his experience so far. sblythe@mail. med.upenn.edu. John’s College • Fall 2003 } RUTH BUSKO (SF) is very excited to be in her final year of training for a master’s degree in acupuncture at the Tai Sophia Institute for the Healing Arts in Laurel, Maryland. She spends most of her time treating patients at the faculty-student clinic at the school and in the Baltimore City Detention Center as well as other drug rehabilitation sites around Baltimore. She can be reached at rmbusko@hotmail. com. GEORGE FINNEY (SF) dropped a line from Dallas: “I’ve just gotten engaged to my longtime girlfriend, AMANDA KENNEDY (SF02). Amanda and I will be married at Grace and Peace Fellowship in St. Louis on November 1 of this year. I have also recently taken a new job at Southern Methodist University as a network engineer. This new position works out great because I hope to begin my pursuit of a legal education there, as opposed to the illegal one I had been pursuing, in the fall of ’04. If you would like to contact me, send e-mail to: diggablelinux@ yahoo.com.” MARK H. JOHNSON (A) is currently pursuing his Master of Divinity at Duke University. PATRICK REED (AGI) moved back to the Annapolis area and is currently teaching at Severn School. His wife, Jana, is an ER doctor stationed at Andrews Air Force Base. 2000 KELSEY BENNETT (SF) will begin courses in the fall toward a master’s degree in English at the University of Denver. She recently completed a novel. TIM CARNEY (A) is currently working in Washington, D.C., as a reporter for columnist and CNN commentator Bob Novak, as well as doing freelance writing. He has been awarded a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship and will use it after the 2004 elections to write a book reporting on big business and big government. �39 {Alumni Notes} In sunny Las Cruces, N.M, KARINA NÖEL HEAN (A) is working on a Master of Fine Arts degree and is a teaching assistant at the university. In June 2003 she had an artist residency at Vermont Studio Centers. She writes: “Allin-all, I’m just loving life, but miss my friends, though. Hope everyone is well—feel free to drop in. Peace!” She can be reached at karinahean@hotmail.com. BENJAMIN SHOOK (SF) writes, “I now have a successful business building furniture and cabinets. I also now have a great deal less amour-propre.” SAM MARKHAM (SF) is studying at the University of London for a master’s in the History of the Book. experiencing in mainstream academia these past few months makes me appreciate St. John’s even more. I welcome contact from former classmates or from other Johnnies who might want information about grad school and comparative literature at Penn State.” CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN (A) learned to surf, visited England, and “saw what might have been Spiderman” while living with FLETCHER CUNNIFF (A) and other alums in Baltimore. He traveled to Chicago to visit STEVE PALOPOLI (A01), who is now living and working there. He also reports hearing that ALEX DIEFENBACH (A01) is in the Army, married, and presently living in Germany. Christopher can be reached at cvaughan@ flagier.edu. SARAH SIEMERING (SF) entered the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, Tenn. in August. The Sisters are a teaching order and teach in schools throughout the country. Sarah joins at least two other Johnnies who are already professed Sisters. SARAH MARSH (A) writes from Brooklyn, N.Y., “Hey y’all. Things are going well with me in the big city. I’m finishing up my first year of grad school and can’t believe I will be a midwife in a little over a year! I think of so many of you so often and it always makes me smile. Get in touch. sarahkmarsh @hotmail.com.” N. NICOLE NELSON-JEAN (AGI) lives in Tokyo and serves as the Energy Attaché to the U.S. ambassador to Japan and director of the U.S. Department of Energy Asia office at the American Embassy. She recently celebrated her twoyear wedding anniversary to Patrick. DEBERNIERE J. TORREY (AGI) writes: “Following a year of teaching high school history and literature at Abu Dhabi International School in the UAE (working with SJC alumna JUDITH HUGHES [AGI95]), I’m now enrolled in my first semester of Ph.D. studies in comparative literature at Penn State University. What I’ve been 2001 LANCE BRISBOIS (A) lives in Boston, where he also works as a secretary to the chancellor of Boston University; his e-mail address is brisbois@bu.edu. From DANIEL BRAITHWAITE (A): “I’m in Chicago.” Students interested in Boston University’s University Professors Program are welcome to contact BASIL CLEVELAND (A) at basilcleveland@hotmail.com or visit him in Boston. LANCE KIRMEYER (SF) and JENNIFER JULIANA CORONA (SF02) were married on May 25, 2003, and are living happily in Santa Fe. Lance provides technical support and assistance to customers of Dankoff Solar Products and Juliana will teach math and New Mexico history at Alameda Middle School in the fall. MATTHEW LIPPART (SF) has finished his second year of teaching in Santa Fe and has returned to St. John’s for the Eastern Classics. SUZANNE SIMMONS (SF) writes, “After having my assignment with the Peace Corps cancelled three times, due to a country’s civil unrest and the imminence of war with Iraq, I decided not to join. I did not want to wait another year for a proper assignment. I hope that all my former classmates, tutors, and other friends are doing well, especially those who have any friends, family, or are themselves involved with the U.S. efforts in Operation Iraqi Freedom. I am still keeping track of SF01 addresses, numbers, etc., so please e-mail me with any new information: guneh@ hotmail.com.” 2002 H. CHRISTIAN BLOOD (SF) writes, “How nice it was to see everyone who made it to croquet. Precipitation complications aside, what a fine weekend. This fall I shall begin doctoral studies at the department of literature at University of California Santa Cruz. I think I’ve found a school whose location rivals the beauty and glory of Santa Fe. Anyone who finds himself in the area, contact me at hchristianblood@yahoo. com; looks like I’ll be there for at least six years.” AMANDA KENNEDY (SF) writes, “I’m employed! After attending the 2002 Summer Institute on Philanthropy and Voluntary Services, I went to work temporarily at a nonprofit called Energy Solutions, which provides energy conservation consultations to schools, businesses, etc. Then in January 2003 I started at the Genesis Women’s Shelter in Dallas, Texas, as their fund development writer. We serve women and their children who are victims of domestic violence. Thank you to SJC! I’m liberated!” JONATHAN COOPER (A) has moved to St. Louis to spend a year in Americorps. He already misses Boston very much, but misses his friends even more. Any interested party or area alumnus should feel free to e-mail him at his newly minted { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } account: MisterNojangles @hotmail.com. He is also very excited to see his name in the paper here. JAMES GILMORE (A) began studies in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. EMMA WELLS (SF) reports that she has her first full-time, salaried position: “Good news! I am so excited. I am working at the Cato Institute in downtown Washington, D.C. This is where I interned this last spring semester. I am really happy. I work for the development department, which is the fundraising department of Cato. I will be here for at least a year, if not two, before going off to law school. So make sure and send me an e-mail and let me know if you’re in the area or if you can visit!” 2003 REBEKAH NEELY GOTTLOB (A) married NATE EAGLE (A) on July 5. 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 January; deadline for the alumni notes section is October 31. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; reharty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College Public Relations Office 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu Alumni notes on the Web: Read Alumni Notes and contact The College on the web at www.sjca.edu — click on Alumni. �40 {Obituaries} Kathyrn “Kitty” Kinzer, AGI87 Kitty Kinzer (AGI87) was “part mother hen, part vigilant fury.” Former Annapolis librarian Kitty Kinzer died unexpectedly last spring. Annapolis Tutor Mera Flaumenhaft delivered this tribute on the occasion of Mrs. Kinzer’s retirement from the college in 1999. By her own account, Kitty Kinzer knew from the beginning that it wouldn’t be your usual assistant librarian’s position. Charlotte Fletcher, who presided over the library in those days, walked Kitty to the house of Bob Goldwin, where she was to be interviewed. The dean was expecting them; he was lying on the floor. Charlotte, a Southern lady of refined manners, promptly suggested that she and Kitty join him on the floor. There followed a peculiar conversation about how many of the Program books the would-be librarian had already read. Aside from that, all Kitty remembers is thinking wildly (no doubt in her best Virginia accent) “Wha, oh wha, are they doing this to me?” Later Charlotte did mention that Bob Goldwin had back problems. And Kitty, to her surprise, got the job. To this day it’s remained a bit offbeat. But, then, so has Kitty. You see, she was not so conventional an applicant herself. Kitty grew up in a small Virginia town in the days before TV and air conditioning, the kind of place where sultry summers were spent on porches, sipping lemonade, playing board games, and reading…and reading…and reading. Smart kids took Latin, and schools that couldn’t afford new texts continued teaching geometry from the musty old Euclid books the rest of the world had left behind. Kitty studied biology in college and started her career in medical labs. After Valerie and Adriane were born, she took up graduate studies in American history and intended to move on to European history. When her family decided she needed direction, she chose a degree in library science and read books in any field she chose. Once in our midst, she happily continued her education: in community seminars, in the Graduate Institute, and as an auditor for undergraduate seminars, tutorials, and preceptorials. Kitty has had as wide an academic experience of this college as any non-student or non-tutor I know. An old poster declares, “Have a Question? Ask your Librarian.” How literally many of us have learned to take that advice! A botanical passage in Homer? Ask your librarian. A history of London? Ask your librarian. A musty old manual? Ask you librarian. A novel for a vacation? Advice on gardening? A new doctor in Annapolis? Ask your librarian! But this librarian not only answers your questions. She gets interested in them. She reads up on them, continues sending you relevant materials for years to come, and forever forwards her own queries about the purchase of related books for her library. Finally, in the spirit of this college, and as a true associate of the faculty, this librarian has taught us what questions we should ask. Most important, she has urged us to ask: “What is the function of the library in this unusual community of readers?” Which secondary materials best help us to read the books that are the primary teachers in our program? How can the library supplement that program with books on subjects that we don’t all read together? And how can we keep our attention on books at all, while much of the world is turning from printed to electronic words? In short, she has articulated the notion of the library as a carefully selected “collection” in the service of a carefully thoughtout curriculum. Another “collection” that we owe to Kitty is the important archive of photos and documents she has established about the history of St. John’s College and its program. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } For several decades, Kitty has bought our new books and rebound our own, planted flowers at the entrance and kept an eye on the exit, dealt with leaks in the roof and mushrooms in the basement. She personally visited Mortimer Adler’s books in Chicago, and arranged to move them all to Annapolis. She’s moved her own books from one side of campus to the other. She even managed to make it a lot of fun. Over the years, Kitty has trained and kept in touch with dozens of student aides who consider her a trusted friend who knows what they are doing from the inside. She’s made parties for our students, for our children, and for us. And she’s been an important representative of the college to town borrowers and other visitors who know us through our library. Unflappably, she has dealt with converts, and extroverts, introverts, and, like all librarians, even a few perverts. Great readers come in at least two types. Some withdraw into their books and are very silent. Others are great talkers. We all know which type Kitty is. She is articulate in the old-fashioned way that one finds in people who love words, words in books, and words in the talk of friends who love books. For this urban Northerner, the Virginia accent and exclamations like “my word” have always had a special delight. And our Kitty is witty. It was she who declared, in the early seventies, that she wasn’t “laid back, but hunched forward, and proud of it!” Part mother hen and part vigilant fury, Kitty Kinzer has shaped and guarded her– and our–precious “collection” of books for almost thirty years. Many of us simply cannot imagine the library without her. But we probably won’t have to. For, from the day she retires, she’ll probably become one of the heaviest town borrowers the St. John’s library has ever had. Of course, she will no longer be the first person to take home all the books. And, yes, like the rest of us, she will have to drag them all in for her infamous call-ins. Nevertheless, from the day she retires, things will be different around here. And, my word, dear Kitty, how we shall miss you. x �41 {Obituaries} James A. Matthews by Thomas May, Tutor At a dramatic moment in Book IX of the Iliad, Phoenix, lifelong counselor and tutor of Achilles, reminds his pupil of the model by which he has been instructed: “to be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.” Longtime St. John’s staff member James Matthews, who died in March, is fondly remembered as just such a man—one whose words and actions simply and eloquently expressed noble character and deep religious faith. Known to his friends and associates on the Annapolis campus as “Jim” or “Jimmy,” he served the college for more than 37 years before retiring in 2000, after becoming incapacitated by ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Born in Shadyside, Md., Jim was raised by his foster parents, Charles and Elizabeth Tyler, in Annapolis, where he attended Wiley Bates High School and sang in the choir of First Baptist Church. He came to St. John’s in 1963 at the age of 18 and was assigned to custodial duties in Mellon Hall. Of his many associates, James “Jake” Hicks remembers him fondly as a true friend who acted as an older brother to him during their 27 years together in Mellon. He recalls that Jim took him under his wing when he joined the college staff, greeted him as a friend and showed him every- thing, from how to run floor-stripping machines to how to keep calm under harsh criticism. Jim was unstinting in his praise of what was right and well done, and equally direct in his criticism of what he saw to be wrong or unfair. He was unafraid of expressing his affection; when the weekend arrived on Friday afternoon, Jim would say, “Stay out of trouble, see you Monday; I love you, man!” Early on in their time together, Jake came in one morning to hear Jim’s deep bass voice emanating from the supply closet beside the FSK lobby, privately reading his Bible and saying his prayers. “Did you pray for me?” Jake asked. “You’re the first one,” was the reply. His keen sense of when a student, a staff member, a co-worker, was troubled or discouraged was inerrant, and he would gently offer to listen, frequently taking the person aside into the Conversation Room, his “office,” for words of support or advice. He was scrupulous about keeping confidences and expected others to do the same. This staunch faith and love of life that informed Jim’s life at the college sustained him through his long struggle with ALS. Throughout this time, and particularly during these last two years, as his life was gradually confined to the sickroom of his home, Jim continued his keen interest in the life of St. John’s and his friends here. When colleagues and I went to visit Jim and his wife, Doris, we would invariably find him in good spirits. “I’m still here,” he would say, greeting us with a smile full of his joy for life, “and I’m obviously meant to be; I am so blessed.” With characteristic generosity, he and his family requested that any memorial contributions be made either to Hospice of the Chesapeake or to the James Matthews Scholarship Fund, established at the college when Jim retired in 1999. x Vernon Derr, ’48 Vernon Ellsworth Derr, class of 1948 and member emeritus of the Board of Visitors and Governors, died of complications of Parkinson’s disease on July 24, 2003, in Boulder, Colorado. He was 81. Born and raised in Baltimore, Derr had planned on a career in engineering until a teacher suggested he consider St. John’s. He enrolled in 1940 but left in 1942 to serve in the 11th Airborne Signal Company during World War II. He returned to St. John’s after the war, living on the back campus in the veterans’ housing with his wife, Mary, and graduated in 1948. In 1959 he earned a Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University. Derr was chief scientist at Martin Company from 1959 to 1967. He worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1967 to 1994, serving as director of Environmental Research Laboratories from 1983 to 1988. He taught at St. John’s, Rollins, and the University of Colorado. As a research scientist at the University of Colorado, Derr studied the effect of climate changes on clouds. He developed a forecasting method based on artificial intelligence and data going back 150 years on winds, cloudiness, and air and sea temperatures off the west coast. His computer model could predict weather six months in the future. In 1988 he received the U.S. Presidential Distinguished Rank Award and in 1991 the U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award. Derr was always interested in St. John’s and served on the Board of Visitors and Governors for six years. He credits his education at St. John’s for helping him remain open to new ideas, adapt to changes in careers, and respond to the demands of research. Survivors include his wife Mary, of Boulder; a son, Michael E. Derr; two daughters, Louise E. Derr and Carol MacBride; and a grandson. x ALSO NOTED: EDWARD HEISE, class of 1936, July 30, 2003 WILLIAM K. LYNCH, class of 1932, June 3, 2003 WILLIAM D. RENDALL, class of 1942, March 23, 2003 For 36 years, Jimmy Matthews had a smile for everyone on the Annapolis campus. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } WILLIAM J. SEELEY JR., class of 1936, March 17, 2003 �42 {Campus Life} CROQUET 2003 For behold, in the midst of the field there arose a great contest. And mallet strove with ball, and ball with ball, and many balls did thread the postern of a wicket, and great was the tumult thereof. But the people regarded it not, and drank and made merry. And the Lord saw that it was good. Well...OK. Anonymous Alumnus, class of 1978 Les chic-chacs eternelles de ces espheres infinies m'effrayent. Henri “Blaise” Higuera Every tradition grows ever more venerable—the more remote is its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe. Nietzsche, HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN nother croquet match, another victory for St. John’s College. Imperial Wicket Ben Porter led the old orange-and-black to its 17th win in the 21-year contest against the Naval Academy on Sunday, April 27. Originator of the croquet tradition, Kevin Heyburn (SF86, shown above with mallet) hit out the first ball. Unable to come up with a new angle on the same old story (I’ve been covering the match for nine years), I will step aside to let more able pens provide the commentary. A Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love. --Sus3an Borden (A87) photos by sara white wilson Milton, PARADISE LOST { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �43 {Campus Life} Not at all similar are the race of the immortal gods and the race of men who walk upon the earth. Homer, ILIAD Dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth! Oh for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stainèd mouth. Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale” For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn? Among all men on earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards. Austen, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE Homer, ODYSSEY { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �44 {tutors} Grant Franks: Finding His Inner Wizard on the Road from Santa Fe to Annapolis n July 15, Santa Fe tutor Grant Franks (A77) rolled into Annapolis on his Trice XL recumbent tricycle—completing a five-week journey of more than 2,000 miles from the Santa Fe campus. After triumphantly planting the New Mexico flag in front of McDowell, he set off with family and friends—gathered to witness his arrival—for a crab feast at City Dock. Franks says the unusual design of his three-wheeled cycle makes for an extremely safe and comfortable ride; stable and aerodynamic, it’s “the go-cart of your dreams.” He named it Shadowfax, after Gandalf’s horse of Lord of the Rings fame. “A friend told me that the secret when going through middle age is to find your inner wizard,” Franks explains. “His is Yoda, so he said I could have Gandalf.” Franks spoke to his wife regularly by phone, and Martha Franks (A78) logged his experiences on their Web site under the heading, “From the Bay to the Fe: Cross Country on Shadowfax.” Excerpts from Franks’ travel log describe the highlights (and low points) of the trip. Except for Grant Franks’ initial pre-trip entry, the log was recorded by Martha Franks. O –Beth Schulman June 3: Headed out of town, the headwind seemed daunting until Grant realized he had the parking brake on—doesn’t happen on a regular bike. Then, to make up time, put on Bach’s Symphony and Cantata No. 3 which pushed him up from 10.5 mph to 14.3 mph. Although Grant brought some selections from the Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hahn, he’s worried that “mindfulness” is exactly what you don’t want on a trip like this. June 6: Grant headed up 54 North on a shoulderless four-lane highway… Some people gave him a wide berth; some didn’t, June 9: First, the stats: 99.38 miles, over very bumpy proto-Ozarks; 10 hours and 48 minutes between Lamar and Marshfield. While not the longest, this was certainly the hardest day so far. There were even despairing thoughts of flagging a truck down during the last few hours, but none came by, and Grant was driven by circumstance into accomplishment. June 11: The morning began auspiciously, keeping up a 10 mph average, despite a phenomenon that Grant named to himself “missouris.” These are small valleys cut into the limestone Ozark plateau until it comes to the edge of the “missouri,” where it continues in the same compass heading, but angling downward at an alarming angle of dip. Without making actual measurements, Grant estimates the average angle to be about 88°. Since the citizens of Missouri—could it really be malice?—have made no use of zigzag “switchback” patterns common in the Appalachians for going up steep grades, the road simply careens down the side of the valley where it crosses a one-lane bridge over the small stream that is responsible for the valley in the first place…Grant can measure the severity of such “missouris” by the speed that the Shadowfax attains when it arrives at the bridge: there are 30 mph misBiking from Santa Fe to Annapolis gave Grant Franks a physical challenge he was hungry for. “In my fantasy life, the trip quickly grew into a personal confrontation between me and the highway system of the United States,” says tutor Grant Franks. “In my imagination, I would taunt the road map: ‘You’re not so big! I can take you!’ Bizarre? Maybe. But I was looking for a big challenge, and here it was.” victoria smith May 16: With the trip a week and a half away, I am doing some preparation work on Shadowfax, fixing the headrest and the side pannier supports. I am also working on loading my I-Pod with music and books for listening during the trip. The longest work I have is the Bible, unabridged (77 hours from Genesis to Revelation). Also included are three John Le Carré novels, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and extended selections from James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, plus several dozen hours of music ranging from Sinead O’Connor and Joan Baez to Aaron Copeland, Beethoven, and Bach. Also the Beatles. and Grant realized he had been spoiled by the long ride from Las Vegas on an empty two-lane highway with broad shoulders and no traffic—hot, straight and boring, but reasonably safe. The Song of Songs is wonderful—love stronger than death—although some of the similes are surprising, and there is not the smallest textual suggestion to support the church’s long-time claim that this is a chaste allegory for divine/ecclesiastical relations. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �{Tutors} no desire to be like anyone else; second, in particular, he didn’t want to be like someone who would shout such a question; third, cars were a blot on the landscape which made us dependent on foreign oil; and fourth, maybe if this guy got out of his car sometimes he would be in better shape. souris, 35 mph missouris, etc. The most severe has been a 44 mph missouri; coming to the “Yield” sign at the bottom of that missouri, Grant was screaming, “Yield to me! I can’t stop!” Fortunately, there was no oncoming traffic...And then the rains began. At first it seemed merely an obstacle to be faced with a high heart, and thoughts of “this is not so bad” kept up the energy. The yellow rain jacket seemed to work, although there was no question of keeping dry, really, since rain on the outside met sweat from the inside with only the wall of plastic between them. Sunscreen, it turns out, causes water to bead up, leaving Grant feeling that he had been dipped in wax. June 13: The first leg to Ellington, Mo., was easy enough, and the eidos of a roadside diner was found, with aggressively authentic people—Heidegger would be pleased. Fortified with a Western omelet, hash browns and toast, Grant made the dicey decision to brave the predicted thunderstorms and head for the next dot of civilization some 35 miles away . . . Every hill is a raw, untempered straining straight into the sky. One was five miles long and found Grant geared all the way down to first gear—out of a possible 81—but still hardpressed. The Ten Commandments are a popular lawn ornament in this place. June 14: I remarked that he seemed to think nothing now of 60-mile days which had been hard at first. He scoffed at the 60-mile day—a “nothing, a bagatelle, a luxury.” The first 10 miles whistle by, the second are a little harder; the third seem like the meat and potatoes of the day; the fourth are “droll,” and the fifth are spent thinking that you are practically there, while the sixth pass thinking that you are there and will there be a hotel? June 15: Coming out of Chester, the Cycling Association offered two routes. Grant chose one along the levee, which meant that he rode on absolute flat through haze and watched the water and the coal barges moving along with it. Spectacular. Deer by the side of the road. The miles slipped by. The heavy, thick smell of green and humidity brought home that he has reached the East. June 16: Coming out of Eddieville, in the last few miles of the day, he looked straight ahead through some trees and saw bluegreen hills rolling away into the distance 45 forever—Kentucky, just across the Ohio. He had about a tenth of a second to admire all that loveliness before he was taken by a final, unexpected missouri, and plunged, shouting, down an asphalt incline. You don’t pedal at that pace; you mostly fall, and the winds pulled his helmet back so far that it was acting like a parachute, so that the only way to get it back on the top of his head was to open his jaw widely, in which case the bugs moved in. Quite a moment. Through wind-induced tears he made out that he was going 44.1 mph, peak speed on the trip so far. June 21: The two books he had recently bought, Northrop Frye, some superfluous shorts, and other small items could be spared, so Grant packed them up and mailed them to my mother in Washington, D.C., lightening his load by, says the post office, 4.7 lbs (including some Missouri moisture that had never entirely left the Northrop Frye book). Feeling immensely ahead of the game, he rewarded himself by purchasing Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be—narrowly preferred to Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo and only upon the discovery that Hegel was not to be had…The madness for books obscures every prudent thought; I know this because, with Grant too far away to exercise oversight, I have been filling up our bookshelves, too. Between us, we will read ourselves out of house and home. June 23: As he was starting up, a black Camaro roared by, and a pudgy head and shoulders leaned out from it to shout “Why don’t you get a car like everybody else?” Some energizing defiance from that experience, as Grant reflected that, first, he had { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } June 25: There was a curious feeling today that, under the table, the trip had been accomplished, even though there is so far to go...Finally, he began to feel a little ragged, 73 miles being a pretty long day over rough country, so he put on the Brandenbergs, which give the feet great tempo. You can switch to the largo movements going uphill, and there is nothing to beat the peppiness that pulls you over those last few miles. Bach was truly a genius. Grant is in Damascus, Va., trying to avoid having portentous thoughts about being blinded on the road there, since he has been listening to all this Paul. June 28: There is a large National Park between Lexington and Charlottesville…Down so close to the ground, not only does he get interested and appreciative toward the flowers, but has begun to notice the smells. A car going by, spouting exhaust, is something of a trial in that regard—he finds himself tempted to shout “Get a tricycle!” at them . . . Several times in the course of the last few days people have asked about the New Mexico flag he flies. Some people’s jaws drop when he says he has cycled from there, which is gratifying of course, but he also muses on the fact that no one recognizes the flag. He feels like Odysseus with the oar. June 29: “Never let it be said,” Grant told me, sternly, “that a guy in a fake wheelchair can’t make it all the way up Blue Ridge.” The Appalachians are harder, although in Virginia they have achieved the switchback …Grant came down through the town of Afton, clinging by his fingernails to the side of the mountain, where the cookie lady lives. This is someone who keeps a perpetual welcome and refreshment for bicyclers coming up this steep way, by way of congratulations on the undertaking. A classy ministry, I think…Charlottesville was unmistakable, with the rotunda of the University of Virginia. This is the symbol for Grant of a life not lived, as he would probably have gone to UVA if he hadn’t found St. John’s instead—an imponderable alternative. x �{Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Dear Johnnies, The January Alumni Association Board meeting sometimes leads us into blizzards and sometimes into beautiful winter sunsets, but it always puts us in the middle of essay writing period for seniors. They take a few hours out of their labors to join alumni hosts for Senior Dinners—conversations between alumni and soon-to-be alumni about the college, self, and the world. April on the Annapolis campus includes lots of fun things—croquet, budding flowers, more senior dinners, and soccer on the green. Passing by Dean Flaumenhaft’s office I was reminded of the completion of the spring essay ritual. Posted there on his door were the schedules for Senior Orals. Before I could have a thought, the feelings rushed back. In an instant I relived it all: the alternating despair and elation of essay writing period, the trembling hands before the opening question, the careful and considered conversation, the unfettered relief when it was over, and the joyous celebration. Looking at the list of essay titles, feeling gave way to thought with a question: How does your senior essay relate to the rest of your life? I know the curiosity that led me to Galileo for my essay was the same curiosity that has driven my work as a high school physics teacher, instructional designer, entrepreneur, and researcher. Though the title is long since lost (and thankfully) in the dusty recesses, I know that the questions that drew me to my topic are the same questions that inspire and engage me today. I am sure my essay, as product, was both arrogant and naïve, but as process it was a precursor to a chain of investigations that continue to build my life as a thinking human being, if not a full-time liberal artist. Is the same true of you? How do you see your current self reflected (or challenged) in the essay you wrote during the spring of your senior year? How have the questions shaped your later inquiries? How did the writing reflect your literary habits? How did the public defense of your work build your strength as a confident conversational companion? Or do you see the experience as disconnected from the rest of your life? I also wondered about the lives that would unfold for these emerging alumni as they take their St. John’s experiences out into the world. What do their essay titles say about them as productive members of their various communities? How will they integrate their Johnnie experiences into fulfilling lives of love, work, and learning? What kind of partners and parents will these people become? How will they practice citizenship in an ever more challenging polity? How will they express themselves through public and private action? What do these essay titles tell you about the newly formed alumni who created them? A Modest Approach to Science through Analogy A Confession of the Confessions The Art of Beauty: A Discussion of Duality in To the Lighthouse Wanted: Guilty for All God’s Thumb: The Political Discourse of The Federalist Desire, the One True Teacher: The Investigation of Love Within Plato’s Symposium Moral Teleology and Practical Proofs Montaigne’s Path to Wisdom; or, How Not to Miss the Point Entirely Experiencing Incommensurability And from Santa Fe... Science as a Poetic Vision: Finding a Home for Orphaned Beauty in Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants The Importance of Being Wagner You Ain’t the Boss of Me: Freedom and Social Rebellion in Prometheus Bound Human Instinct: The Mortar of Our Universe Piety and Passivity: Walking the Line in the Book of Job Prelude to the Song: Mathematics, Dialectic, and the Good Mercy, Sin, and the Foundations of Society in The Scarlet Letter Life: A Blend of Dichotomies Theory of the Use of Theory: The Question of the Practical in Modern Science Santa Fe graduates have much to celebrate. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, undergraduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program or New, graduated or not, all alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The Board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the Association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates Alumni Association news and events of interest. President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary –Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair – Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76) Web site – www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. We welcome all of these authors into the community of the St. John’s College Alumni Association along with their peers who began the journey with them four years ago and who were following other paths as spring came to Santa Fe and Annapolis. It is a privilege and a pleasure to share experiences and remembered experiences with you! For the past, the present, and the future. Glenda Eoyang SF76 Eoyang@chaos-limited.com President St. John’s College Alumni Association teri thomson randall 46 �47 {Alumni Association News} Homecoming Honorees The Alumni Association celebrated the accomplishments of two distinguished St. John’s alumni with Awards of Merit presented at Homecoming in Santa Fe. A native of New York City, Alfred Grant (SFGI83) earned a degree from City College of New York before embarking on a naval career from January 1943 to November 1945. He founded his own company in the 1960s and sold it in 1972. He moved to Santa Fe in 1978 and enrolled in the Graduate Institute. After earning his St. John’s degree, Grant earned a second master’s from the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of two books: Our American Brethren: A History of Letters in the British Press During the American Revolution, 1775-1781 (1995) and The American Civil War and the British Press (2002). Grant served on the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1987 to 1990. Eric Springsted (SF73) went on to study theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he earned a master’s of divinity and a Ph.D. Springsted has served as chaplain and lecturer in philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary and Illinois College. As founder and president of the American Weil Society, he is recognized as the foremost American author on Weil, having authored and edited books including Christus Mediator; Simone Weil and the Suffering of Love; and Spirit, Nature and Community. Springsted’s involvement in the college has included serving as class of 1973 representative for the Fourth Century fund-raising campaign and as a member of what is now Philanthropia, the Alumni Association’s development arm. He has also been an active member of the association. x Celebrating the Formation of Attention The following is excerpted from remarks from Eric Springsted, A73, at the Homecoming banquet in Santa Fe. Fourteen years ago in April 1989, the American Weil Society held its annual meeting at St. John’s in Santa Fe. The theme of the meeting that year was “Simone Weil and Educa- tion.” With the help of [Santa Fe Tutor] Elliot Skinner, I arranged for a volunteer group of students to have a seminar on Weil’s essay “Reflections on The Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God.” Fifteen to twenty students read the text and showed up on a late Friday afternoon to discuss it as Elliot and I led the seminar, and the Weil experts sat around the outside of the Senior Common Room and watched. That the students were willing to do this was already a testimonial to St. John’s. What was more important is that the students were magnificent. The best of them saw the deeper points of the essay, and even were able to anticipate Weil’s thought in areas where they had not read. But something else struck me about this seminar, something that very much had to do with the reading. “Right Use of School Studies” is about attention, a key notion in Weil’s thinking. She defines attention as “suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object.” The word “detached” is an unfortunate translation for it renders the French disponible, which does not have the connotation of aloofness that the English “detached” does; it means something more like “ready to be used.” What Weil then means by attention is that it is a way of knowing that does not construct meaning and truth but takes it in as it is, consents to the reality of the other, and then adjusts itself to that reality. Attention is a key notion for her understanding of faith, love of God and neighbor, philosophy (including her astounding readings of Plato), Christ, and her left wing politics. Now what struck me about this seminar is that the students weren’t just talking about attention, they were showing it at an appropriate level just as Weil thought students should. They were paying close attention to a not-so-easy text. But they were also paying attention to each other. Afterwards members of the society remarked with some amazement at how students in the seminar helped each other to understand. They also remarked on the fact that when a junior or senior cited a thinker such as Kant, he or she immediately recognized that the freshmen and sophomores hadn’t read Kant, and so worked to put the point in other terms. At St. John’s discussion has always been fair and requires a common text. Why is all this so important? In a late fragment Weil defined culture this way: “Culture is the formation of attention.” Culture, at least a worthy culture, gives us worthy things to pay attention to, it gives us knowledge and wisdom as a goal; it even shapes our bodily reactions so that we can sit still long enough { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } to pay attention. It gives us what the Germans call Sitzfleisch. That “culturing” in the service of attention above all is what this school is good at, I realized that April afternoon. I don’t know if we always recognize that. I don’t think we did, or even could as students when we were so thoroughly situated within the process. But for those of us here who are no longer students, we ought to recognize it. We ought to recognize it for a reason that Weil argued that we need to respect institutions and collectivities, namely that they are food for the soul. Without them our souls starve. This is something we need to pay close attention to. In a culture that deforms attention, where intellectuals are either busy constructing or deconstructing reality—but never paying attention to it, where differences between the just and the unjust are blurred by those leaders who ought to distinguish them, and where we all are constantly being distracted, this college is a rare place where a mind when it asks for bread doesn’t get a stone or a serpent. It truly deserves our support. x CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-275-9012 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 215-465-0244 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin 410-280-0958 PORTLAND Dale Mortimer 360-882-9058 AUSTIN Bev Angel 512-926-7808 SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 619-423-4972 BALTIMORE David Kidd 410-728-4126 SANTA FE Richard Cowles 505-986-1814 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 SEATTLE Amina Stickford 206-269-0182 CHICAGO Lorna Johnson 773-338-8651 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 DALLAS/FORT WORTH Suzanne Gill Doremus 817-927-2390 DENVER/BOULDER Lee Goldstein 720-283-4659 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 NEW YORK Fielding Dupuy 212-576-7260 NORTHERN CALIF. Jonathon Hodapp 831-393-9496 TRIANGLE CIRCLE (NC) Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 WASHINGTON DC Jean Dickason 301-699-6207 ISRAEL Emi Geiger Leslau 15 Aminadav Street Jerusalem 93549 Israel 9-722-671-7608 boazl@cc.huji.ac.il �48 {St. John’s Forever} The birthplace of Charles Carroll, the Barrister, begins its journey up Main Street to the Annapolis campus. Moving Day hat does it take to move a 1723 house through a 1955 town? Five weeks, $20,000, 43 feet of clearance, and some legal acrobatics. On the morning of October 4, 1955, hundreds of Annapolitans watched as the Carroll Barrister House, birthplace of Charles Carroll, the Barrister, an early American patriot, was moved from the corner of Main and Conduit streets to its current location on the King George Street side of the Annapolis W campus. Workers had spent two weeks preparing the house: jacking it up, laying steel beams, and dismantling chimneys. The power company sent 20 workers to install temporary high poles to provide clearance for the house along its journey. The house was split into two parts: a 125-ton section that reached King George Street at 6 p.m. and was placed on the campus the next morning, and a 25-ton section that was moved three weeks later in less than three hours. During the course of the move, the title changed hands three times to establish insurance liability: At the beginning of the day, the house belonged to Joseph G. Greenfield, who had bought it at auction { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } and wanted to develop the site for commercial purposes. During the trip, it belonged to Historic Annapolis, which had raised $20,000 to save the house from demolition and finance the move. As soon as it was placed at its new site, it became the property of St. John’s. Today the building houses the Admissions and Advancement offices. It is the first stop on campus for many Johnnies who visit as prospective students. They meet with Admissions Director John Christensen in his office, which was once the dining room, and often have their interviews in the reception room, once the living room. x �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Event Annapolis-area alumni have the opportunity to take a leap of imagination in considering mathematics in a seminar on Harvard mathematician Barry Mazur’s book Imagining Numbers (Particularly the Square Root of 15.) Tutors Sam Kutler (A54) and Eva Brann will co-lead the seminar, scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday, October 12. Mazur, one of the foremost mathematicians in the world, served as the chief “referee” on the panel to check the Andrew Wiles proof of Fermat’s last theorem. Imagining Numbers explores how we grasp and develop ideas both in poetry and in math, from the Renaissance to the present day, and provides a step-by-step guide to how we can begin imagining numbers for ourselves. To register or for more information, call the Annapolis Alumni Office: 410-626-2531. moe hanson The Painting Project For three days in August, a small group from the classes of 1968 and 1969 came to the Santa Fe campus, sacrificing vacation time to tape windows and casings, climb ladders, paint walls, and generally improve the environs for all. The effort was coordinated by Margaret Gaffney (SF69), who was joined by Thompson Clay (SF69), Wendy Watson (SF68), Richard and Shirley Flint (SF68), and Ray Drolet (SF69). The group hopes to see the Alumni Painting Project become an annual event. Homecoming in Annapolis Laura Mangum (A04) and Alex Wall (A03) donned formal clothes and waltzed around the Great Hall as models for the 2003 Homecoming poster in Annapolis. Annapolis artist Moe Hanson photographed the couple, then used the snapshots to paint her watercolor celebrating one of the college’s favorite traditions, the waltz. The painting was used for a Homecoming brochure and poster—this year’s giveaway gift to attendees. Didn’t get one at Homecoming September 12-14 in Annapolis? A limited number are available for sale. Call the Alumni Office at 410-626-2531. Tom Clay works on painting a ceiling as Shirley Flint takes a break. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Fall 2003 } �P ERIODICALS P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404 dave trozzo 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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 2003 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 29, Issue 3 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Fall 2003. 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_2003 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/4457368e8d103fe8926dc781d1ae996c.pdf 453ce634ebc110b01782c6281ec19770 PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis F a l l • Santa Fe Jonathan Swift T h e A d v e n t u r e s o f T r av e l 2 0 0 4 �On Swift W hat does it mean to be human? is one of the questions often discussed in St. John’s seminars. In a seminar on Gulliver’s Travels, the question could be expressed in this way: Are human beings good and rational creatures, or just a step above wild beasts? Gulliver’s odyssey begins among the tiny Lilliputians who fight with their neighbors over whether an egg should be broken on the small end or the big end. Finding himself a tiny being among giants in Brobdingnag, he suffers the indignity of being carried away by a monkey. Among the ridiculous scholars of the Academy in Lagado, he learns of a scientist’s eight-year attempt to draw sunlight from cucumbers. By his final stop in a land where horses are gentle, rational beings, and men are vile, greedy brutes, he has seen enough to conclude bitterly that man falls far short of the ideal. Swift was born of English parents in Dublin on November 30, 1667. His father died shortly before Swift was born, leaving him dependent on the generosity of uncles. (He feared poverty throughout his life and was quite a penny-pincher.) Swift studied at Kilkenny Grammar School and at Trinity College in Dublin, and later received an M.A. from Oxford. At the age of 22, he went to live at Moor Park in Surrey, where he served as a secretary to Sir William Temple. There he began a very close friendship with Esther Johnson, the daughter of Temple’s housekeeper, that lasted until her death. (Swift had another long relationship with a woman, Esther Vanhomrigh, but he never married.) In 1695, Swift was ordained in the Church of Ireland in Dublin. During the reign of Queen Anne, Swift was a celebrated figure in the literary and political life of London, becoming editor of the Tory journal The Examiner in 1710. He harbored great aspirations for a political career, but when Anne died in 1714, and George I came to power, the Tories lost their influence and Swift found himself outside the political power structure. He reluctantly returned to Ireland, where he was dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Though he felt like an exile in Ireland, Swift identified with the poverty and misery of the Irish people. Few anthologies of satirical literature fail to include Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” written in 1729, which sets forth a logical argument for ending Ireland’s poverty by breeding infants for food. Swift suffered from Ménière’s disease, which left him dizzy—a “giddiness” as he described it— that he feared was madness. He was declared senile in his last years, and died on October 19, 1745. In many ways, Gulliver is a model traveler. He endeavors to understand the local customs and the native language of his captors and companions, and he is patient and diplomatic. In describing his culture to others, he gains insights into his own. Because he recognizes that Yahoo qualities persist in supposedly civilized men, Gulliver returns from his last voyage with a profound disgust for humanity. He can no longer tolerate the sight of his fellow man—even his own wife and children: “[M]y memory and imagination were perpetually filled with the virtues and ideas of those exalted Houyhnhnms. And when I began to consider that by copulating with one of the Yahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror.” In this issue of The College magazine, intrepid Johnnie travelers share their perceptions about living in a new and unfamiliar culture. Their observations of interesting sights and sounds and experiences are made richer by the questions they pursue about themselves in other cultures. —RH The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Annapolis 410-626-2539 reharty@sjca.edu Rosemary Harty, editor Sus3an Borden, managing editor Jennifer Behrens, art director Advisory Board John Christensen Harvey Flaumenhaft Roberta Gable Barbara Goyette Kathryn Heines Pamela Kraus Joseph Macfarland Jo Ann Mattson Eric Salem Brother Robert Smith Santa Fe 505-984-6104 alumni@sjcsf.edu John Hartnett, Santa Fe editor Advisory Board David Levine Andra Maguran Margaret Odell Roxanne Seagraves Mark St. John Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �Fa l l 2 0 0 4 Vo l u m e 3 0 , I s s u e 3 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 8 Eastern Classics d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • Santa Fe’s once-controversial graduate program is going strong after a decade. • • • 10 Johnnies Abroad page From China to Colombia, wandering Johnnies relish new experiences amid different cultures. • • 7 page 10 28 18 The Story-tellers • page • Alumni who work as curators and in other interpretive roles make history tangible. 32 from the bell towers The long-lost California campus. Annapolis dedicates Gilliam Hall. Our man in Iraq. New tutors in Annapolis and Santa Fe. Summer interns are satisfied customers. An honorary alumnus makes a generous gift. letters bibliofile Writer Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74) on the great books, Zen, and writing. Annapolis alumnus pens children’s poetry. alumni notes P RO F I L E S 30 Finding a pattern in conjunctions told 22 Commencement page Tutor Chester Burke (A74) and University of Chicago Professor Danielle Allen gave graduates more questions to ponder. page 18 Carole Chaski (A77) that police had a killer on their hands. 36 Sara Roahen (SF94) carves out a niche as a restaurant critic in the Big Easy. 42 alumni voices Santa Fe alumni Paul and Laura Cooley on life without a car. 26 Homecoming in Santa Fe page 46 48 Parties, picnics, and piñons. page 26 on the cover Jonathan Swift Illustration by David Johnson alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} The California Property: A Happy Ending at Last Standing on a hill high atop what used to be the Marks Ranch, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of regret at what might have been—a cluster of picturesque dormitories here, an academic building there, a playing field bordering the state park. The view from these golden hills is of a scenic valley, and beyond that the city of Monterey and the Pacific Ocean. More than 30 years ago, the Marks family, enamored of the St. John’s program, donated this spectacular 850-acre property to the college for possible development for a California campus. The ensuing decades saw extensive studies—topographical, geographical, seismographical, political— followed by a decision by the college that the property was less than an ideal site for a campus. Most of the property was too steep to build on, and infrastructure would be too expensive. A report issued in 1990 by the Monterey Campus Feasibility Committee of the Board of Visitors and Governors, chaired by Warren Winiarski (class of 1952), concluded that a Califor- nia campus was not in the picture. That led the college to investigate selling the property to a developer—a decision unfortunately timed to a groundswell of opposition to growth in Monterey County. For years, several Annapolis and Santa Fe presidents and other college officers, assisted by members of the board, weighed the need to make the best business decision for St. John’s with protecting the college’s good name in the face of opposition from wellorganized conservation and citizens’ groups. The resolution came last summer, when St. John’s sold the property to the Big Sur Land Trust, a nonprofit organization that conserves the lands and waters of California’s central coast. The agreement also included California State University, which claimed a 22 percent interest in the property through one of the many legal actions and settlements that evolved over the years. (CSU was to get the land if St. John’s didn’t build a college.) The Big Sur Land Trust—which is paying off the $4.5-million purchase price of the property in install- ments over the next three years—will draw from neighboring communities to seek a vision for the property as well as the financial means for carrying the vision out. Susanna Danner, conservation project manager for the Big Sur Land Trust, took time last summer to offer a tour of “It was an excellent resolution.” Robley Levy, class of 1956 what used to be one of the most productive chicken ranches in the county—a family business led by matriarch Nisene Marks, whose children deeded the property to St. John’s. The land is still leased for cattle grazing, and a geologist initially hired by St. John’s, and now employed by the Trust, runs his business out of the Marks Hacienda and helps keep intruders away. Over the years, the ranch has attracted illegal campers and lots of debris: an abandoned bus, old appliances, barrels of some unidentified fluid. Up on higher ground, Danner points out the boundaries of Toro County Park and the hiking trails that extend into the canyon and the back country. Dotted with coastal live oak and chamise chaparral trees, the area offers a habitat for wildlife including mountain lions, bobcats, foxes, and many different species of birds, including golden eagles. Part of the Marks property may be eventually joined to the park. “On three-day weekends, the park routinely turns away visitors, and there’s no money for new park development in the The rolling hills of the Marks Ranch were too steep for a campus. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } county,” Danner says. On one border of the property is a visible sign of why the college faced fierce opposition to selling the land for development: luxury houses in the Las Palmas subdivision that are wedged into the hillside. St. John’s had a contract with the subdivision’s developer, the Fletcher Company, that gave the company a 20-year option to develop the property. A combination of forces emerging at the same time would have made development difficult, says Robley Levy (class of 1956), a former Santa Cruz County commissioner who served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors until recently. But the cut-and-fill development near the Marks Ranch was probably the biggest reason the issue became an emotional one. “People were happy with the first phase of the (Las Palmas) development,” Levy says. “But the cut-and-fill development of phase two, that’s what drove the neighbors nuts. It’s classical for Southern California, but for people in this area, it’s not the accepted way to develop property.” A conservation group called Land Watch made the Marks Ranch one of its major issues. The group capitalized on ideals of the St. John’s Program— truth, justice, integrity—in its campaign rhetoric. Levy says the board anticipated some resistance, but never such a vituperative attack. Alumni were among those who wrote letters and signed petitions in opposition to development. “It might have been possible before all of the bad news got out to have a compromise where a portion of the lower part of the property could have been developed—if St. John’s had been willing to wait,” Levy says. “But I don’t think the college is really suited to be a developer.” Levy was co-chair of the continued on p. 3 �{From the Bell Towers} 3 Gilliam Hall: A New Dorm Opens in Annapolis david trozzo On November 11, when the college officially dedicates its newest dormitory, some special guests will join the St. John’s campus community in celebrating this milestone. Among them will be the family of James H. Gilliam Jr., for whom the building is named. Mr. Gilliam was a member of the Board of Trustees of The Hodson Trust from 2000 until his sudden death last summer at the age of 58. Generous funding from the Hodson Trust helped the College build the dormitory, which houses 48 students. A second group includes the entire board of The Hodson Trust, particularly its chairman, Finn Caspersen, who will speak at the dedication. A third group comes to honor Mr. Gilliam as an AfricanAmerican businessman and civic leader, a man who was devoted to public service and to improving higher education A glass-enclosed common room in Gilliam Hall offers splendid views opportunities for minority students. They are the first seven African-American graduates of the college: Martin Dyer (class of College Creek. of 1952), Leo L. Simms (class of 1956), Everett Wilson (class of An attorney and private investor, Mr. Gilliam served on a num1956), Joan Cole (class of 1957), Carolyn Baker Brown (class of ber of nationally recognized boards, namely, Household Interna1958), Jerry Hynson (class of 1959), and Charlotte King (class of tional Inc., T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Howard Hughes Medical 1959). All seven are expected to attend the dedication ceremony. Institute, and National Geographic Society. A longtime resident of Mr. Gilliam’s widow, Dr. Linda G. J. Gilliam, and his father, Delaware, he also served as chairman of the Governor’s Judicial James H. Gilliam Sr., will be present for the dedication ceremony. Nominating Commission of the State of Delaware, chair of the James H. Gilliam Jr. graduated from Morgan State University in Administrative Enhancement Committee of the Delaware 1967 and earned a law degree in 1970 from Columbia University’s Supreme Court, and as a member of the executive committee and School of Law. After board of the Medical Center of Delaware. practicing law in New York, “Jim Gilliam was a particularly good friend to the College, and he joined a law firm in Wilmwe are pleased that in this way he will become a permanent part of ington, Del. He joined the our community,” says Christopher B. Nelson, president. “Having Beneficial Corporation in 1979 as vice president-legal, rising to the College’s first seven African-American graduates present for the ceremony honors both Mr. Gilliam’s memory and the College’s executive vice president and decision to open its doors to them at a time when segregation was general counsel. He was the rule rather than the exception in Maryland. They have appointed to Beneficial’s Board remained devoted to the college and its ideals,” he adds. of Directors in 1984 and to its The addition of Gilliam Hall allows the college to house 350 executive committee in 1987. students on campus. In addition, the College reduced the number of triple dorm rooms from 18 to 13 and created a new common room with a kitchen in Humphreys. Construction begins this fall James Gilliam was a on a second dormitory, which will house 32 students and should be philanthropist, businessman, ready for students by December 2005. x and friend of the college. (continued) California property committee with another former board member, Stephen Feinberg (HSF96), and their time and expertise were instrumental in getting St. John’s out of the Fletcher contract and into negotiations with Big Sur. Board members Thomas Stern (SF68) and Robert Bienenfeld (SF80) were also involved at one point. “It was an excellent resolution,” says Levy. Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70), whose many years as a lawyer were an asset in negotiations, was relieved to see the college’s days as a California property owner coming to a close. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Santa Fe Initiative, a project to address some of the critical needs—from new science laboratories to funding for student internships—of the college’s Western campus. Just days before the agreement was announced, Nelson was still getting e-mails from Californians urging him to “Save the Marks Ranch.” He was clearly pleased to be able to write back with the news of the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } Big Sur agreement. “Some 13 years ago, our board determined that the property be put to its highest and best use. That’s just exactly what we see this to be,” Nelson said. x — Rosemary Harty �4 {From the Bell Towers} News and Announcements New Tutors CHRISTIAN HOLLAND (A84) joined the faculty in Annapolis. After graduating from St. John’s, Holland went to Rome, where he earned a degree in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian Institute and a degree in biblical studies from the Pontifical Biblical Institute. He has taught at the Monastery of Chevetogne in Belgium, at the Greek College in Rome, and at Emory University, where he earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature. In his research and teaching, he has specialized in biblical and patristic studies, postwar French philosophy, and theology. In Santa Fe, TRAVIS COOK joined the faculty. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Maine and Boston College. He is currently completing a doctorate in political science at Loyola University in Chicago. His dissertation is titled, “Shaftesbury and the Ancients: the Enduring Concern for the Noble and the Just.” Before joining the St. John’s community, he was the assistant director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University. AALE Accreditation St. John’s College in June joined a select group of colleges to receive accreditation by the American Academy for Liberal Education, a national organization dedicated to strengthening and promoting undergraduate liberal education through accreditation of liberal arts insti- In Memorium The college lost three members of the Annapolis campus community late in the summer. (The College will publish complete obituaries in the Winter 2005 issue.) • On August 17, former assistant dean and tutor emerita BARBARA LEONARD died. Leonard—an honorary member of the class of 1955—came to St. John’s in 1951 with the first class of female students. She had the important role of counseling, guiding, and supporting students throughout the years. She retired in 1987 after serving the college for 36 years. • Tutor emerita BEATE RUHM VON OPPEN (HA01), who was a tutor at the college from 1960 to 2003, died at her home in Annapolis on August 10. Born in Switzerland, she was raised in Germany and left the country at the age of 16 as the Nazis were rising to power. She earned her degree at the University of Birmingham and during World War II worked for the British Foreign Office. She moved to the United States in the late 1950s. Her book Letters to Freya, which captures the story of Nazi resister Helmuth James von Moltke, won the Scholl Prize, a prestigious literary award in Germany. • Former tutor ALFRED MOLLIN died at his home in Philadelphia on August 22. Mollin taught at St. John’s in the 1970s, but many more Johnnies know him from the Greek manual he co-wrote with tutor emeritus ROBERT WILLIAMSON (HA02). After leaving the college, Mollin earned a law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law. From 1978 until his retirement in 2001 he was an appellate lawyer with the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. x tutions and programs. The AALE joined the Middle States Association in a review of the college’s self-study, and the two accrediting bodies made a visit to the college together last fall. At its June meeting, the academy granted the college in Annapolis full institutional accreditation. The AALE’s standards for accreditation center on “a program’s demonstrated ability to instill and develop in its students the characteristics of liberally educated persons,” characteristics that include “an ability to reason clearly and effectively about important questions and issues, the acquisition of a rich fund of meaningful knowledge, and an inclination for seeking out and acquiring knowledge and skills.” Agresto and Iraq “We’ve been bombed two nights in a row, and I expect more of the same tonight,” JOHN AGRESTO wrote from Iraq last November. The former president of the Santa Fe campus was just a few months into his post as senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, and in the e-mail to his colleagues back in the states, he wrote about how the war affected his daily life. “To go to the Ministry or to a university I have to travel in a secure car with at least one shooter—usually my driver has a pistol in his lap. I’m both preceded and followed by two { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } John Agresto (right) needed flak jackets and armored body guards for his work in Iraq. armored humvees with two gunners in each and a soldier with a machine gun on the roof.” Once the most modern in the Middle East, Iraq’s institutions of higher learning withered under Saddam Hussein, and after his regime fell, they were further weakened by looting and vandalism. Agresto determined that the universities needed $1.2 billion to become viable again, but the reconstruction package approved by Congress last year allocated only $8 million for higher education, which Agresto directed to the construction of new science labs. He attempted to raise the remainder himself from the international community without success. Nevertheless, when he left Iraq in June, Agresto could report that some goals were achieved. These included reopening the universities; decentralizing the ministry and empowering the academic community through an academic bill of rights; removing admissions restrictions on female students; reestablishing Fulbright and other scholarship opportunities; and establishing three “American universities” in the Kurdish region of Iraq. x — Beth Schulman �{From the Bell Towers} Satisfied Customers ELIHU DIETZ (A06) and CHELSIA WHEELER (SF03) are among the true believers in the value of the Career Services offices on both campuses. Dietz spent the summer at a castle in Italy after spotting an advertisement for an internship in the Annapolis Career Services newsletter. Wheeler gained a lead on a graduate fellowship program, including a Capitol Hill internship, through the Santa Fe office. Here are their reports: Reading Retreat I found “Reading Retreats in Rural Italy,” a utopia for the socially awkward and artistically driven, last March through the Career Services newsletter Praxis. The notice was a laconic plea for anyone interested in performing remedial tasks for the upkeep of a 14th-century castle in exchange for cheap room and board and good conversation with international artists, book lovers, and travelers of all ilk. Believing it was too good to be true, I was determined to get in touch with the owner, Clark Lawrence. Five days later, I received a request for my resumé from Clark; six weeks later, I was on my way to Italy, to the Castle of Galeazza, where I lived for the next three months. There were four guest rooms and up to ten guests staying at the castle at a time. The first few days, my chores of watering and weeding the gardens, making up the rooms for the new arrivals, and feeding the cat were accompanied by the echoes of the two pianists practicing their program for the upcoming concert on the following Saturday. About every two weeks, the castle hosted a classical music concert (sometimes followed by tractor rides through the woods) and an open gallery displaying the works of six or seven painters from Moscow, Berlin, and Athens. On my two to three days off a week, I was just as likely to sit with a book or talk with guests as I was to take an overnight trip to Venice or Ravenna. While the daytime was usually spent awing over the Alexandria Quartet or Cide Hamete Benengeli’s masterpiece, dinners were always time for all the guests to come together and to tell stories or listen to Clark’s amusing antics. People listened to each other, drank with each other, and lived art (in all kinds of mediums) with one another. Every guest who came, like every student who comes to St. John’s, was a member of a community by the simple fact that they came willing to share their own thoughts and humor. All Johnnies love a great book but along with that they value a community of people willing to learn from others. It was lovely to experience a place where people took time out to enjoy life and simply live. Early this fall, yet another Johnnie will be there, Anna Schall (A07), who will take my place as an intern for three months. —Elihu Dietz Serving the People “Well you see,” said the woman on the other end of the line, “I am 64 years old, and I don’t have a lot of money. I fly my plane down to the Virgin Islands a few times a year to stay in my house there. But I have some business to conduct with the timeshare company, and I can’t afford to call them. Could you please call from your office and represent me?” It was a typical day in the office of the Hon. Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin Islands delegate to Congress. But, as a St. John’s College graduate, I have excellent skills in diplomatically avoiding the direct request. After hearing a long, unsolicited medical history of my caller, I agreed that if she sent information to our office, we would write a letter. She never sent the information. Margaret Odell of the Santa Fe Career Services office 5 pointed me toward this wonderful opportunity last winter. I was teaching English in Korea as a break from academia after graduation. The Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellowship Program provides an expenses-paid Summer Enrichment Program for six weeks at Howard University, then an internship for six weeks on Capitol Hill; then tuition, room, and board for two years of graduate study; then a summer internship at a U.S. embassy abroad; and finally, a five-year contract as a Foreign Service officer in the State Department. It fit perfectly my passion for traveling and learning. I can never thank Margaret enough for pointing me in the right direction. The congresswoman’s office contained a colorful mix of people, mostly from the Virgin Islands. One man argued on the phone with his girlfriend for hours on end. Another smoked out of the window of the federal building. And another spoke passionately of his readings of Kant and his search for the greater Good. (A Johnnie at heart.) I was amazed that I could find such a wonderful mix of people even in a congressional office, not to mention the constituents who called and wrote with strange requests every day. Now I am off on another adventure. I have just started graduate studies at American University to earn a master’s degree in International Affairs. The experience should prove another interesting new endeavor for a Johnnie. x —Chelsia C. Wheeler At left, Elihu Dietz’s summer castle. At right, Chelsia Wheeler meets Colin Powell. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �6 {Philanthropia} A $4 Million Vote of Confidence Texas businessman Stephen Feinberg (HSF96) was spending a lot of time in Santa Fe and Albuquerque in 1977, when a good friend told him about a small liberal arts college in Santa Fe that deserved his attention. Richard Weigle, president of both campuses at the time, and vice president J. Burchenal Ault (HSF83) were successful in persuading Feinberg to serve on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Feinberg joined the board at a time when the young campus was still experiencing growing pains. “I was somewhat concerned when I attended my first board meeting, and the president said he didn’t know if the college had enough funds to make the payroll,” recalls Feinberg. “I wondered if I’d gotten myself into a situation that I really didn’t want to be in.” Feinberg’s concerns about the campus turned out to be short-lived, and in July he expressed his unqualified confidence in the management of St. John’s College by announcing a $4 million gift to david trozzo Something to Celebrate Making the college’s Annual Fund goal is no small feat, but thanks to more alumni participating, and more generous gifts from alumni, the college reached its $2.3 million goal for the 2003-04 fiscal year. This year, 35 percent of the college’s alumni made a gift. Tuition pays only 70 percent of the cost of a student’s education. Draw from endowment, federal and state grants, and the Annual Fund make up the rest. Students in particular have something to celebrate: the largest portions of funds collected through the Annual Fund go to support instruction and financial aid. the endowment. “I have seen the college evolve into a very wellmanaged organization, a strong and stable organization,” he says. He hopes that his gift will spur additional investments in the college. “We, as community members, have a great responsibility to this college,” says Feinberg, who lives part of the year in Santa Fe and part in El Paso, Texas. He finished his fourth term on the board earlier this year. It took him several years to get “fully engaged” on the board, Stephen Feinberg’s gift to the says Feinberg. When college expresses his confidence in the board began to tap the Santa Fe campus. his expertise in real estate and finance—with tremendous results—his interim president in Santa Fe, involvement grew. In turn, he said Feinberg’s gift is particubecame more aware of imporlarly welcome during this time tant issues facing faculty, staff, of rebuilding in Santa Fe. and students at St. John’s. The college is still seeking a He became more involved in president to replace John the intellectual life of the Balkcom (SFGI00), with the college as well, attending goal of bringing a candidate Executive Seminars, community before the board at its meeting seminars in Santa Fe, and rarely in November. In the meantime, missing a session of Summer it’s important that the college Classics. His admiration for continue to draw the the tutors helped inspire his confidence and support of gift, which he would like to its Santa Fe community. see help support improved “Steve’s gift shows that the faculty salaries. community understands our work “The college’s mission is here, and that the 40-year bond more important than ever,” between Santa Fe and St. John’s Feinberg says. “With a global College will continue long into economy and all the conflicts the future,” says Nelson. and the terrorism, the ability Mr. Feinberg is the third board to be open, honest, to question, member to publicly announce a to search, and to think about gift to the college in advance of important issues—this is the official start of the next especially important to capital campaign, expected to mankind right now. St. John’s begin in the fall of 2005. stands out in the world of Alumni Ronald Fielding (A70) academia because this type and Sharon Bishop (A67), board of searching is the college’s chair, have also announced core mission.” generous gifts to the college. x Christopher B. Nelson (SF70), -Rosemary Harty president in Annapolis and { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �7 {Letters} Free Thought and Reason I was left scratching my head over Steven Brower’s letter (Spring 2004) in which he recalls Douglas Allanbrook responding to the absence of Eastern authors with the claim, “the only good thing that has come out of the East was the Sun.” Brower takes Allenbrook’s statement as evidence that free thought thrives at St. John’s. In fact, it shows the opposite. Not only is Allenbrook’s statement laughably false, but it also helps confirm the worst stereotypes about St. John’s: namely, that the college is provincial, self-important, and dismissive toward ideas that do not fall within a particular conception of the Western canon. I tend not to agree with this stereotype since I also believe that St. John’s teaches the importance, above all, of giving reasons for what one believes to be true. Evidence of free thought requires more than saying something controversial or unpopular: it also requires the capacity to give reasons. Perhaps Allanbrook had reasons for his view. If so, it is regrettable that he chose to respond with a fatuous quip. Likewise, perhaps Brower has reasons for lauding Allenbrook’s expression of “free thought” —but he, too, has given no reason to support his choice of words. Fortunately, Santa Fe now has a program in Eastern Classics. I always enjoy reading The College, but I am not sure what you hoped to accomplish by printing Brower’s letter. John Capps (A91) Mistaken Notions I am writing to correct some mistaken notions expressed in the letter from Erin N.H. Furby (A96), in The College Winter 2004). She was commenting on an article, “Admissions and Diversity, East and West,” published in the previous issue. Her response suggested that she misunderstands the “diversity initiative” under way on both campuses and the importance of diversity for the life of the college community. I agree that the word “minority” is ambiguous, and its meaning often must be clarified. The “diversity initiative,” which we refer to as the Opportunity Initiative,addresses different minority groups on the two campuses. In Annapolis, it is directed primarily toward black students; in Santa Fe, Native Americans and Hispanics are the primary focus. Why? As easily might be guessed, it is because the recruitment problem differs on the two campuses. That is largely a product of differences in the demographics of the areas from which the campuses recruit students. Hispanics and Native Americans, although the largest minority groups in the area from which Santa Fe draws most of its students, have applied in small numbers. On the East Coast and in the large urban areas from which the Annapolis campus draws most of its students, blacks, although the largest minority, have applied in even fewer numbers. This does not mean, of course, that both campuses are not seeking or would not welcome students from other minority groups. Why should St. John’s make this determined effort to recruit more minority students? Because seminars and classes “In attempting to diversify the applicant pool, [admissions officers] hope to recruit a student body that reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of this country.” Martin Dyer, Class of 1952 achieve greater profundity and richness when students of different races, ethnicities, and backgrounds bring their life experiences and individual perspectives into the conversation. Students benefit. As fellow learners, tutors benefit. The entire community benefits. I agree also that skin color means nothing— in itself. Blacks, like whites, are a rainbow of colors. Variations of hue, however, are not the concern of this initiative. The cutting edge is racial difference, however defined, which creates for most blacks in American society unique life experiences and social and economic status quite different from other groups. In some situations, a different culture has evolved. Ms. Furby acknowledges that “ religion, age, home state, and economic background influence the perspective of students.” Why is she reluctant to acknowledge that race and ethnicity are equally important parts of an individual’s conditioning and development? Being of one race, however, does not make blacks a monolithic group. Like whites and others, they are of different religions, from varying states, cities, and neighborhoods, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } and of diverse economic backgrounds. These differences, plus the common conditioning their race provides, produce the “individual perspectives that [individual blacks bring] to the class.” As appalled as Ms. Furby may be that “the Annapolis campus was mentioned ... only in terms of having a small number of black students each year,” that is the unfortunate fact. Last year, three of the approximately 450 students were black. Admissions officers are not being “pressured” into seeking “students of one race over another.” They seek black students, Native Americans, and Hispanics not as an alternative but an addition to white students. In attempting to diversify the applicant pool, they hope to recruit a student body that reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of this country. They do this also because they believe that it is the “right thing” to do for parts of our society subjugated for more than 300 years and which, even now, still suffer from it. Just as the college is richer for having voluntarily added blacks and women to its student body many years ago, the reading list is enhanced by the inclusion of black and female authors. If the college is derided for this, it is because some erroneously believe that these authors cannot express ideas that are “universal and applicable to all thinking people.” As to “the unwise who looked only at the race and sex of [these] authors,” I respectfully defer to the collective wisdom and integrity of the college deans and faculty who serve on the Instruction Committee. Martin A. Dyer, Class of 1952 Editor’s Note: Mr. Dyer was the first African-American student admitted to St. John’s. The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or The College magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: rosemary.harty@sjca.edu. �8 {Eastern Classics} Eastern Classics at Ten Enrollment Grows in Santa Fe Program by Rosemary Harty n 1968, Scott Buchanan explained in an interview with author Harris Wofford why he and Stringfellow Barr excluded Eastern works when they selected the great books of the New Program. “I think in ’37 reading Oriental books when then we had so slender a grasp on our own tradition would have led to the kind of phoney stuff that has happened often when Westerners have become intoxicated with Zen Buddhism or something,” Buchanan said. However, in a later interview Buchanan added, “We ought to have gone at the oriental books simply and hard and we’d have cracked them.” “Cracking” the great texts of the Eastern tradition—simply and hard—is exactly what students and tutors do together in the Eastern Classics program in Santa Fe. It is an intense, full-time program leading to a master of arts degree. Each student studies Sanskrit or Ancient Chinese to read original texts in those languages. Two of the five preceptorials taken by each student are mandatory and involve two weighty books, books worthy of a lifetime of study: the Mahabharata and the Tale of Genji. When a group of Santa Fe tutors proposed a program geared to the study of Eastern works, the idea met with strong disapproval from some in Annapolis and Santa Fe. Tutor Krishnan Venkatesh, now director of the Graduate Institute and a long time tutor in the program, was among those who weren’t sure the college should take on such a program. “I didn’t know if we would be able to teach it, and teach it well,” says Venkatesh. “But my fears were allayed rather quickly. I’ve seen how successful the program is. And I should have had faith all along that the books can teach us how to read them.” The texts may be different, Venkatesh says, but students in Eastern Classics ultimately embrace the same questions as undergraduates do: “What is it possible to know? What is a human being? What is ultimately real? What is the relation of pleasure to happiness? What is a good person? What does it mean to be free?” The Eastern Classics program is more similar to the undergraduate program than the college’s graduate program in liberal arts, says tutor Frank Pagano, who was GI director in Santa Fe from john hartnett I 2001 to June 2004. “Everybody starts at the beginning and everybody ends at the end. It’s a full-time program and it really has the sense of commitment, the structure, and the continuity of the undergraduate program.” After a yearlong pilot program funded by the Bradley Foundation, the Eastern Classics program began formally in the fall of 1994 with an enrollment of 23 full-time students. It struggled to build enrollment during its first years, but interest continued to grow over the years. This fall, 33 full-time students, including 15 alumni, enrolled in the program—enough for two full seminars. Students read and discuss the books of China, India and Japan—the classics of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism—in chronological order. In choosing books for the program, tutors initially consulted a comprehensive list assembled by Columbia University’s, but ultimately, the same standards for works selected in the undergraduate program guided the list. “You ask yourself what books work in seminar, what books are absolutely necessary even if they don’t work in seminar, and which books talk to each other,” Pagano says. Tutors like Pagano Santa Fe GI Director Krishnan gradually migrated to the Venkatesh was initially doubtful program when the time was that a program in Eastern Classics right for them, he explains. could succeed. He began by leading a preceptorial on the Grand Historian, Sima Qian. “That was my entryway to China. I started doing more Chinese works, then audited the Chinese language tutorial,” says Pagano, who by now has taught everything but languages in the program. “Jim Carey, who loves language, taught Sanskrit. Other people began teaching because they were interested.” In marketing the program, the college takes out ads in Yoga Journal, some of which have featured testimonials from Tias Little (EC98), one of the country’s leading yoga instructors. “Each year we have people interested in yoga who want to know more about the books behind the practice, people interested in Buddhism, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �{Eastern Classics} 9 half of the program’s students were Johnnies; more recently, that’s and people interested in religion,” Pagano says, adding that most dropped to about a quarter. “During their undergraduate years, students simply seek to broaden their knowledge. many develop a pent-up desire to take on the Eastern Classics Ronalie Moss (SFGI91, EC95), a recently retired teacher from program,” he says. Los Alamos, N.M., was among the students in the pilot program. Alexis Brown (SF00, EC03) took a year off after graduating She enrolled right after completing the liberal arts graduate before she enrolled in the program. It’s intense and difficult, but program because she was still eager for intellectual challenges. well worth the hard work, she says. “The whole time I was an “I fell in love twice at St. John’s—you know how you read undergraduate, I’d see the reading list for something and you just discover a mind that Eastern Classics and knew that I wanted to you fall in love with? It happened for me in do it,” she says. “I knew I would gain a the liberal arts program with Aristotle and much fuller picture of human thought. the Nichomachean Ethics. And again in Some of the best seminars I’ve had at Eastern Classics with the Analects of St. John’s were in Eastern Classics.” Confucius,” she says. Brown didn’t struggle as much with Because the program was noncredit when studying and translating poetry in ancient she took part in it (those who completed it Chinese; plunging into the unfamiliar were awarded certificates), Moss wrote her imagery and new concepts of Hindu texts, papers and took an oral examination to particularly the Upanishads, gave her complete requirements for the degree. Over Krishnan Venkatesh trouble. She saw a few students drop out the years, she integrated both sides of her because the St. John’s graduate program into the approach of analyzing and high school Advanced discussing texts did not fit Placement and World Claswith their personal beliefs. sics courses she taught. “I met a few students who “Of course we should study couldn’t understand that the Eastern classics,” Moss this was not a spiritual says, “how could we ignore endeavor,” she says. half the world?” In nurturing the One of the program’s program during his years strengths is that it’s the as the GI director, Pagano only program of its kind. has come to better underNowhere else can a student stand the college’s mission interested in the Eastern as a whole. “I can imagine texts find a comprehensive, people arguing that we discussion-based program, really don’t do Eastern Venkatesh says. Many Classics well—that the colleges offer programs program really is a diletwith majors such as Asian tantish affair. But if this studies, but these generally program is dilettantish, emphasize contemporary I’d say the [undergraduate] culture. Other programs program is. We’re after focus on traditions and liberal education at practices instead of St. John’s, we’re out to original texts. Students in seminars in Eastern discover things.” Among the biggest objections to overcome were those voiced works wrestle the same universal Annapolis tutor Eva by tutors who believed the program would weaken the college by questions that undergraduates Brann is an admirer of the overburdening tutors, or disturb the unity of St. John’s by creating tackle, says Venkatesh. Eastern Classics program a “department” within the college. But during the last three and is satisfied that it has years, more than half of the members of Santa Fe’s Instruction added to the mission of the college. “This has done us no end of Committee have taught in Eastern Classics, Venkatesh points out. good,” she says. “It adds a new dimension to what we do here. He argues that the program has less of a “department feel” than And it shows that our way of doing things is universal.” sophomore music or senior lab. However, Harvey Flaumenhaft, dean in Annapolis, told a group The fear that tutors would be overwhelmed was a reasonable of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors reviewing the one, Venkatesh acknowledges—the Program already requires so program last summer that he would continue to oppose introducmuch of tutors. “Instead, tutors who have taught in Eastern ing it in Annapolis. “We already spread ourselves too thin,” Classics have been invigorated by the experience,” Venkatesh Flaumenhaft said. “I don’t think that we can do all good things for says. “It’s given them new ways to enter the conversation,” as practical reasons. And there are a lot of good things we don’t do in well as “clearer focus and commitment, and a richer sense of our undergraduate program. It’s unthinkable, for example, not to what the questions are.” Pagano wasn’t surprised that alumni would be among the first study Maimonides. The danger of taking on more is not that we to apply for the program. In the first years of the program, up to don’t go broad enough, but that we don’t go deep enough.” x john hartnett “I should have had faith all along that the books can teach us how to read them.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �10 {Johnnies Abroad} A DV E N T U R E S A B ROA D “My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in observing the manners and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their language, wherein I had a great facility by the strength of my memory.” Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels. ohnnies are the kind of travelers who approach a new culture like an unfamiliar text, ready to have their prejudices challenged and their horizons broadened. In these short essays, alumni who have spent an extended time in other countries write about the discoveries, disappointments, surprises, and delights found in the manners and dispositions of different cultures. Several went abroad to teach English: Mike Crawford in Colombia, Paul Obrecht in the Czech Republic, and Meredith Smith in Spain. Ryan Rylee spent a year in China and India during a break from the college to pursue his interest in the East. John Hartnett traveled to India and Lauren Sherman to Africa, both on volunteer medical missions. Recent dispatches or distant reminiscences, these aren’t typical travelogues. J A Woman Who Danced with Fans by Ryan Rylee (A04) Beijing is hidden under a cloud, but it’s not the mystical kind. The cloud comes partly from the taxis and buses, of which there are more every year. As more Chinese get rich while auto import tariffs come down, those taxis are joined by private cars. One still sees, in outlying Beijing, modified tractors, smoking and jittering along the road. And it becomes less and less rare to see a coal-laden cart being pushed alongside a Mercedes Benz. The cloud over the city also comes partly from the coalburning stoves some people still use for warmth and cooking, and a little from the industrial plants. A lot of sand blows in from north of the city, where for hundreds of miles farmers are causing desertification with unsustainable grazing and farming practices, cultivating every inch of remaining land around the city. It has gotten so bad that some of them are now being paid by the state not to work. The cloud over the city is, more than anything else, the dust raised by development at what is certainly one of the largest construction sites in the world. Stand at the window of a Beijing skyscraper and try to make out the number of construction cranes across the city. Nimble giants stand stock straight in flocks that stretch out much farther than the eye can see, vanish into the smog, and seem beyond counting. The city—and a lot of the country—are trying, fast as they can, to be as modern and Western and capitalist and techno- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �“The city—and a lot of the country—are trying, fast as they can, to be as modern and Western and capitalist and technological as possible.” Ryan Rylee, A04 Modern life is crowding out the traditional in China, with Starbucks, McDonalds, and other American franchises moving in. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �12 {Johnnies Abroad} The woman was in labor.“I immediately understood her pain and terror without comprehending the words.” Lauren Sherman, A05 logical as possible. There is a Starbucks now inside the Forbidden City. McDonald’s and KFC abound in Beijing, along with unlicensed imitations of everything American, from Levi’s to DVDs. And with Hollywood movies come the imitations of them, in appearance and behavior, the cars and bravado, the high heels and discotheques. Where is the Chinese soul? The blue suits and caps of the Cultural Revolution are still worn by a lot of the 60-and-older people. They amble slowly about the streets and gawk at the thousands of foreigners who have invaded the capital. A woman told me about growing up in her family’s Chinese-style, four-sided garden home: parents, grandparents, and children all eating together in the central courtyard, in the shade of trees and trellises, grape vines growing overhead. She showed me, with a mix of words and gestures, how her brother would reach up, pick the ripening grapes on the sly, and put them into her mouth. They taught her, in that kind of place and time, how to dance with a fan held in each hand, and she still remembers, even performed it for us, rhythmically folding and unfolding the fans, ephemeral butterflies hiding her face. That house, like so many old ones, has been demolished, and different generations packed off to apartments high above the city. Some of the old folks speak fondly of the days of yore, the lousy plumbing, leaky roofs, coalburning stoves, and drafty rooms of their charming, crumbling traditional-style slums. Some of them also, in a frustrated moment, will speak fondly of the days of Mao, but no one wants to go back to those days. And anyway, Chinese have become used to making way for progress, used to sacrifice. Mao campaigned to destroy anything ancient or traditional. I even heard one Chinese student reference, in a casual aside, “Mao’s mission to destroy China.” Was the mission successful? Tai Chi is still practiced in the public parks. Peking Opera goes on, now performing a mix of Mao-era and pre-Mao songs. And kung fu soaps, set in the days of emperors, are the most popular kind of show on television. The magical ancient China we sometimes see in movies is only available to most Chinese in just the same kind of medium, usually minus the effort and expense of making flying through the air and breathing fire look real. Chinese mystique, as we know it, is something only perfected in the movie studios and new-age bookstores of California. Perhaps the real mystery is how “China”—if such a thing persists—continues to be reflected through the industrial smoke and mirrored high-rises. As the opening lines of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching read, “Dao ke dao, fei chang dao.” The way is a becoming way, not a fixed way. Death in the Night by Lauren Sherman (A05) In the summer of 2003 I went to Africa with Operation Crossroads Africa, a nonprofit organization that sends young people to various countries on the continent to work on different projects. There were six of us, and our assignment was medical-related. I was there for two months in a rural section of western Kenya. We lived about a mile and a half from the hospital at the family compound of our group leader, Josephine, a Kenyan nurse who has been working in the U.S. for the past couple of years and wanted to bring a group of young people back to her home to help in the community. The houses were no frills, just concrete floors and walls, and the bathroom was an outhouse about 20 feet from the house. There was no toilet, just a hole in the floor, and showers were taken with a bucket of water and a cup. During one week of our stay we traveled to Mfangano Island on Lake Victoria to operate a free clinic for the islanders. This clinic was much needed because the closest hospital is three hours away by motorboat and very expensive. On the second day I was to be working in the pharmacy, but by chance I stumbled into an empty room where a woman, maybe in her late twenties, was in labor. As she called out to me in her native language, Luo, I immediately { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �{Johnnies Abroad} The Czech people are slowly rebuilding traditions, such as this wine festival procession, lost in the communist era. helped me far more than any remedies or medicines I could have given to her. She helped me to realize the power of the human heart. paul obrecht understood her pain and terror without comprehending the words. I approached to comfort her, and placed my hand on her swollen belly as she moaned in pain. I looked into her eyes and felt utterly helpless. How was I, a 20year-old student of the “great books,” going to stop her pain? For over an hour I stood with her, rubbing her belly in silence. The doctor reported that her condition was stable and that she had hours before she would give birth. He then left to see other patients. After some time, I followed suit and returned to the pharmacy, but throughout the day I frequented her room. More than once I again demanded the doctor’s attention, but he always reported the same. Her pain may have been steady, but was it normal? Without a better foundation for concern than my feelings, I trusted the doctor’s judgment and left for the evening. Soon I was overtaken by hunger and fatigue, and the woman’s suffering was pushed to the background of my thoughts. The next morning when we arrived at the clinic, the doctor told us that this young woman had experienced complications and was rushed to the mainland during the night. She and the baby both died. For a time I allowed the suffering and inequality that I experienced in Kenya to saturate me with helplessness. Then finally, a few days before our departure, I realized that this woman knew that somebody cared about her and wanted to ease her pain, however inexperienced and unable I may have been. Even though we didn’t know each other’s name, I felt a searing love for her. I realized that the world is filled with nameless individuals, and it was my responsibility to show them this love. In a way, this nameless woman 13 Marching to the River by Paul Obrecht (SF02) In the middle of March, having been in the Czech Republic for nine months, I was invited to participate in a traditional springtime procession in a tiny village in southern Moravia. A straw man was to be carried from the village square down to the river, set on fire, and then tossed into the water; newly green branches would be gathered, decorated with ribbons, and returned to the square. All of this was in the name of dismissing winter and welcoming the return of spring. When we arrived in the middle of the cold, gray afternoon, we joined a small group of parents and children and began marching to the river, singing Czech folk songs all the while. But I was misled about this being a traditional procession: At some point it was admitted that Czechs haven’t enacted this ceremony for a hundred years or more. I was part of a re-creation, an attempt to resurrect an old tradition that had died out generations ago. I discovered later that the people marching down to the river were Waldorf School moms and dads, and that this was a Waldorf event. (Waldorf schools were imported from the West in 1995 or so.) I was tremendously disappointed, but I couldn’t quite say why. Was it just the tourist in me, disappointed by the lack { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �14 {Johnnies Abroad} paul obrecht of quaint costumes? I recalled a wine festival I had stumbled upon the previous autumn in the village where I live, when the participants had been dressed in the traditional Moravian lace-and-embroidery-embellished garb. They started performing traditional songs and dances, parading through the streets of the village joined by a small marching band and a group of men pulling a red wagon that held a big decanter of burcak, an enticingly sweet midpoint on the journey from grape juice to wine. They poured glasses for the folks watching along the sidewalk or from their lacecurtained windows. I noticed that I was the only foreigner there, in fact, probably the only person not from the village itself, and this produced a wonderful feeling of satisfaction at the authenticity of it all. So why the disappointment at those real Czech folks marching down to the river, trying to resurrect some bit of their heritage, even if many could not remember all the words to the songs? The urge to resurrect old traditions is here, as everywhere, a reaction to the ever-accelerating pace of life and the fear that one’s own way of life is being consumed by the global behemoth of instant glitz, pop culture, and convenience. In a country that just 15 years ago was dominated by secret police, closed borders, and banana lines, things are changing quickly and people are in a hurry to make up for lost time. My disappointment, it turns out, was at being confronted with my own naivete. I had moved to the Czech Republic in hopes that I could learn something from a people who had had no choice for so long but to define themselves by other means than what they could afford to buy. Instead I found Glitz, pop culture, and convenience threaten authentic Czech culture. many of them eager to acquire as many as possible of the vices of the West. The march down to the river was a response to that, the unglamorous act of real people trying to do something real for themselves, trying to create meaning where meaning is in danger of slipping away. On my cynical days, the growing Czech hunger for the consumer lifestyle suggests to me that human nature longs for little more than cool stuff to buy; real and meaningful traditions seem only to survive as long as people are prohibited, whether by circumstance or design, from having enough shopping opportunities. On other days, however, I catch glimpses of an entire nation rallying to redefine itself after centuries of being ripped apart and re-sewn by the hands of various would-be empire builders. They are hard at work rebuilding their social institutions and public infrastructure, trying to purge the last whiff of totalitarianism from their souls. In effect, they are redesigning their society from the bottom up, and a necessary part of that is to resurrect old traditions. How else to remember who they have been? The enthusiasm and success of their effort suggest far more convincingly that the fabric of human nature is truly resilient and durable stuff. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �{Johnnies Abroad} 15 “The guerillas put a price on his head and would kill him and his family if they could find him.” Michael Crawford (A87) The Guerilla’s Warning by Michael Crawford (A87) Graduation called, but South America beckoned. In the spring of 1988, my knowledge of the city of Cartagena consisted of exactly two items: it was 80 degrees year-round and it was full of cool Spanish colonial-era architectural remnants. My knowledge of Colombia in general was a bit more extensive, having followed the New York Times stories of Marxist guerilla fighting or drug-related massacres that took out three or four dozen people at a time. (In one story, the blood was literally running out the front door of the tavern afterwards.) Almost no U.S. citizens wanted to live there. This fact, plus the thought of the anxiety I would cause my parents if I went, appealed to me in a way that such things can only appeal to a 21-year-old. I went. The first few weeks did nothing to dampen the sense of the exotic. Yes, those are wild monkeys in the trees alongside the river. Yes, that is the beautiful but deadly blackand-yellow viper (no known antidote for the venom) slithering across the schoolyard while we are trying to play pick-up basketball. Yes, the discos throb with salsa and merengue until six in the morning. Yes, she likes you because she thinks you have American dollars. The height of this giddy new-ness came during a retreat the school organized for my 12th-graders. We were at a ranch in the middle of nowhere. The school’s forwardlooking rector wanted the students to talk about democracy and violence, and I was asked to lead a seminar on the Bill of Rights. The talk went well—back then it was not ludicrous for other countries to look toward America’s government as a model with real moral authority. My efforts in rudimentary Spanish were appreciated. But as the sun went down and the oil lamps were lit, I realized that I had only been the warm-up band for the evening’s main act: two hours with a real, live South American ex-guerilla. As we sat in a circle around the table, he was brought in flanked by two military guards. He told us to call him Alberto. The bandana covering his face only added to the mystique. For 12 years, he had been a foot soldier in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the oldest and most hard-line of Colombia’s five armed Marxist insurgent groups. He joined because he believed in social justice, but after only one day he realized it would not be found among his guerilla comrades. Daily life consisted of endless making and breaking camp, or sitting through Marxism indoctrination classes in the middle of the jungle. Stray from the straight and narrow, and they would shoot you. In 12 years he had walked every sparsely inhabited inch of Colombia, shaking down farmers for the “tax” on coca and skimming profits on drugs that got shipped north to undermine bourgeois society. Fundraising, it seems, is a big part of every job, even if you are a South American revolutionary. They made him a bookkeeper, and then wanted to eliminate him because he knew that the leadership was partying at Bogota’s best hotels while the rank and file were swatting mosquitoes in the Amazon. When he got sick they sent him to a sympathetic doctor in the city, and there he defected to the Colombian army. We were mesmerized as we listened. The guerillas put a price on his head and would kill him and his family if they could find him. Later I recognized him as the night watchman at our school. As he was picking up his paycheck, our eyes met, but he was unflustered. He knew his secret would go no further. I would see and do many other fascinating things while in Cartagena, but none left the same impression as hearing Alberto’s story. Hyped by Clash lyrics, I had come to South America dreaming glitzy, shallow dreams about the glamorous revolutionaries. Now I was getting the real story. “If you want adventure,” he warned the 12thgraders, “sign up for the merchant marine. Do not join the guerillas.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �16 {Johnnies Abroad} The Piercing Festival Young men pierce their cheeks and dance for rupees in Keralla. by John Hartnett (SF83) john hartnett From the moment you step out of the airport you are confronted by mass —a writhing, noisy, stinking mass of crumbling concrete pillars and gritty floors; tangled electrical wires; flailing arms and legs; voices of every conceivable pitch, tone, and key—all asking for something. It is at that moment that most Americans make up their mind about India. You either see nothing but the grit, nothing but the three-year-old living on the highway median begging for change, or you see past it. If you’re lucky, something helps you past your prejudices, some glimpse of the majesty of India. It might be the beaming smile of a man threshing rice by hand or a wrinkled old woman in a bright purple sari stooping to sweep the streets. By rights, my moment should have come at the clinic. I spent three weeks working in a clinic in Andra Pradesh next to all that mass: the hustle of the street vendors, the cacophony of honking horns, and the belching fumes of the three-wheeled moto-rickshaws that we called “tripods.” Working in the city, I was nearly blinded by the poverty and the grinding crush of everyday life. Toward the end of my trip, I had a chance to visit a distant state called Keralla. Almost every Indian I told about my plan called it “God’s Own Country.” On my first day in Keralla, I hired a driver to take me to Kumarakoum to visit the canals and waterways where people lived. As we turned a corner of the highway, I noticed a throng of people gathered by a side road. I stepped out, camera in hand. A festival was in full force, with young men and boys dancing to a capti- vating beat. Older men waved peacock feathers and circulated amongst the crowd, prodding the onlookers to notice the young men. It was then I noticed the piercings. These young men had pierced their cheeks with long skewers. The skewers were held in place by balls of fruit. As they danced, someone would approach and slide a rupee onto the skewer. The more these boys danced, the more hypnotic the effect as the drums thundered, their skin glistened, and the rupees collected on their skewer. For the rest of my time in India, I asked about this festival, but no one had ever heard of it. No Hindu or Buddhist, Jain or Muslim, Sikh or Christian I encountered had ever heard of anything like it. It was a completely local custom, this painful, intense festival. This devotion would not have found me had I not found it. Someone else might have seen only the rupees or the old men sidling for donations. But they would have missed the bright peacock feathers, the concentrated look on the boys’ faces, the intense focus on the divine in their bodies. Everyone is Beautiful in Madrid Meredith Smith (AGI03) The streets have been washed in daylight for hours when the waking sounds of the neighborhood begin to pass over the balcony and into my room in the heart of the Madrid shopping district. Below my window, the cherry vendor { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �{Johnnies Abroad} bellows invitations to sample fruits that are so delicious she can’t believe it herself. Driving her calls louder are the building traffic and the accordion player’s rendition of “Besame Mucho.” Each morning this city melody mingles with the metallic, salty aromas from the seafood stalls to awaken me to another day in Madrid. In obedience to the Spanish morning ritual, I mix a strong espresso off the stove with hot milk and sugar. A staple of café life and social invitations, the café con leche has become an indispensable part of my mornings. Without it, I can’t imagine how I would brace myself for a day composed of exhausting attempts at communication. The robust, bittersweet brew seems perfectly fitted to the air of the people who lay their claim to it. If I am to have any prayer of matching their inexhaustible gift for gab, my first cup will not be the last. Properly caffeinated, I can embark upon the day. While it is easy to get lost in the graceful architecture of curling garlands and wrought-iron balconies overhead, it must be cautioned against. The Spanish pedestrian is considerably more focused on a conversation or a shoe in a storefront window than on the other people on the sidewalk. As a result, a certain nimbleness is required on the part of those who don’t want to be the victims of collisions and scowling faces. Perhaps the most abundant and treacherous obstacle is the ceaseless flow of little old ladies pulling their grocery carts. Prone to sudden stops and nonlinear trajectories, they served as my first introduction to the importance of staying alert. To tangle with one of these seemingly harmless teetering forms can mean bending under the force of one of the sharpest and quickest tongues in the country. In Spain everyone is beautiful. At the neighborhood market, undiscriminating greetings from the men behind the rows of hanging hams and pyramids of vegetables are bestowed upon their patrons in praise of their beauty. “Hello, beautiful,” is reciprocated with, “How’s it going, handsome?” And perhaps this familiarity is part of the shadowed Spanish tradition. For in the new super- 17 markets, frequented more by the youth than the traditional markets, the reserved dryness typical of modern business has replaced the intimacy that is prevalent in neighborhood shops and cafés. But it is this intimacy that allows one to experience a sense of belonging in a culture that is built upon secrets and mysteries inaccessible to foreigners. Work takes a back seat in this country, where recovery from and preparations for the next social engagement are the priorities. Leisure and pleasure are held in the highest regard, and the evidence is apparent each afternoon. Between two and three o’clock, the shops lower their metal gates and they will not raise them again until the late afternoon, giving everyone an opportunity to eat and nap. I am actually somewhat suspicious if the lunch hour ever ends, or if it just blends into the evening. For when I return from teaching a few English classes, it seems as if nothing has changed. All public spaces remain occupied, from badly lit fluorescent cafeterias displaying wide arrays of mayonnaise-drenched salads on stainless-steel counters, to park benches, and elegant umbrella-topped tables attended by uniformed waiters. In the evening, groups of friends that have gathered for after-work cocktails spill out of the bars, restaurants, and cafés and occupy the table-lined avenues. As the streets buzz with chatter and activity, the sunlight that has blazed throughout the day is replaced by a bluish haze from the cigarette smoke in the air. And when dinners come to a close right before the morning hours, and those who will continue their visits have moved indoors, the city begins its resistant farewell to the day. Everyone’s cheeks are kissed, everyone’s backs are patted, and we return to our homes to gather the energy to make it to lunch tomorrow. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �18 {Culture and Context} T H E S T O RY-T E L L E R S Johnnies in Museums Make History Tangible by Sus3an Borden (A87) t the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., a pair of shoes with sparkling red sequins and snazzy bows—the “ruby slippers” worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz—draws visitors from all over the world. Although not “real” items of history, like Mr. Rogers’ cardigan or Indiana Jones’ hat these artifacts of popular culture mean a great deal to the people who came to know them through movies and television, says Smithsonian curator David Allison (A73). Just a few blocks away, different shoes tell a different story: a heap of 3,000 shoes—dress shoes, tennis shoes, children’s shoes— turned gray by time and tragedy. Left behind by Holocaust victims at a concentration camp in Majdanek, Poland, the shoes are part of the permanent exhibition at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., where Steven Vitto (A85) works as both a researcher and a public reference librarian answering questions for visitors. What man creates, museums preserve. Shoes, documents, furniture, tools, art, weapons—all can be found in museums around the world. If these artifacts tell the stories of our past, the curators are the authors of those stories. What artifacts a curator selects, how he or she arranges them, and the context in which they are presented all combine to make the experience mean- A ingful and evoke a sense of connection to history—even when we can’t understand it or would prefer to look away. Alumni who work in museums, historical societies, and other interpretive venues come to their work with specialized training, but also with a sense of how to draw disparate things—a Vietnam-era helicopter and a Civil War chair, for example—together to create a whole. Allison, a curator at the Smithsonian’s American History museum since 1986, is at work on a new permanent exhibit for the Smithsonian titled, “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War,” scheduled to open in November. There’s more to an exhibition than just the idea or the narrative, Allison explains. “It’s also about putting people in touch with original objects and helping them see history through these objects. How do you get people to feel that they are in a different place and at a different time?” he asks. The answer requires a thoughtful balance of design, content, and artifactual considerations, he says. At the Smithsonian, exhibition planning for major exhibits usually begins three years before the opening with a design charrette, several intense days where experts in the three-dimensional presentation of ideas meet with the people who have a story to tell. During the charrette, the rough outline of the exhibit’s content is mapped to the space allotted. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } Amateur genealogists and professional historians alike can find rich resources about American life from Lori Williamson (A94) at the Minnesota Historical Society. �19 {Culture and Context} dave lachapelle From the charrette, says Allison, all else follows. Although each exhibit is designed with a logical structure (large labels, secondary labels, then object labels), the visitor is not expected to follow that structure, Allison explains. “Usually there is a personal connection that draws you into the particular and you go to the general from there. If you see an object that interests you, that evokes nostalgia, curiosity, anger, love, you go and say what is that? Why is it here? Then you read the object label and if you want to know more you go backwards up the hierarchy. Museum behavior is much more like being in a shopping mall than reading a history book. In a museum it is the visceral connection with objects that people come to seek out and that serves as a guide for how they work their way through an exhibition.” In his upcoming exhibit, for instance, the logical structure is the chronological presentation of 16 major U.S. conflicts. The largest single object in the floor plan is a Huey Helicopter, an icon of the Vietnam War. “Helicopters were used in the Korean War,” notes Allison, “but in Vietnam it was the first time they were used to provide mobility and remove wounded, as well as perform other missions. [Vietnam] was the first helicopter war.” Another significant group of artifacts is the chairs that Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant sat on at the surrender at Appomattox and the table on which Lee signed the surrender document. These articles of furniture have been in the Smithsonian’s collection for a long time, and are often exhibited against a painting of the surender. But for the new exhibit, Allison will place them in a context of discord rather than harmony. “This was, in some respects, our country’s most divisive war. But these two men knew each other, they had fought together in Mexico. When you show the meeting of the two men sitting in a room signing the surrender document, you capture their familiarity and the simple nature of the surrender. But you have not captured the meaning of the war.” To remedy this, Allison will exhibit the furniture against a collage of battle scenes to give visitors a greater sense of the cost of war. living history: Emily Murphy made an 1840s-style dress to wear for the Nathaniel Hawthorne bicentennial celebration in Salem, Mass. Allison’s bold departure exemplifies the power of the curator as storyteller: no illustration, no captioned photograph, no chapter in a book could convey both the violence of the war and the brother vs. brother intimacy of its context with such visceral immediacy. That powerful connection isn’t as strong in other media, says Emily Murphy (A95), a longtime student of the elegant use of artifacts. Murphy is a Ph.D. candidate in American studies and a park ranger at the Salem (Mass.) Maritime National Historic Site, who recently completed an internship with the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. Many people are content with surfing the Web to learn about history or art, says Murphy—a “terrible loss” in her view. “Seeing something in real life is a very personal interaction that I just don’t think you get with an image on a computer screen,” she says. “Being able to go to the National Gallery and see the Leonardo da Vinci portrait there, to see the depth of color, the brushstrokes, and the slight three-dimensionality of the layers of the oil paint—no matter how well-photographed something is, you don’t really get that.” In addition to the level of detail a real-life museum visit grants its visitors, there is another advantage to beholding the real thing. “The actual piece creates a connection,” Murphy explains. “All of us in our own lives have artifacts that we consider valuable. To be able to say, ‘this was my great-grandmother’s’ is very important to an individual. Museums are doing that on a larger scale. Instead of saying ‘this was my great grandmother’s,’ they’re saying ‘this was a part of history.’” Original artifacts are most valuable in creating a connection, but Murphy also works as a living history interpreter, and she is quick to acknowledge that reproductions also have their place. “Reproductions are valuable because they allow people to handle artifacts. Clothing is a great example of this. You do not want to wear antique { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �20 {Culture and Context} textiles, they’re simply too fragile. But when you put on a reproduction dress, it suddenly changes your whole idea of how people functioned in that period.” Murphy recently made an 1840s-style dress for the Nathaniel Hawthorne bicentennial in Salem. “This dress has four layers of petticoats, it’s got almost 500 feet of clothesline in the petticoats to give them stiffening. The corset is very long so that you really cannot bend at the waist, and the shoulders are dropped so you can’t raise your arms very far. “When you see the actual 1840s dress you can look and think it must have taken that woman weeks to sew something like that by hand. When you put on the reproduction you realize that once she spent six weeks making the dress, she couldn’t move very much in it.” The reproduction, it can be said, helps bring the artifact to life. For Lori Williamson (A94), acquisitions coordinator at the Minnesota Historical Society, sometimes “my great-grandmother’s” and “part of history” refer to the very same thing. “They greatly inform each other,” says Williamson, who works mainly with books, manuscripts, and photographs in the Society’s library. “When people begin work on a family genealogy, they often start out with a list of who bore whom. It sounds kind of biblical and it’s not helpful to them or to us; they need to add a narrative and a context.” To help them do so, Williamson directs David Allison (A73), standing before a shrouded Huey helicopter, recently prepared a Smithsonian exhibit that explores the meaning of war. them to the Society’s collections, rich in local and national history, to provide the large-scale backdrop against which the family history was played out. When a researcher is successful in thoughtfully filling out the family genealogy within this larger context, the resulting narrative can be added to the Society’s collections, and will be, in turn, used by other history writers to give detail and texture to their broader focus. While Williamson helps amateur and professional historians to integrate the personal and historical, Murphy says that, for many Americans, a museum’s collections in some way stand in for a family’s personal history. “Unlike people in other parts of the world, there are comparatively few of us who can say ‘my family has lived in this house for 10 generations.’ So we honor generally the pieces that belonged to our ancestors, real or imagined,” she says. “My family is Irish and showed up here in the 1860s and 70s, so I personally have very little connection with the aristocratic merchants of Salem, but the things they surrounded themselves with are beautiful and it would be a huge loss if we didn’t have these pieces to give all of us a physical connection with the past.” To Vitto, the very design of the Holocaust Museum demands a reflection on the relationship between artifact and reproduction. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �21 {Culture and Context} “The Nazis tried to wipe them out. The registry brings them back.” Stephen Vitto, A85 developed a reading knowledge of Hebrew, Yiddish, German, and all Slavic languages. As the librarians learned to find their way around ghetto lists, transports, and work details, they began to focus their work on building a survivors’ registry, using as their foundation a registry started in 1981 as a project of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Today, the registry database contains information on approximately 180,000 Holocaust survivors and their family members worldwide and handles 34,000 requests annually. Vitto’s work at the museum is what he describes as a perfect mix of researching documents for the registry and working with survivors and their families. He talks about the registry’s relationship to one of the museum’s most poignant exhibits, the Tower of Faces. This three-story tall exhibition shows 1,500 photographs taken over a 50-year period in Ejszyszki, a shtetl in Lithuania. The photographs capture the everyday lives of Ejszyszki’s 4,000 Jews before the Holocaust, with pictures from weddings and family reunions, school and the beach, graduations and bar mitzvahs. On two days in September 1941, all but 29 of the 4,000 Ejszyszki Jews were killed by German death squads. For Vitto, the photographs run seamlessly into his work with the registry and explain why he finds his work so fulfilling. “This is completely what my work is about,” he says. “The Nazis tried to wipe them out. The registry brings them back.” x gary pierpoint “The building itself is an artifact,” he says. “It’s made of the brick and steel of industrialization, with jagged lines of lights. There’s a lot of gray and black and an emphasis on poignant photographs. There are false doors, some parts are dark, some are cramped. Its layout is meant to be confusing, to give you some sense for the experience of the Holocaust: once the knock on the door came, people didn’t know what was going to happen to them.” The Holocaust Museum is an exemplary work of museum craft, says Murphy. “You hate to say it’s your favorite museum, because of the subject matter, but in terms of a museum that gets its point across, the Holocaust Museum is the finest museum that I’ve ever been to. It tells the story without devolving into mere voyeurism. It involves you from the minute you walk into the door. The skill of the people who put that together is unbelievable.” Vitto considers himself fortunate to have witnessed that skill first-hand. He began working at the Holocaust Museum three years before there was a Holocaust Museum, after answering an ad at George Washington University (where he was working on a master’s degree in history) for entry-level library work. At the beginning, he did a lot of cataloguing and answered reference questions. Early on, he says, the library staff was uncertain of how the collections would be used: by historians? scholars? for personal research? As library use grew, they learned that about 90 percent of visitors were survivors and their families, a group that often formed lines of 20 to 30 people at the reference desk looking for personal information. By the time the library opened in April 1993, Vitto and a colleague had developed an expertise in finding historical information particular to the needs of survivors. Vitto, for instance, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } At the Holocaust Museum, Steven Vitto has a daily reminder of the importance of his work: the faces of Jews from a shtetl in Lithuania where all but 29 of the 4,000 Jews were killed by German death squads in 1941. �22 {Commencement} COMMENCEMENT 2004 nspired teachers always leave their students with something intriguing to dwell on. The two commencement speakers at St. John’s last spring shared that quality. Annapolis tutor Chester Burke (A74) spoke of the value of genuine conversation, and Danielle Allen of the University of Chicago spoke to Santa Fe graduates of the lasting gift of wonder that a liberal education can impart. Both left students with an assignment: Burke asked students to ponder Pascal, and Allen asked students to think deeply about a Greek poem. teri thomson randall I “Men and Women of the World” Celebrating in Santa Fe. Annapolis, May 16 As a student, Chester Burke thrived on conversations in the classroom, the Coffee Shop, and the gym; as a musician studying in Paris, he found how much he missed those conversations; and as a tutor for the past two decades, he has seen students discover themselves in those conversations. In life outside the college, real listening is rare, and “conversations too often consist of isolated outbursts of speech which rarely meet up with one another, and even more rarely build upon one another,” he told the Class of 2004. “Such speeches are lonely endeavors which end when the participants have run out of words,” Burke said, adding that what happens at St. John’s is very different. “Your words, responding first to ours and now your own questions, have grown from tentative but honest beginnings, nourished by the active listening of your classmates, into vessels through which the world may be displayed in its fullness. During the past few months, I have been watching not only your faces, but your entire bodies come alive while you strained to respond both to texts and to { T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Fall 2004 } one another.” Some of the college’s veteran tutors, Burke said, including himself, may sometimes expect a conversation to take a certain shape in seminar, but students at their best will refuse to conform to it. “Our words rebound from your stubborn surfaces, and leave no indentations. You punish us with your silence and your glazed looks when we deliver beautiful speeches, continually reminding us that speech is not a rehearsed performance, �23 {Commencement} Real conversation can be hard to find outside St. John’s, tutor Chester Burke said. david trozzo but a way of responding to a genuine question. When you are at your best of bests, you slowly build an account with one another, which though it may have the fragility of a sandcastle, resonates as an image of the soul itself— not some abstract soul, but your particular souls.” This development can be witnessed in class, and also in senior orals, said Burke. “All of us have something to say and we become who we are by attempting to articulate it,” Burke said. “It’s overwhelming to be in the presence of someone telling this story, whether it be Odysseus or a stranger on a long bus ride. It’s tremendously difficult to say what dwells most deeply in us, and we are rarely satisfied by our utterances. Sometimes we are embarrassed by these moments. Dostoevski was painfully aware of this. the world. We must be in a position to say, not: this person is a mathematician, a preacher, or eloquent, but that he is a man of the world. This universal quality is the only one that appeals to me. It’s a bad sign if, on seeing a man, we remember his book; I should prefer not to be aware of any quality until we actually meet it, and the moment comes to make use of it (nothing in excess), for fear that one quality might be preponderant and give a man a label; we do not want to feel that he is a good speaker except when it is the right moment for good speech; but let us be sure to recognize it then.” Burke challenged the graduates to consider the meaning of honnête homme, which he translated as “man of the world.” “In Pascal’s century, an honnête homme referred to a cultivated man of the world, graceful and distinguished by his comportment, his spirit, and his knowledge,” he explained. “All of this, though interesting, is not essential to my intention, nor is the fact that Pascal indicates in another Pensée that one cannot learn to be an honnête homme. “I want you to supply your own translation, as I believe that all of you are men and women of the world, abundantly endowed with diverse qualities, but fundamentally human beings, respectful and in awe of the world, and overflowing with the desire to engage the world. You are able to listen, not without judgment, but with passion and fairness, with an openness that will encourage others to seek you out.” david trozzo “You are able to listen, not without judgment, but with passion and fairness, with an openness that will encourage others to seek you out.” Tutor Chester Burke, A74 His characters expose themselves in the most outrageous situations, expressing themselves in ways which often appear ridiculous and even monstrous. It’s very difficult to say the things which need to be said.” This fall, tutors will greet a new group of students, and the voices of students who have moved on will be somewhat lost. Students will also forget many details of their time at St. John’s, but Burke is certain, he told them, that “all of your lives will be spent remembering and nourishing the words that you have spoken with us and with one another… As he closed his address, Burke read a passage from Pascal’s Pensees: “Man of Christopher Nelson congratulates Bryson Finklea, who won a prize in mathematics. President Nelson presided at ceremonies in Santa Fe and Annapolis. { T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Fall 2004 } �“Use and Wonder” Santa Fe, May 22 University of Chicago classicist Danielle Allen told graduates and their families in Santa Fe that her address would not touch on the usual commencement topics: a tally of where graduates are headed, a celebration of future careers, and laudatory remarks on how well-prepared graduates are for success. “Such details are supposed to answer the twin questions: what has college made of this particular group of students; what does the future hold for these particular young people?” Allen said. Instead, Allen offered to share with graduates a gift “of real value” in the form of two poems by Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-468). The first, Allen said, was a gift with no strings attached, Simonides 567: Countless birds, all his in a way, fly above his head and from dark water up fish leap true, sounding the song. Allen told graduates she would ask for something in return for her second gift, Simonides 521: don’t try to read his life line, for swifter than a dragonfly, pfft a change. “You have all studied Greek, here, so perhaps you recognize the argument in the poem,” Allen said. “Simonides repeats what the Athenian legislator Solon, one of the Seven Sages of antiquity, had already said ‘Call no man happy before his death.’ “Herodotus treated us to that bit of Solonic wisdom as part of the story of the travels that Solon undertook after completing the heroic work of resolving class struggle in Athens and establishing institutions that had in them the seeds of democracy. He left Athens in order that his personal authority would not interfere with the working of the new legal system and stopped in his voyages in Lydia (modern-day Turkey) where he visited the great king Croesus, a wealthy and powerful man entirely confident of his life’s success….Croesus put to Solon the question, ‘Who is the happiest man you have ever seen?’ Solon answered, ‘Tellus the Athenian.’ Flabbergasted, Croesus asked who was the second happiest man. He was expecting to hear his name at least this time. But Solon said, ‘Cleobis and Biton.’ Angry, Croesus demanded an teri thomson randall Since you are mortal, don’t prophesy the quality of tomorrow’s dawn, and when you meet the man of the year, {Commencement} teri thomson randall 24 At its best, liberal education endows a graduate with the ability to wonder, Danielle Allen said. explanation for why he didn’t rate. Solon answered: “‘My lord, I know god is envious of human prosperity and likes to trouble us; and you question me about the lot of man. Listen then: as the years lengthen out, there is much both to see and to suffer which one would wish otherwise. Take 70 years as the span of a man’s life: those 70 years contain 26,250 days [on the Greek way of counting], and not a single one of them is like the next in what it brings. You can see from that, Croesus, what a chance thing life is. You are very rich, and you rule a numerous people; but the question you asked me I will not answer, until I know that you have died happily.… Often enough, god gives man a glimpse of happiness and then utterly ruins him.’ And indeed, Croesus eventually lost his empire and his children. He couldn’t in the end be called happy.” After the ceremony, a family celebrates. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �25 david trozzo {Commencement} No college can ensure the future happiness or success of its graduates, but it can endow them with something of immeasurable value: the ability to wonder, Allen said. To illustrate her point, she told about inviting a colleague, a biologist, to a meeting of a Chicago parks and recreation advisory board on which she serves—a group often rent by contentious arguments. The biologist’s presentation on birds and other wildlife in the park gave the group “an opportunity to pursue knowledge for its own sake,” along with a chance to discuss something that didn’t require a vote or a stance. “The pleasure of knowledge is as real as the pleasures of the body,” she explained. “I saw it there in that room, in a group of argumentative people joined in a variety of expressions of pleasure from wonder satisfied. This pleasure was much easier to identify in that meeting than in a college classroom, because of the palpable difference from what we council members were accustomed to in our exchanges.” Practical matters such as food, clothing, and shelter can overwhelm us, but the “cause of wonder” has a restorative effect that will see us through crises and lead us to new sources of strength, she said. “Wonder sets us back on our heels and helps us turn in a new direction.” At the conclusion of her address, Allen returned to Simonides 521 and read the poem to her audience again. It is not a poem of despair, she noted. “In the midst of reflecting on the alarmingly unpredictable nature of change, the speaker of the poem marvels at the speed and beauty of dragonflies,” Allen said. “The poem is itself an example of what it means to draw on the resources of wonder to sustain oneself even as one confronts necessity.” x Above, Annapolis graduates Jackson O’Brien, Kelly O’Donnell, John Okrent, and Erin Page. At left, Annapolis graduate Sarah Stickney and her father, Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney (A75), celebrate. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �26 {Homecoming} PL ANTING MEMORIES Alumni Make Time “For the Trees” by John Hartnett, SF83 teri thomson randall M campus has lost over a thousand trees to drought and devastation from the pine bark beetle. In the immediate campus vicinity, the college has lost over 150 trees. Replanting lost trees and tending to healthy ones is an urgent project for reasons other than preserving the beauty of the campus—the college is keenly aware of the need to head off future fire hazards and to work to prevent soil erosion. About 15 alumni and five current students spent a day tending to healthy trees that had been reseeded in the spring. Marni Hamilton (SF05) was one of the students working outdoors with alumni. “Interacting with the alumni made me think about my class and where all of us are going,” she says. “It made me think about life after St. John’s.” teri thomson randall ost college reunions are for trading snapshots, bragging about children’s accomplishments, and comparing hairlines and waistlines, but for the nearly 200 Johnnies who came to Santa Fe for Homecoming July 1-3, this gathering was for the trees—the fragrant and elegant piñon trees that help define the Santa Fe landscape. The weekend theme was “For the Trees.” In addition to the usual luncheons, parties, and award ceremonies, the weekend provided alumni with an opportunity to cultivate new memories while re-planting piñon trees. The trees nearest the classroom buildings were planted when the campus was built in 1964; however, many of the trees on the surrounding college land are over 150 years old. Since 2002, the Santa Fe Roxanne Seagraves (SF83), director of alumni relations and parent activities, said that working together helped the alumni interact in the present as well as the past. “At a reunion, sitting in seminar with the same people you sat in seminar with years ago affirms the past,” she says. “But this weekend was also about creating beauty in the present. When you replace a 300-year-old tree, you are replacing a legacy and making a tangible commitment to the future of the college.” Besides planting trees and digging up memories, reunion classes also enjoyed a full weekend of fun including a Saturday waltz party, alumni dinner and fiesta picnic, awards from the Alumni Association, dance lessons, a President’s brunch, and, of course, reunion seminars with retired tutors William Darkey, Don Cook, and Robert Sacks. x More on Homecoming can be found in the Alumni Association report, pages 46-47. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �{Homecoming} Opposite top: Future Johnnies join in the festivities. Opposite left: Members of the class of 1984 shares memories at the Fiesta Picnic Saturday afternoon. At right, Kevin (SF90) and Khin Khin Guyot-Brock (SF88) find a shady spot between activities. Below, clockwise, members of the class of 1979 blur the lines of time and space. Glenda Eoyang (SF76), Steve Thomas (SF74), and Joseph Tooley (SF69)enjoy the picnic. Members of the class of 1969 and 1979 join Alumni Association board members at Sunday brunch. photos by teri thomson randall { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } 27 �28 {Bibliofile} The Writer in Natalie Goldberg uthor Natalie Goldberg (SFGI74) found immediate success with her first book, Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within (Shambala, 1986). Now in its 33rd printing, the book has sold more than a million copies in 10 languages. Goldberg’s other books include Wild Mind, Thunder and Lighting, Long Quiet Highway, Banana Rose, and Living Color. This fall, she published her newest book, The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth (Harper San Francisco). A poet, teacher, writer, and painter, Goldberg has studied Zen Buddhism for 24 years. She teaches writing workshops based on the clear-mind, clear-heart methods presented in Writing Down the Bones. Goldberg recently made time to sit down and discuss her books, her studies at the Graduate Institute, and the writing life with The College contributor Andra Maguran. A I’m curious about why you chose to attend St. John’s College. I had gone to undergraduate school at George Washington University....I majored in English lit. And I had had wonderful high school English teachers, but George Washington was very disappointing.…I had heard about St. John’s in Annapolis, Maryland, and it had always intrigued me. I was very interested in philosophy and literature. So when I heard about the graduate program in Santa Fe, and that it met in the summer, I decided to come [right after graduating from GWU]. That’s how hungry I was and how disappointed. And it was very scary for me to come to Santa Fe—I’d never been farther than Ann Arbor, Michigan! I had no idea what the West was like, and I probably would never have come if I hadn’t gone to St. John’s. But was it the Program itself, the great books program? Yes, it was definitely the great books Program. I’d heard about it when I was in Washington. And it’s amazing to me, I don’t really know where it came from, but I just took a leap and said that I’m going. It wasn’t very much like me. But I think I had heard about it all during my undergraduate years, and it intrigued me, so when I heard about the graduate program I was ripe. It strikes me as interesting that you, being such a creative person, would come to a graduate program that focuses very heavily on critical or analytical thinking. I didn’t know I was a creative person then. I was just like a St. John’s person in that I was very analytical. I was actually an atheist, and I was sort of an intellectual. I loved books, and I think I didn’t know it, but I was terribly intrigued by ideas and thoughts. So it was only after I graduated from St. John’s that I took a huge leap into another arena of my life. At that time, the college had only been here for a few years. Did you have a sort of pioneering sense? It felt very fresh…I just loved it. It was really exciting to sit and just talk about a book directly, without reading any other sources, to have a conversation. And I loved the teachers; the tutors were wonderful. It was so intriguing that you could have a Ph.D. in physics, but you had to teach Greek. You couldn’t just be frozen any place. It was just a wonderful concept that you called them tutors and that the classes were so small. The tutors were so alive. And during that time, Rockefeller had given a grant to St. John’s for high school English teachers from the inner city. So there were a lot of African-Americans. My class was at least half African-Americans, people who had really lived their lives. They didn’t just read Socrates and just mouth it. They kept referring to their own life experience. It was very vital, very exciting. So you spent time studying Western philosophy—Western culture—and then you made this headlong leap into Eastern leanings? Yes. I have a new book coming out called The Great Failure, and I write about St. John’s in it—the fact that I studied Descartes: “I think therefore I am.” Later the man who ended up being my Zen teacher, a Japanese Zen master…said, “I’ve been reading your { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } dissatisfaction with her undergraduate degree led Natalie Goldberg to St. John’s. Descartes, ‘I think therefore I am.’” And I perked right up. I thought, “He’s reading Descartes?” And he said, “Descartes probably remembered, but forgot to mention: ‘I don’t think, therefore I’m not.’” And in all those hours in the seminar on Descartes, no one thought of that angle. So it was sort of like Western civilization dropped off a cliff at that moment. But what I realized in writing this new book was that St. John’s prepared me for that. Because the other friends and students who practice with [Zen Teacher Katagiri] Roshi don’t remember that lecture. But for me, it was totally a lecture, because I’d been studying Descartes at St. John’s so I really paid attention. So, I went into the Eastern world, but I think I got my foundation in the Western world that let me lead into the Eastern world. Do you think that the Program influenced your writing life? Yes, I think it did, because it taught me to trust my own mind and to believe in what I think, saw, and felt. You didn’t go to secondary sources, you met something directly and that’s what writing is. That’s also what Zen practice is. And now that I’m living right near the St. John’s campus, it’s really fun for continued on p. 29 �29 {Bibliofile} The Man in the MoonFixer’s Mask by JonArno Lawson (A91) Toronto: Pedlar Press, 2004. n part, his diverse interests explain JonArno Lawson’s two most recent accomplishments in the publishing world. Not long after his chapters on Chechen literature and proverbs appeared in Chechens: A Handbook, Lawson’s third volume of poetry, The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask, was published by a Canadian press. The other explanation is a relatively new audience for his work: his son, Asher, and daughter, Sophie. “We had our first child, Sophie, about three years ago and were reading a lot more children’s poetry,” explains Lawson (A91), who lives in Toronto. Asher joined the family in January 2004. Lawson and his wife, Amy Freedman, were reading books such as Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends to their daughter, and Lawson found the musical style of children’s poetry infectious. Writing for children, Lawson adds, is distinctly different and a little more difficult than writing poetry for adults. “In adult poetry now in English, most of the time you don’t worry about rhyme, and I (continued) me to walk around. The other thing for me was, when I came here I was blown away by the architecture of St. John’s. Like, wherever you are you know people take it for granted, there’s all this glass and light. We all know about the doors being painted different colors, but in 1970 that just blew me away. One wall would be blue and another pink. Some people think writing can’t be taught. How do you feel about that? A lot of those people who think that writing can’t be taught are people who can’t write themselves and have given up. Writing can be taught, just like anything else. When Writing Down the Bones came out, across the culture, people wrote me letters: Quarry workers in Missouri. Blue- meter isn’t as important. When you’re writing for children, all those things become very important again—word play, timing. I guess it’s the same with an adult poem in that you want the images to be surprising.” Children are a tough audience to write for, he adds. “Children are very honest when they don’t like something. We tried out all the poems on Sophie first— she was my first editor for this project.” Lawson began writing poetry as a teenager, and by the time he got to St. John’s, he was taking his craft seriously. He published his first book of poems and aphorisms, Love is An Observant Traveller, tackling themes such as families and relationships, in 1997. “One of the first poems I wrote was when I was at St. John’s,” he says. “It was based on the Odyssey. It hasn’t made it into a book yet, but it has promise.” Since poetry doesn’t pay well, Lawson also does freelance editing and teaches poetry workshops in schools as part of Ontario’s Artists in Education program. He continues to explore other types of writing, such as the chapters on Chechen literature. “It all ties together because it’s all language, and how people use language collar workers in Nebraska. Vice-presidents of insurance agencies in Florida. Everybody has a deep desire to write. And that doesn’t mean they’re all going to become Faulkner, but people have a need to express themselves. How did you make the transition to being a full-time writer? I just made enough money and I could just make a living as a writer, so I quit doing other things. Before that I was teaching. My last full-time job was teaching fifth and sixth grade, at Rio Grande. Writing Down the Bones came out. It still sells, and is taught in colleges and high schools, and so I was able to just leave. After Writing Down the Bones, I started a novel, Banana Rose, and then I wrote Wild Mind. This book, The Great Failure, is a memoir about my { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } Horses in Cities Good and iniquitous, they were ubiquitous: Horses were everywhere anyone looked. But with cars, numbers dwindled, and sightings diminished, and then one day horses in cities were finished. I Spun I spun where I was told to spin and while I spun grabbed hold of him who told me where I had to spin. I could tell it startled him. as a tool to say things in different ways and as clearly as possible,” he explains, adding, “I probably am a better writer than a talker.” Lawson has two volumes—one of children’s poems and one for adults— nearly complete and ready for a publisher. “Children’s poetry is the most fun of anything I’ve done,” he says. “It’s the most fun, I guess, because there’s a better chance people will read it.” x father, who was a Jewish bartender, and my Japanese Zen Master Katagiri Roshi, the two most important men in my life… looking at the wonderful things about them, and also their darkness. I think it’s the best book I’ve ever written. I’m very excited about it. Do you still have dark periods where you hate everything you write or can’t write? What do you do when that happens? Yes. And you just keep your hand moving. Writing is a practice, and you do it whether you like to or not, whether you feel good about it or not. You’re in a good mood, you go write. You lost all your money, you go write. You just won the Nobel Prize, you start a new book the next day. x �30 {Alumni Profile} “From Homer to Homicide” A Love for Language Led Carole Chaski (A77) to Forensic Linguistics by Rosemary Harty arole Chaski had worked long and hard to earn her doctorate in computational linguistics and by 1992, was nicely settled in an academic career. She was conducting research on reading, setting up literacy programs for factory workers, and teaching at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. One day she took a call from a homicide detective investigating a suspicious suicide, and her life took a completely different turn— for the better. Chaski went on to help solve a crime in which the prime suspect might have otherwise gotten off scot-free. Today she is a leading expert in forensic linguistics. It turned out to be a lot more exciting than teaching the History of English to glassyeyed engineering majors. Between her teaching days and her 15-minutes of fame as the expert who cracked the case on a recent episode of Court TV’s Forensic Files, there were years of research and study of the structures of language, beginning with a deep fascination with the puzzles of ancient Greek. “If I ever wrote the story of my life, I could call it, ‘From Homer to Homicide,’” Chaski quips. Chaski’s work today involves analyzing language, finding patterns in syntax, and determining when a piece of writing departs from a pattern. Her ability for this work stems from the study of languages, especially ancient Greek, in reading and linguistics. Chaski left St. John’s after her freshman year to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Greek and English at Bryn Mawr College. After graduating, she spent a year teaching in an impoverished school district on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The dismally high illiteracy rate there fed an interest in scott suchman C how children learn to read, and Chaski went on to earn a master’s degree in the psychology of reading at the University of Delaware. While working on her degree, she assisted two computational linguists in their research. That subject took hold of her imagination, and she went on to Brown University for master’s and doctoral degrees in linguistics, with an emphasis on syntax, computational linguistics, and how languages change over time. At Brown she returned to ancient Greek grammar for her dissertation topic and settled on the historic changes in the syntax of Greek. “The verbal infinitive had been very prevalent in classical Greek and started to be less prevalent in Hellenistic Greek until finally by early modern or medieval Greek, it was essentially gone,” she says. “My question was, what caused Greek to lose the infinitive?” Examining long-distance anaphors (a word or phrase that takes its reference from another word, most often within the same clause) gave her a lead. “When you look at classical Greek you see two things: long-distance anaphors and case mismatches—case agreement mismatches in that you expect the case to be genitive but it comes out accusative, you expect dative and it comes out accusative. Both of these phenomena that were attached to the infinitive were odd because they went back past the boundary of a clause for their antecedents.” She cites an example of a long-distance anaphor from Thucydides: “Oerestes persuaded the Athenians to restore himself.” Expected to refers to the Athenians, himself refers instead to Oerestes. Chaski went through hundreds of lines of Greek works from ancient times to modern, assigning the terms “marked” and “unmarked” to phrases. Unmarked followed the usual patterns; marked were in some way remarkable. Examining those patterns allowed Chaski to study one narrow aspect of how a language changes over time. “When the condition that allowed these phrases to go outside the boundary—that is, the infinitive—disappeared, these oddities instantly died out,” she said. From criminal cases to civil lawsuits, Carole Chaski’s expertise is in demand. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �{Alumni Profile} This painstaking research was what Chaski went back to when a homicide detective named W. Allison Blackman brought her a computer disk with suicide notes allegedly written by Michael Hunter, a young man found dead of a lethal combination of drugs injected into his arm. Blackman didn’t have much to go on when he came to Chaski and asked if she could examine the note and other writing samples from Hunter to determine if he had really written the suicide note. “I know how to analyze syntax and I know how to find patterns,” she told Blackman. “I’ll try it and we’ll see.” Chaski looked at writing samples for Hunter and his two roommates, including a young medical student named Joseph Mannino, who had easy access to the drugs in Hunter’s system. Chaski found that patterns in the suicide note—particularly the use of conjunctions—were strikingly similar to those of Mannino, who was involved in a three-way affair with Hunter and a third roommate. The suicide notes were marked by conjunctions between sentences. Samples of Hunter’s authentic writing included more conjunctions between non-sentence phrases. Police eventually arrested Mannino. After a three-week trial, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison. After consulting with the local district attorney’s office on another case (identifying the author of an anonymous threatening letter), Chaski knew she had found something more satisfying and more challenging than an academic career. “At St. John’s, we talk a lot about the examined life. I just wasn’t happy as an academic. It seemed that the primary role of professors was to get away from the students,” she says. She secured a fellowship at the National Institute of Justice (the research arm of the U.S. Justice Department) and set about finetuning a method to distinguish one author from another based on syntactic patterns. “I was the only one doing any research independent of litigation,” Chaski says. As part of her research, Chaski set about examining every method already employed in language identification. She demonstrated that analyzing language based on the spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors was not good enough to determine individuality in writing. “I’m really against the prescriptive, stylistics method because what pops out to people as odd is not a pattern, it’s just what’s popping out,” she explains. “It’s like Plato’s cave—you can’t know the light until you know the shadow, and you have to have them both. In DNA analysis, if you’re looking for a chromosomal anomaly, you have to have the whole pattern. That’s where you start in syntactic analysis. Every document is analyzed for every syntactic pattern and nothing is left out. That way you can find out if something that seems unusual in a piece of writing really is unusual.” Similarly, the type of analysis scholars undertake in trying to determine the authorship of something like a Shakespeare play or a Biblical text (content analysis, vocabulary “It’s like Plato’s cave— you can’t know the light until you know the shadow, and you have to have them both.” Carole Chaski, A77 richness, the complexity of sentences) is not suited to forensic linguistics, where documents conveying death threats or ransom demands are usually short and to the point. Chaski has spent the last decade or so refining and applying a scientific method for syntactic analysis that is rooted in linguistic theory and validated by statistical testing. Each analysis begins with taking texts apart and labeling each word for its part of speech, then taking phrases within the sentences and parsing those. “Once the phrases are all determined, I categorize them into two types: marked and unmarked. Unmarked are phases that are so common, they don’t stand out—‘it’s in the car.’ Marked are those that are more infrequent or more remarkable— ‘it’s in the car, in the garage, attached to the house.’’’ Next, Chaski determines the frequency of marked and unmarked phrases in the writing samples. Those numbers are fed into computer programs that yield three different statistical analyses. The first two methods, discriminate function analysis and logistic regression, seek a clear division between the questioned document and the other known writing samples in her pool. The third test, hierarchical cluster analysis, seeks similarities by “clustering” similar samples into the same pool. “Everybody starts out in a pool of potential authors. If the statistical procedures show there’s a significant difference, people { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } 31 are excluded. If I can’t find any difference between a suspect’s writing sample and the evidence document, that’s what my report will say,” Chaski says, adding, “I never claim that only one person in the world could have written something.” Several years ago, Chaski left Washington for Georgetown, Del., where she founded the Institute for Linguistic Evidence, of which she is executive director. Along with continuing research, lecturing, and writing about her methods, Chaski has served as a consultant in a number of intriguing cases where her research influenced the outcomes. In one Annapolis case, the founder of a firm that developed environmental technology was sued by a former employee who wanted a significant share of the profits reaped from the company’s product. However, the company’s owner suspected the man had written damaging letters to potential customers. “The lawyers for the defendant came to me and they were already convinced that it was this engineer. In this case, the pool was limited to those who worked for the company—only they had the technical knowledge to write the letters, ” Chaski explains. Her analysis proved the defendant correct, and on that basis, the judge overruled the jury verdict to give the fired engineer the small sum the jury had agreed upon. In another recent civil case, Chaski determined that a woman claiming sexual harassment in her workplace was the author of e-mails that indicated the relationship between her and her supervisor was consensual. Chaski also showed that a federal employee who was fired for writing racist e-mails was very probably the author of those missives. In other cases, Chaski’s work has taken her into state and federal courts, where her testimony has passed successfully through the scrutiny of evidence hearings. Chaski believes it’s possible for someone to succeed in imitating another’s writing to a degree, but that it’s impossible to suppress one’s own style completely. “Language is meant to be meaning-centered, not syntax-centered. Syntax is fundamental, it’s what makes language efficient. But it’s very abstract, very automated. If we thought about it, we’d go nuts—‘how many prepositional phrases did I just write?’—and not actually be able to communicate.” Given her St. John’s education, it’s not really odd that Chaski was drawn to forensic linguistics. “That’s because Johnnies learn to think about, and talk about, language as language,” says Chaski. x �32 {Alumni Notes} 1937 HAROLD L. BROOKS just celebrated his 90th birthday with a big party in Sebastian, Fla. 1941 HENRY M. ROBERT III, who lives in Annapolis and has been a regular at Annapolis campus homecomings, is co-author of the seventh, eighth, and ninth edition of his father’s wellknown parliamentary manual, published in 1970, 1981, 1990, and 2000 respectively, all under the title of Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised. And now in response to widespread demand by those who feel daunted by that book’s complete treatment of the subject, he and the same authorship team have now produced a brief introductory work published last May entitled, Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised in Brief (Da Capo Press). “And,oh yes,” Henry writes, “nowadays you have to make is something called ‘user-friendly.’ We hope we’ve passed muster on that score.” 1944 ARTHUR HYMAN serves as Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University in New York. 1945 LAWRENCE L. LEVIN writes, “Just had my first grandchild—a boy!” 1950 T YLDEN STREETT is still completing sculpture commissions and teaching an advanced figurative class once a week at the Maryland Institute College of Art. “I am enjoying one of many slack periods and am able to return to work on my presentational busts of Barr and Buchanan that were begun in ’02,” he writes. “Barr is approaching a casting date but Buchanan is more difficult. I have received some critical help from John Van Doren and may have both cast by year’s end.” 1951 L. DONALD KOONTZ points out that members of the class of 1951 are featured on the cover of this year’s Philanthropia calendar. The students peering into their microscopes were members of his freshman lab class, working diligently in the spring of 1948. GEORGE WEND is still active with the book discussion group of the Alumni Association’s Baltimore chapter. He took a trip last summer to Peru to visit Machu Picchu, the Andes, and the Amazon; this summer he embarked on a two-week river cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Homeric Geography (1992). The reader may visit his Web site at www.homer.com.mx. 1962 JOSEPH J. BRENNIG retired from the Foreign Service in 1997, but was called back to serve in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1998. Currently, he is working in the Department of State on the Pakistan Desk. 1964 JUDI WOOD writes: “No new news— except to say that we are traveling in May 2004 by car to East Lansing, Mich., to visit grandchildren while their dad, our son John, is working on his master’s degree in business. We will be in Fort Smith, Ark., and Nashville, Tenn., on our way.” 1954 To mark the 50th anniversary of his graduation from St. John’s this year, RICHARD BURNETT CARTER sent The College two poems celebrating former dean Jacob Klein and one of his most memorable tutors, Simon Kaplan. Kaplan still influences Carter after these many decades. He wrote: “That man’s teachings,/Spoken quietly as dawn breezes sighing through pine forests;/They sing in my heart after 50 years,/Still forbidding any meanness to enter there.” Of Klein, he wrote: “That falcon sought eternity in Nimrod’s dense thicket,/But once there, he found poems bleeding on the thorns of Mind’s mindless veiling./So, he sheathed his dream-rending talons,/ And nursed those verses back to their long-hidden splendor.” 1965 A busy summer and second-career plans for CAROL JEFFERS: “I will be participating in a build with Habitat for Humanity in Durban, South Africa, in July and traveling with friends to Capetown after that. In August I return to the U.S. and retire from my federal job. In September I enter Lancaster Theological Seminary, pursuing a Master of Divinity degree. My long-term goal is to be a community minister in my Unitarian Universalist faith.” 1966 “After spending 17 years rehabbing a shell in South Philadelphia, we finally finished last December, at least enough to move in,” writes JUDY (MILLSPAUGH) ANDERSON. “I am sure we will be upgrading and improving for the next 10 years. I am still doing house calls exclusively, in the greater Philadelphia area. The practice is thriving. I have two parttime physicians, a full-time nurse Bluegrass on the Bayou S ome retirement careers are more fun than others. That’s LARRY SCHLUETER (A67) in the back of the boat in this promo picture for his band, New Orleans-based Hazel and the Delta Ramblers. Schlueter recently retired from the U.S. Customs Service after “32-plus” years and spends much of his time recording and performing in and around The Big Easy. The band’s latest CD, Pickin’ on the Bayou, features 16 cuts of bluegrass tunes and original compositions. That’s Larry’s wife, HAZEL (A69), standing in the front of the canoe, holding her mandolin. x 1959 ROBERTO SALINAS-PRICE has been an avid Homeric scholar for the past 30 years. He has published Homer’s Blind Audience (1984) and Atlas of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �33 {Alumni Notes} practitioner, an office manager, a business manager, and two office workers to share the work (and the money). None of us will ever get rich doing this, but it is certainly more fun than punching a time clock with the Commonwealth of PA. “Step-kids are doing fine; all out of the nest for a while now, and I have a multitude of grandchildren, ranging in age from 3 months to 15 years. My dad passed away last year; I don’t know if there was a notice in the Annapolis paper. There was one in the Baltimore Sun, and a few people wrote that they had seen it. He went the way I want to go when my time comes: peacefully and painlessly in his sleep, after a pleasant evening spent reminiscing with family and friends. “My sisters are doing well. Both had surgery last year, one for breast cancer, the other for a thyroid nodule. Both recovered and are currently in good health, as am I. Well, except for arthritis, but nobody ever died of that. “My husband Joe is also doing OK. He closed his business a couple of years ago and is back among the salaried masses, and hates it with a passion. His inner entrepreneur is itching to be in business for himself again.” 1967 THE REV. CLARK LOBENSTINE will be part of the Assembly of Religious and Spiritual Leaders meeting and then participating in the much larger Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona. He will be one of just 350 leaders selected worldwide to be at the assembly. He was thrilled and humbled to be one of just 51 people internationally nominated for the first Paul Carus Award to be given at the Parliament. It is the most prestigious award in inter-religious work. The nomination was based on his 25 years as executive director of the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. MARK LINDLEY (A67) is active with the InterFaith Conference. Three Boys in College HEILA BOBBS ARMSTRONG (SF70, SFGI95) writes: “My son Ian will be a sophomore at the Annapolis campus this fall. He loves St. John’s, having spent three years at the University of New Mexico. Eamon, #2 son, is at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Quinn, #3, is at Idylwild Arts Academy in California. I am still with Mike and splitting time between Santa Fe and Perth, and traveling. Love to all.” x S 1968 A story that ends well from JONATHAN AURTHUR (A): “I was a member of a group of 70 bicyclists (and one skateboarder) who were arrested at the Democratic National Convention in August 2000 for participating in a Critical Mass bike ride that was part of a week of protests against globalization and related matters. (Critical Mass is an informal international movement that advocates for more bicycles and fewer cars.) We were held in county jail for a day and a half, and the female members of our group were illegally stripsearched. A couple of weeks after our release, all charges against us (most having to do with ‘reckless driving’) were dropped. In late 2000 we sued both the County and City of Los Angeles for unlawful arrest and stripsearches. Last year we settled the County case (strip-searches and related matters) for $2.75 million, and this past March we settled the City suit (unlawful arrest) for $875,000.” MARY HOWARD CALLAWAY (A) writes that her daughter, Hannah Boone, will be graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Carleton College and traveling to France on a Fulbright teaching award next year. “She was grateful that when she was growing up, ‘dinner was always a seminar, where I learned to hold my own in heated discussions.’ Ah, the St. John’s legacy runs deep!” Some recognition for BART LEE (A): “Not a Nobel Prize, but an academy award in History of Technology: I received the Houck Award for Documentation in Radio History from the Antique Wireless Association largely for the papers “Radio Spies” 2002; and “Marconi’s Transatlantic Leap” (1999). The Antique Wireless Association is an organization of some 4,000 members linked by a common interest in the history of electrical and electronic communications. CHARLES B. WATSON (A) is still at work as an anesthesiologist and parttime physician administrator of a 50+person department that provides care for more than 18,000 people a year: “Rising elderly population and shrinking health care dollars create problems most alumni have or will experience, sad to say. Happy to report Ivan Watson, of NPR, is back from Iraq and going elsewhere until August. Masha, my wife of about 30 years, is abroad with a high school group and recently managed costumes for 125 youngsters at a superb high school production of Les Miserables. Anya, age 20, is at Connecticut College (no basketball), pursuing Marine Science, while Misha, now 26, builds things on Martha’s Vineyard. Y’all call or stop by: 203-372-9586; CBWMDCT@aol.com or optonline.net.” 1969 DAVID E. RIGGS (A) sent his regrets about missing Homecoming this year, but it’s too far to come from Kyoto, Japan, where he is a research fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. Here’s his news: “I received my Ph.D. from UCLA in 2002, writing about the reform of Soto Zen Buddhism in 18th-century Japan, and after a teaching stint at the University of Illinois and UC Santa Barbara, I am now halfway through a post-doc at this research institute. My wife, Diane, is doing her dissertation research on a different aspect of Japanese Buddhism, and we are living in a house on the edge of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } Kyoto, where I still can indulge my passion for cycling. My best wishes to you all.” “I decided it was time to bring you folks up to date,” writes RACHEL HALLFORD TREIMAN (A). “I divorced in 2001, and after my son entered college, sold the house in New York and returned to Lewistown, Mont., where my brother lives, last December. My new address is 19 W. Brassey Street, Lewistown, Montana 59457. I am now coordinator for the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program covering Fergus County and Judith Basin County. Since that is only 30 hours a week with no benefits, I also work online 20 hours for benefits. My oldest, Grace, is now 21 and a senior at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in history. My son Andrew is 19, a sophomore at the University of North Dakota majoring in Air Traffic Control and is on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, planning to go career Air Force. I love being back in Montana. I was born in Lewistown (left when I was six) and therefore, for many of the older folks I identify myself by my grandfather, mother, and her siblings. That slots me in the scheme of things. I’m fortunate my family was liked back then—people have long memories out here!” 1971 What has THOMAS DAY (A) been reading? “I recently read Churchill’s The Story of the Malakand Field Force. Very topical and readable. I’m currently going through his The River Won. If the situation in the Sudan doesn’t stabilize, it may turn out to be equally topical.” 1972 “We lost our first-born son, Ari Cody Sherr, June 7, 2003, in a bicyclingracing event to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society,” writes LAURIE SUSCO-SHERR (SF). “He’s now with his dad, Doug Sherr, who died June 7, at the same age. Twins: Jesse Doug Sherr graduated from UNM’s architecture school, and Dante Gabriel Sherr is to graduate in �34 {Alumni Notes} Thirty Years Go Fast E LLEN (USNER) LEITNER (SF73) left the college to study music after being inspired during concerts of the Moscow Trio, Czech Chamber Orchestra, and Natalia Gutman at St. John’s: “I studied violin with Renata Skoberne, then went to Austria, where I played with several orchestras in Vienna, The Innsbruck Symphony, and the Graz Philharmonic. After that I moved back to New Mexico (my native land) with my Austrian husband, Johann (Hans), and together we raised six children in Chimayó. All of the children were home-schooled for the greater part of their education, and two girls are now studying guitar and voice at North Carolina School of the Arts, our son is studying architecture at UNM, one daughter has a degree in psychology and is married, one daughter is married with two children and one on the way, and the youngest is still at home. Whew! That’s it in a nutshell! Thirty years go by so fast! “As a stay-at-home mother I started doing art, and since 1988 my children and I have participated in the annual Spanish Market on the Santa Fe Plaza with our retablos. I have also been in the St. John’s College Spanish Market since its inception. I enjoy donating a piece of my work for the auction, checking out the book sale, and spending a little time at the college. “I have always been active performing in northern New Mexico and Colorado in symphony orchestras, chamber groups and as a soloist. Recently I have been working with classical guitarist Roberto Capocchi, with whom I have made a CD, Duo Guadalupe, Music for Violin and Guitar. You can hear samples from it at www.cdbaby.com/cd/guadalupe.” x religious sciences and computers next year. Proud Mom and Dad. Much love to all my fellow students, teachers, and compatriots.” 1973 DAVID ALLISON (A) is busy as curator of a new exhibit on military history at the National Museum of American History, which will open on Nov. 11, 2004. His wife, YMELDA MARTINEZALLISON (A74), is teaching art to children in Alexandria, Va., as well as serving as teaching director of community Bible study in Alexandria. They have two children: Camilla, 22, and Gabriel, 20. Many people love collecting, but ROBIN CHALEK TZANNES (A) has taken it to another level: “I am delighted to announce the online appearance of my little Greek museum— now known as the Kythera Museum of Natural History. Since 1977, my husband, George, and I have lived part-time on the beautiful and remote Greek island of Kythera. There, with the help of my sons, JOHN (SF00) and PETER (SF04), I’ve made an extensive collection of seashells, rocks, fossils, pressed flowers, feathers, and skulls. Last summer, Peter and another photographer documented my collection, which can now be viewed at www.kythera-family.net (scroll down the left-hand menu and click Kythera Museum of Natural History).” 1974 TOM BYRNES (SF) graduated from the University of Kentucky School of Library and Information Science with an MLS on May 8. He is now library manager of the Lexmark Information Center, a unit of the University of Kentucky Libraries. “Lexmark may be the only corporation that outsources its Library/Information Center to a university,” he writes. “At least we know of no others. In June, UK picked me to run it for a while.” ROBERTA (RAZAFY) FAULHABER (SF) has been living in Paris, France, practically since graduation. She is married to a man from Madagascar and is the mother of two girls, one a painter and the other an ambassadress. RANDY O. and MARTHA (MACKEY) PENDLETON (both SF) celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary this year, Martha writes: “We have two children, one of whom (unlike his parents) graduated from St. John’s College and is also attending his class reunion this year. At various times we’ve written short stories (R), drawn portraits (M), folk danced, swing danced, and sung in a choir (both of us). Randy has mostly been working in pharmaceutical manufacturing (Syntex, Genetech). I was lucky enough to have been able to stay home and raise our two children. Currently we are following Voltaire and cultivating our garden.” 1975 DENNIS J. JOHNSON (A) writes: “Ann and I moved back to Newnan, Georgia, two years ago, after a 15-month stretch of employment in Charlotte, N.C. I wear a number of different hats at work here, including those of training coordinator, ‘machine vision’ system guru, and product trouble-shooter. Our grandchildren are now five in number, ranging from seven months old to ten and a half. We had planned to make a trip to Virginia and Maryland to see them this spring, but Annie cannot travel right now due to health problems. We were hoping to be able to visit with some of my Johnnie friends in that area as well, but for now we will have to make do with e-mail and phone calls. The online alumni register contains all of my updated info, so please feel free to use it and contact me here in the Sunny South!” “I’m half Jack-of-all-Trades and half Jack-in-the-Box, living in Madison, N.J., and trying to come out of retirement as an artist’s model or as a psychiatric caseworker,” says SUZY { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } LARRISON (A). “I have the best resumé for those jobs, but what I really need is a seminar. The opening question is G. KAY BISHOP’S (A75) impression of John Wayne ‘Ta be or not ta be.’ “I was baptized on January 11, full immersion, but don’t want to see sports banned on Sunday, so I have trouble with my latest church. My fiancé is a trustee of a Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. We met in the park in front of the White House (he was taking a nap). He stopped at Freud—but I’m a Jungian. Figuring things out—didn’t know until recently that logos translates to tao in Chinese. The tao, the truth, and the light are making ME lightheaded. “Missing CAROLYN WADE LORING (A77) and GRETCHEN BERG SAVAGE (A75) with pains that would frighten a midwife. Also TEMPLE WRIGHT (A75), TINA SADDY BELL (A75), and KAREN BENT SALEM (A76). Trying to remember my additions to the Seminar Songbag and the Seminar Jokebook, as life can be pretty grim, as in the Brothers G. (Bruno Bettleheim). “Doing pretty well with my stage fright—but I still probably would be a SILENT student. Fondest regards to all.” 1976 MARIE CLARK AVERY (SF) has been nominated to the Wall of Tolerance for her work as a founding member in the National Campaign for Tolerance. Marie teaches Special Education in Espanola and is working on her master’s degree. She also raises four sons, Justin, David, Josh, and Tyrel. VICKY HANLEY (SF) published her third novel, The Light of the Oracle, in the U.K. in August; the book will be published in May 2005 in the U.S. “You can visit me at www.victoriahanley.com.” PHYLLIS HUFFMAN HERMAN (SFGI) writes: “I have been involved in the study of the work of two great thinkers: Moshe Feldenkrais and Virginia Satir. I am a Feldenkrais practitioner (i.e., I work with people exploring thinking/sensing/ feeling/moving in order to bring �35 {Alumni Notes} more efficiency, congruence, grace, ease, and satisfaction to their lives). I am currently training in the Human Validation Process Model, based on Virginia Satir’s work, which I find complementary to the Feldenkrais method of somatic education. I live in Arlington, Va., with my husband, Michael, and our younger daughter, Amy. Our older two children are in college. The nest is emptying.” As a postscript, she offers these lines from Adrienne Rich: “Anger and tenderness: my selves./And now I can believe they breathe in me/ as angels, not polarities./ Anger and tenderness: the spider’s genius/ to spin and weave in the same action/from her own body, anywhere—/even from a broken web.” 1977 BILL MALLOY (SF) retired in December 2003 and spends his time writing and working on photography, in addition to volunteering four mornings a week holding babies in the (NICU) at Texas Children’s Hospital. He plans to get ESL training soon in order to teach English as a Second Language. “Other than that, I am blessed to have both of my parents, ages 88 and 83, who’ve been married an amazing 63? years (so far),” he writes. JUDY KISTLER-ROBINSON (SF) recently visited classmate ELIZABETH (COCHRAN) BOWDEN (SF) at her home in Marblehead, Mass. The two celebrated their birthdays and being friends for more than half their lifetimes at the Kripalu Yoga Center in the Berkshires. Judy also watched the cows changing pastures while visiting LYNNE GATELY (A) in Randolph Center, Vt., where Lynne is a librarian. Lynne and her husband, David, run a dairy farm and a maple sugar business. Judy also visited KEITH HARRISON (SF) at his home in New Hampshire. Keith teaches law at Franklin Peirce Law School. Judy has been enduring Minnesota weather for more than six years now and is longing for a temperate climate with mountains. Anyone with job leads in New Mexico, please contact Judy! 1979 Poetic entry no. 3 for this issue of Alumni Notes, from QUINN CUSHING (SF), an ode from Brooklyn: “Winter’s cold blues chase/ The summer’s heat/through the city’s sewers./They meet and rise,/ Coiling about my feet—Steam rising from the street/after the promised thunderstorms/have passed.” 1980 LISA LASHLEY (SF) writes: “I’m married to Santa Fe attorney Ron Van Amberg. We have two children, Alex, who will be attending CU Boulder in the fall, and Virginia, who is a sophomore at St. Michael’s High School. I am teaching algebra at St. Mike’s where I am head of the Math Department and advisor to the National Junior Honors Society. I’m still involved in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and plan to accompany my son on a two-week back-packing trip to Philmont this summer!” BOB NESLUND (SFGI) was named “Latin Teacher of the Year” by the Classical Association of Minnesota in November 2003. 1981 JIM PRESTON (A) and ELLEN MINERVA (A80) “are happily raising their girls in Silver Spring, Md. Call anytime: 301-585-8554.” 1982 MARIAN BETOR BAUMGARTEN (A) writes: “My husband, JONATHAN BAUMGARTEN (also A82), was ordained a Deacon in the Episcopal Church in February 2004. Jon continues to work as a systems analyst in Chicago, and I continue to work in human resources administration. Martha will be a sophomore in high school this fall, and Peter will be entering 7th grade.” 1983 JOHN HARTNETT (SF) has been named communications director on the Santa Fe campus of St. John’s. ANN WALTON SIEBER (A) is currently living in her hometown of Houston, where she’s working as a “bohemian freelance journalist.” She recently coordinated all the media for Houston’s Art Car Parade. On a more serious side, she’s involved in starting a halfway house for men released from prison. 1984 PETER GREEN (A) has finally left Prague and finished a year at Columbia Business School as a Knight-Bagehot Fellow. He expected a return to journalism this summer. “I’m in New York now and reachable at petergreen@pobox.com. See you all at the reunion!” Peter is compiling the virtual yearbook for his class reunion. Pictures and updates can be mailed to: sjc84reunion@ hotmail.com or to Peter personally. TRISHA (FIKE) HOWELL (SF) is pleased to announce the publication of her fifth book, The Adventures of Melon and Turnip, a children’s picture book. Trisha would love to hear from former classmates and can be reached at Trish@HowellCanyonPress.com NATASHA WALTER-FISK (SF) writes, “I’m going to the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, studying for a degree in counseling, planning on being licensed in 2008. Getting divorced from Peter. Gioia, 8 years old, is a joy. When a plant moves to a bigger pot, breaking the roots hurts, but then it flourishes. Sending kindest regards to all.” JOHN C. WRIGHT (A) sends an update on his literary career: “My fourth novel, Last Guardian of Everness, came out in August. The second two volumes of the previous trilogy—a work of science fiction— made the N.Y. Times Recommended { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } Reading List for 2003. The titles of that series are: The Golden Age, Phoenix Exaltant, and The Golden Transcendence.” 1985 MARY WALLACE (SF) and Eileen Lynx were married in April in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Their marriage “is recognized by the civilized nations of the world,” writes Mary. 1986 ELIZABETH BARNET (SF) writes: “Spring of 2004 finds me 14 years married to Rufus Blunk, whom I met working on a building project in Nicaragua in 1987. We have lived as land stewards in Marin County on Tomales Bay with a big garden, wood sculpture, and sustainable living projects. I have taught yoga here for 12 years and home-school my children: son Jasper, nearly 11, off to performing arts camp on a piano scholarship; son Silas, now 8; and daughter, Savilia, just 5. I am reading Catherine Clinton’s biography of Harriet Tubman and collecting signatures for a petition to make Marin County GMO-free. Hello there to old friends. E-mail me at lizbar@svn.net, or P.O. Box 636, Inverness, CA 94937.” STEPHANIE RICO (A) and TODD PETERSON (A87) welcomed their second daughter, Sasha Gabriele, to their family this past November. “She joins her sister, Tia Linda Rico Peterson, who is 2 years old and loves her new baby sister. You can reach us at srico@mail.sandi.net or boredout@concentric.net.” 1987 News from BOB HOWELL (AGI) and his wife, Lynn: Bob is the head of the English Department at the O’Neal School, and Lynn is the director of the Southern Pines Public Library. Their daughter Emma graduated as the valedictorian of O’Neal’s class of �36 {Alumni Profile} A Taste of New Orleans Sara Roahen’s Restaurant Reviews Capture all the Flavor of The Big Easy by Sus3an Borden, a87 W hen is smoked meat not just smoked meat? When it’s barbecue, the emblem of Southern food culture and the subject of a cover story for the New Orleans Gambit Weekly by SARA ROAHEN (SF94). Still, despite barbecue’s stronghold on Southern appetites, the story was not a natural match for the Gambit. New Orleans, although rich in food culture, is not much of a barbecue town. As Roahen points out in her article, an informal study published in the spring/summer edition of South at the Center puts New Orleans dead last among Southern towns in barbecue-restaurantsper-person. Nevertheless, Roahen managed to turn this low-priority topic into a vibrant story, weaving history, statistics, sociology, oral history, regionalism, race, and politics into its 4,000 words. “Writing about food isn’t just about writing about food,” Roahen says. “It’s also tapping into something everybody can relate to. There’s a lot of room for social commentary. Discussions of race, wage issues, values—those came up a lot while I was researching the story.” Roahen’s articles capture all the flavor— historical and social as well as gustatory—of New Orleans’ food culture. She has won a number of awards for her work, most recently first place in the critical review category for the New Orleans Press Club Awards 2004 and first place in the food writing category for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies 2003. In addition to the food news, restaurant reviews, and feature stories she writes for the Gambit, she is also a contributor to Wine and Spirits magazine and Tin House (a literary magazine), and has been published in Gourmet. Her essays can be found in 2003 Best Food Writing and an upcoming anthology, Cornbread Nation II. Roahen brings a solid background of restaurant work to her job. As a Johnnie in Santa Fe, she was a cocktail waitress at La Posada and worked after graduation at Cloud Cliff as a waitress and assistant manager. She was a line cook at restaurants in Wisconsin, San Francisco, and Wyoming. In 1999, she moved to New Orleans where her then-boyfriend, now husband, MATHIEU DE SCHUTTER (SF94) began medical school. Burnt out from cooking, she decided to resuscitate an old love, writing. “I knew I wanted to make the move to writing, but I didn’t know how to do it,” she says. “I feel like luck was on my side, because the weekly paper ran an ad for a restaurant critic, and Mathieu pushed me to apply.” The ad asked applicants to submit published clips but Roahen had none. Undeterred, she wrote a restaurant review, a recipe feature, and an autobiographical essay and sent them in. Three months later she was offered her first in a series of assign- “I can count the number of truly mind-bending meals I’ve eaten on two hands.” Sara Roahen, SF94 ments that lasted six months before she was officially offered the position. “I found out that I got the job in part because I went to the trouble to make up clips and in part because the editor of the paper, Michael Tisserand, went to St. John’s for one semester and wanted to see what a Johnnie looks like,” Roahen says. “I certainly never anticipated that St. John’s was going to help me get a writing job, but it did.” Roahen’s work as a food writer gives her an unusual relationship with food. For her weekly column she eats at the restaurant she’s reviewing at least three times. Research to find new places adds a few more restaurant meals, and occasionally she eats out for pleasure. “I love dining out. Sometimes I get physically tired of it, but there are a lot of great moments to be had in dining out even if you do it for a living. I’ve given up looking for the end-all-be-all meals, those are always rare. I can count the number of truly mindbending meals I’ve eaten on two hands. But I‘ve gained an appreciation for certain piv{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } otal moments or dishes or mouthfuls. I can find something exciting in more than you would think.” On her list of mind-bending meals is a dinner she ate at a cider house in the Spanish town of Astigarraga near San Sebastian. Cider houses can be found throughout the Spanish countryside, each serving the same traditional menu. Meals are eaten standing up around tables and the food is brought in courses: first, a tortilla de bacalao (a sort of omelet made with salt cod); then, bacalao (salt cod) smothered in roasted peppers; next, rare ox grilled over an open fire; and for dessert, Idiazabal (a slightly smoky sheep’s milk cheese) with quince paste and walnuts. “Throughout the meal everyone at your table walks up to big casks of cider and fills their glasses with just an inch of cider, drinking it quickly before it oxidizes.” As the meal continues, Roahen says, the fun escalates. “You’re standing up digging into hunks of meat, getting tipsy, and everyone around you is doing the same thing. You start talking to people at other tables. Then, every 15 minutes or so, the owner walks to a secret door in the back and unlocks it. That’s where the really good cider is. Everyone leaves their table and stands in line to get a spot of cider. They toast each other, slam down the cider and go back to their tables.” Roahen, who was eating with her husband, his father, and his father’s wife, says that the meal had all the elements of a great restaurant experience: great food, great ambiance, and people you love. As for great moments and mouthfuls, Roahen says they often come during meals in New Orleans’ many neighborhood restaurants. “In New Orleans, neighborhood restaurants generally serve the same menu,” she explains. “There’s always going to be a gumbo, very likely there will be raw oysters, always red beans, especially on Mondays. They serve po boys, smothered pork chops, spaghetti, fried chicken, and probably a shrimp remoulade. In these restaurants they’ll do a couple of dishes really well and the rest will be mediocre. You end up going to these places just for those couple of things they do well.” x �37 {Alumni Notes} 2004 and will be attending Rice University in the fall. 1988 ELAINE PINKERTON COLEMAN (SFGI) sold her World War II suspense novel, Beast of Bengal, to Polocl Press. Publication date is spring 2005. She completed a children’s book, A Hat for Emily, written for her granddaughter Emily Clementine Pinkerton, age 20 months. Visit her Web site: www.booksbyelaine.com LAURIE COOPER (A) lives in rural Chaplin, Conn., with her husband, Dov Kugelmass, and their two children: Carrie, 4, and Cyrus, 2. She is a clinical social worker in a community mental health center. DIANA SHAW-MCCARTHY (A) has graduated from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and is working as a data coordinator for Project Renewal, a nonprofit organization in New York City that works with chronically addicted homeless individuals. 1989 News from JEANNE BLACKMORE (DUVOISIN) (A): “We welcomed baby Samantha on September 12, 2003. She was born two years to the day after her brother Benjamin. Ben and Sam often get together with (A89 classmates) GARFIELD GOODRUM’S daughter Cecily, and ERIKA GAFFNEY’S daughter Cara.” EDWARD P. EAGAN (AGI) lives in Ipswich, Mass., with his wife, Camilla, and three children: Grace, 8; Eloise, 5; and Charlie, 2. He is a practicing clinical psychologist in Newburyport, Mass. BRAD STUARt (A), SARA LARSON STUART (A90), and Eleanor welcome Phoebe Sophia Stuart, born November 4, 2003, at 1:42 p.m. EST. “Brown of hair and blue of eye, Phoebe has a crooked smile and a ready laugh. What a girl!” 1990 1992 “After spending last year living in San Francisco attending Circus School (I fly on the trapeze), I have found my home in sunny Los Angeles and couldn’t be happier,” writes DAVID JOHNSON (SF). “No plans for the big top—just enjoying the ride.” From CATHERINE BARRIER (A) and JIM DUGAN (A93): “We’d like to announce the birth of Lucy Eleanor Dugan on December 10, 2004, in Los Angeles. We are, of course, convinced she is the most beautiful and smartest baby in the world. We just hope we can keep up. If anyone is rash enough to ask for pictures, they can contact us at ceb@mnemonides.net!” “Martin and I are moving to Phoenix,” writes ELAINE (REISS) PEREA (SF). “I am finally going to grad school. I start a Ph.D. program in evolutionary psychology in August. I’d love to hear from classmates and other area alum. My e-mail is meperea@hotmail.com” ELIZABETH SPAETH STOLTZ (SFGI) reports that her daughter, MEG SPAETH (A01), married TIM FREEMAN (A01) on September 20, 2003. ELYETTE KIRBY-BLOCK (SF) has just moved near Paris with her husband, Jonathan, and children: Benjamin, 3, and Elyse, 18 months. “I’m home with the kids and expecting again in September,” she writes. “I’ll be visiting family this summer in Minnesota and Nova Scotia but will be back in France the rest of the time and, as always, would welcome visitors! E-mail elyette@hotmail.com.” LISA HOLLIS-BROWN and DAVID BROWN (both SF) have moved to Colorado Springs. “David is a shiny new math professor at that other wacky liberal arts college in the mountain time zone, Colorado College. Lisa is finishing off her dissertation, and making plans for lots of long weekends in Santa Fe. Drop us a line at dbrown@coloradocollege.edu.” PHIL HOPKINS (SFGI) just received the award for teaching excellence as a philosophy professor at Southwestern University. LISA (KALLMAN) HOPKINS (SF89) begins graduate studies in library science at Texas Women’s University this fall. PRAXADES RIVERA (SFGI) has lived in Venezuela for the last eight years and is now embarking on a year sabbatical, using her summer home in New York as “headquarters.” She intends to study, read, and travel. 1991 PATRICK CHO (A) writes to announce the arrival of his son, Nicholas, on New Year’s Eve, 2002. Nicholas gets along well with his big sister, Samantha, he adds. MAGGIE FARLEy (SF) reports: “I married a Peruvian mathematician named Renzo last December and received a master’s in statistics from UNM in May. I am currently in the doctorate program in education psychology at UNM, where I am interested in studying ways to teach abstract reasoning so as to improve mathematical ability. I have been teaching undergraduate math at UNM for the last three years and before that taught high school math for two years at Santa Fe High. I value my time at St. John’s for how it encouraged me to believe in my own ability to inquire into the meaning of things as well as for all the times I got to dance thoughout the night.” LAKE (JAMES) PERRIGUEY (SF) hosted Nancy Buchenauer for an alumni seminar in Portland, Ore., on Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion. Lake is a litigator, civil rights lawyer, and community-based legal counselor in Portland. A Community in Cotati hat is it like to live in a co-housing community? “Wonderful,” writes ANNE LEONARD (A89): “Last November, after several years of planning and many meetings and work, my family (me, husband Adam Hill, son Benjamin Leonard-Hill, 2 cats) finally moved into our co-housing community in Cotati (Calif.). We live in an intentional community, legally a condominium, with shared common space, community meals several times a week, lots of kid-friendly play areas, private houses that were designed with ‘green building’ principles, and of course fabulous, intelligent, interesting people. All our [Homeowner’s Association] decisions are made on a consensus system, rather than voting. I can hang out with people and have either a frivolous or an intellectual conversation without going farther than next door. At its best, it’s like post-seminar hanging out in the Coffee Shop, with a short trek to your house when you get tired. “A couple of weeks ago, a dozen of us were hanging out in the ‘gathering node’ by the swale, when the talk turned as it often does with this group to wordplay, language games, and mnemonics. A new resident, who had only moved in a few weeks before, said that she still remembered her Greek conjugations and conjugated “luw.” I joined in, and asked her why we both knew the same thing. It turns out she was SUSAN WELCH (SF89). We’re still trying to figure out who we know in common. “I’d love to hear from any other Johnnies who live in cohousing, or from anyone who’s interested and wants to know more.” x W { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �38 {Alumni Notes} 1993 “Yes!” writes JAMES DIPROPERZIO (A), aka James Propis. “My short story, ‘After the Fall,’ was published in a new anthology called Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love, edited by Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D. The book just won an award for #1 Best Parenting Book of the Year from the Independent Publisher’s Book Association.” NANCY MARCUS (A) writes, “After serving as the National Abortion Federation’s State Public Policy Director since 2002 (See pages 139143 of Molly Ivin’s Bushwhacked for some of my recent work), I am leaving the D.C. activist world to rejoin the academic world in true Johnnie style. For the next two years, I will be in Madison earning my LL.M. at the University of Wisconsin’s Law School.” PENNY SINONE (SFGI) is currently working on “Leftovers,” part II of a project called “The Dump Chronicles,” a collaboration with Sonoma artist David Povilaites. “In August 2003, I left Philly and my work at Project HOME (the best experience of my life!) to move to Santa Fe and begin teaching here,” writes J. WALTER STERLING (A). “So far, so good.” “Hi! I am living in Dumfries, Va., with my parents. I hope everyone is good,” writes ERIKA SUSKI (A). She can be reached at P.O. Box 1133, Dumfries, VA 22026. 1994 WILLIAM J. KOWALSKI (SF) and his wife, Alexandra, welcomed a daughter, Kasia, into the world on July 3, 2003. SARAH (LIVERSIDGE) and MIKE AFFLERBACH (both A) are still enjoying life in New Bern, N.C. Writes Sarah, “We’ve been doing a lot of sailboat racing and some cruising to the Outer Banks. Mike’s radio business is growing, and I should have my architecture license this year.” JULIE MEADOWS (A) writes: “I am finally ABD in the Ethics and Society program in the Religion Department at Emory. My dissertation director, MARK JORDAN (SF73), is also a Johnnie! I row on weekends on the Chattahoochee River with the Atlanta Rowing Club, while my sweetie Steve, a veterinarianturned-epidemiologist, goes kayaking. Best wishes!” 1995 GEORGE ERVING (SFGI) is enjoying a tenure-track position as assistant professor of Humanities, Honors and English Lit at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., where he has been since the fall of 2003. “It’s a great fit for me and my courses are substantially influenced by my time at St. John’s,” he writes. ZENA HITZ (A) is finishing her dissertation on the critique of democracy in Plato and Aristotle. This fall she will have a temporary teaching appointment in the philosophy department at McGill University in Montreal, and in January, she will take up a tenure-track position at Auburn University in Alabama. “Greetings from the greater Boston area!” EMILY MURPHY (A) writes. “Still in grad school—still working part-time for the National Park Service and helping with the 200th anniversary of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birth here in Salem.” 1996 ELIZABETH BUCHEN (SF96), daughter of JERRY (GERALD) BUCHEN (SF72), just earned her medical degree from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and starts her residency in Ob/Gyn (“another four years!”) also at UNM: “I live in Albuquerque with my husband, Chris Lopez, and our four dogs and two cats. Anyone wishing to contact me can do so by e-mail at elizsb@unm.edu.” SONIAH KAMAL (A) will have her first novel, An Isolated Incident, published by Penguin in the fall of 2005. “A short synopsis is ‘East is East meets Osama Bin Laden,’” she reports. Kamal has had a lot of short stories published, writes a column for a periodical in Pakistan, and is working on a movie script. She lives in San Francisco. DANIEL SILVERMINTZ (AGI) has accepted a position as assistant professor of Humanities at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. He can be reached at silvermintz@cl.uh.edu. SHANNON STIRMAN (SF) writes: “KELLY (SF97), Henry (who is now almost 3), and I have moved to Menlo Park, Calif., where he’s working for a software company, and I’ll be doing an internship in clinical psychology. I defended my dissertation in February, so this is the last step before I finish school. We’d love to hear from other Johnnies who are in the area!” 1997 DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) recently graduated with an MBA from the University of Maryland. Happy news from LORI FREEMAN (A): “I’m too excited not to write The College and let everyone know that I’ve gotten engaged! Wes Smedley and I will be married in Philadelphia this October. This is the funny part—he’s an Episcopal priest, which is actual proof that God has a sense of humor. Anyway, we’re being married at Christ Church in Philadelphia on Sunday, October 17, during the regular 11 a.m. church service. If you’re around, come and join us! My e-mail address is lorifreeman25@hotmail.com; Johnnies and friends are always welcome at the house I share with KEVIN GARDNER (also A97), who, in addition to being my Maid of Honor, just completed his second year at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } and is working on a huge, beautiful mural project this summer. I’m still working for a women’s literacy program in the Kensington area of Philadelphia.” KIRA HEATER (SF) and her husband, RUSSELL DIBBLE (A92, EC97) are living in Missoula, Mont. Kira is finishing a master’s degree in mathematics, and “Russ is on a BLM hotshot wildland fire crew based out of Salt Lake City. If you’re in Missoula, look us up. Johnnies are always welcome.” BRENT HINRICHS (AGI) is now working as the Upper School Head at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, Calif. In addition, he and Evie Schneider got married last August and purchased their first home in San Jose. “We would love to hear from GIs from ’94-’98! Where are you, BILL BUYSSE (AGI96) and PATRICK WAGER (AGI96)?” ANNE KNIGGENDORF (SF) reports: “TONY LAGOURANIS (also SF97) is serving in the Army and is currently stationed in Iraq. I think he will be there until early 2005. If you would like to send Tony something, I have his address and would be glad to give it to anyone interested. Please contact me at annekknigs@cs.com. My family is well—still in Georgia. Stephen and I have TWO little boys now!” INYA LASKOWSKI (SFGI) has been invited to be art educator in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Luther Burbank Center in Santa Rosa, Calif. She has shown her monotypes in nine exhibitions in the last two years. Her work can be seen at Hand Artes Gallery, Truchas, N.M. KIT LINTON (A) and SONYA SCHIFF LINTON (A00) are happy to announce the birth of their daughter, Viola Mae Linton, on June 3, 2004. Kit heads up the New York City office for a small consulting firm, and Sonya just finished her first year at law school. They would love to hear from friends at Kitandsonya@hotmail.com. �39 {Alumni Notes} After graduating from Yale Law School in May, RICHARD SCHMECHEL (A) plans to move to Washington, D.C., in the fall. He will be working at the Public Defender Service on a two-year project funded by the Open Society Institute. DNA, memory reliability, and other forensic issues are the subject of the project. He would love to hear from Johnnies, “indicted or not,” at richardschmechel@aya.yale.edu. 1998 An announcement from DAWN BORCHELT (A): “Wolfgang Guy Borchelt was born at home Feb. 24, 2004.” He was 6 lbs., 11 oz., and 19 inches long. JESSICA COVITZ and ALAN PICHANICK (both A) are excited to announce the births of their second and third daughters, Katherine and Elisheva, this past January. Along with their 5-year-old daughter, Sophia, they are living in Philadelphia. They would love to hear from old friends and can be reached via e-mail: jcovitz@uchicago.edu or adpichan@uchicago.edu. After finishing a master’s degree in Divinity at the University of Chicago, ALEXANDRA MUDD (A) moved to Cambridge to work on a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science. “Any A98 Johnnies in England should look me up!” she writes. “I am living in that Johnnie haven, Brooklyn,” writes FELIX S. LESLIE (A), “practicing law across the river in Manhattan and enjoying life. I can be reached at felixleslie@hotmail.com.” Santa Fe alumni looking for long-lost alumnus MICHAEL OLSON (A99) can find his classnote among entries for 1999. TIM POMAROLE (A) has graduated from Duke University School of Law and will be working for the Appellate Division of the Suffolk County DA’s Office in Boston. Last summer, Tim worked at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. 1999 MICHAEL BAAS (SF) married Megan Bello on January 2, 2004, in Galisteo, NM. RUTH BUSKO (SF) graduated from the Tai Sophia Institute for the Healing Arts in March 2004 with a Master of Acupuncture degree. She is living in Baltimore, Md., and practicing acupuncture in Ellicott City, Md. GREG KOEHLERT (SFGI) married Merrie Schlein in August 2003; t heir first child is due at the end of November. “Of course, we’re still in NYC,” Greg writes. MICHAEL OLSEN (A) checks in after a long absence: “Almost immediately upon graduating five years ago, I lost my way on the path to law school and never arrived. Instead, this fall I begin my fourth year of teaching English and Social Studies in grades six through eight at a private middle school in Chicago. Although this career began unexpectedly, I’m having a great time teaching and cannot think of anything else I’d rather be doing right now. I will probably continue with it well into the future, although it is likely I will leave Chicago again once I complete the masters degree I’m starting to work on. Not a day goes by when I do not miss the college. I occasionally attend Chicago-area alumni events but regret that I have kept in touch with only a few classmates. I am fortunate to be doing a fair amount of traveling and generally living the life of leisure during my summer vacations. All are welcome to write, e-mail, or telephone: 1354 W. Argyle Street, Chicago, IL 60640; michaelolsen123@hotmail.com; 773.989.8491. I am interested in hearing from anyone I knew, whether in Santa Fe or Annapolis.” “It’s funny to think that it’s been eight years since I last saw most of you, writes BEN THORNBER (A). “I have just gotten an M. Div. degree from Earlham School of Religion, a Quaker seminary located in Richmond, Indiana. I am now looking for work as a pastoral minister at a Quaker church, having become a Quaker two years ago. I’m largely looking at Quaker churches in the Midwest but I am also talking to a Quaker church in Tennessee. I value the time that I spent at St. John’s and the friendships I developed there. I hope to hear from you. My snail-mail address is: 824 SW A Street, Richmond, IN 47374, and my e-mail address is thornberbenjamin@ hotmail.com. I hope things go well with each of you.” New Ventures for John Balkcom ormer Santa Fe President JOHN BALKCOM (SFGI00) joined the board of directors of IMCO Recycling, Inc., in December 2003 and became the chairman of the board in April 2004. He participated in the announcement of a merger with Commonwealth Industries in mid-June. “Carol and I are pleased to be back in Evanston and looking forward to hosting our second reception for prospective students in June,” he writes. “I’m also excited about co-leading a seminar in Summer Classics with tutor Michael Rawn on Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! We send our gratitude to the Santa Fe class of 2004 for their warm welcome at commencement.” x F { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } 2000 JOHN HUNTER (AGI) and his wife, Lisa, would like to announce the birth of a son, James Elias Brinton (“Jeb”) on Oct. 3, 2003. ANNE MCSHANE (A) expects to begin studies at New York University’s School of Law this fall, and offers to coach others thinking about a similar path. “I have taught and am teaching Kaplan’s LSAT course and am happy to advise on the law school application process. I can be reached at annecarolmcshane@yahoo.com.” NICOLE NELSON-JEAN (AGI) is enjoying her time in Tokyo. “Last year I accepted a position as the director of the Department of Energy Asia office and also became the Energy Attache to the U.S. Ambassador of Japan. I have had a fabulous time here. The food is wonderful and the art, historical sites, and people are even better.” DEBERNIERE TORREY (AGI) was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Korea. Torrey is pursuing a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Penn State University. A Korean instructor at Penn State, she’s also active with the university’s International Languages and Literature Student Organization, the Conversation Partners Program, and the Ballroom Dance club. The fellowship will allow Torrey to spend a year in Korea studying 19th-century Korean literature in preparation for her thesis proposal and further research. The topic of her research is the effect of modern/western thought imported from China. 2001 LANCE BRISBOIS (A) recently joined the editorial staff of Hackett Publishing. He works and lives in Cambridge, Mass. PAIGE POSTLEWAIT (A) and MICHAEL MAGUIRE (A02) were married in 2001, “and have a beautiful son, Daschel Auden,” �40 Paige writes. “Michael is currently serving our country in the Army, and we will all be relocating as a family in the fall to Berlin, Germany. I will teach English and attend school while we are there. I have recently started a Web site for Johnnies from the Annapolis campus to use. It is located at www.youthriot.co.uk/sjc, and includes photo galleries and message boards. We are also looking for links to Johnnie homepages. I’d encourage anyone who wants to get in touch with me to help with the site or suggest links! It is a work in progress but we’re very excited. Feel free to contact Mike and me at sizeofthoughts@hotmail.com.” SUZANNAH SIMMONS (SF) expects to be in law school this fall. “Hi, everybody!” writes ERIK STADNIK (A). “I’m one of the growing number of Johnnies who has settled in the DC area for the time being. I’ve lived in the Alexandria, Va., area for the past two years or so, and I just started a new job at the Library of Congress Law Library. So, if anyone is in the area and would like a tour, get in touch! Sjcaustenite@yahoo.com. {Alumni Notes} 2002 LUCAS FORD (A) is pining for certain aspects of the Johnnie life: “I miss vacations, breaks, and long weekends and all that sweetness.” SHELLEY ROSE WALKER (SFGI, EC03) is enjoying life in the East: “Since graduation, Doug Saxon and I have been teaching English at a university in South Korea. We live about an hour from Seoul, which allows us a primarily relaxed, quiet lifestyle within a short jaunt from the cultural and culinary advantages of the capital city. We spent two months last winter traveling in India and we can’t wait to go back. This summer our adventures will lead us through China, into Tibet, and then boating down the Yangtze River before we head back to our East Asian abode come September. Our tentative plan is to hold down the fort here for two to four more years. One of the great perks of our jobs is the enormous amount of free time we’re given, during which you can usually find us gleefully occupied with reading and continuing our conversations. We’d love to hear from you: swalker_@hotmail.com or dougsaxon@hotmail.com.” RACHEL AVIVA POLLACK (A) spent the summer studying at the American Academy of Rome. 2003 2004 SEAN MADDEN (AGI) will embark on the Eastern Classics program in Santa Fe in August. x What’s Up? KATHY CHRISTIE and JOHN ANDERS (both SF) were married in Houston, Texas, in August 2004. LAURA DABNEY (SF) writes that JUSTIN “GUS” HURWITZ (SF) has made it into the Chicago School of Law. “Go him!” Another new law student: SEAN MCLAIN (A) will be beginning studies at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., this fall. The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in January; deadline for the alumni notes section is November 1. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College Public Relations Office 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu {Obituaries} EDWIN LEROY LOTZ, CLASS OF 1931 Edwin Lotz, whose skill as a lacrosse player at St. John’s during the days of intercollegiate athletics won him a place in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, died May 25, 2004, at the age of 93. Born in Ellicott City, Md., Lotz earned his degree from St. John’s in 1931. He received the college’s Allgernon Sidney Sullivan Award for Outstanding Leadership. In 1934, Lotz earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, where he conducted research on the effects of electrical shock to the heart. His basic discoveries later led to the development of the defibrillator. He received his doctorate in electrical engineering from Hopkins in 1938, and went on to a career in research. He retired in 1975 as vice president of research and development for the Glass Fabrics Company, a division of Burlington Industries. He held numerous patents on the treatment of glass fabrics. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow in the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. With his brother Phil, a member of the class of 1932 who also is in the Hall of Fame, Lotz was among the most accomplished athletes in the college’s history. He played football, boxed, and played baseball. When the baseball team was disbanded, Ed Lotz and his brother picked up lacrosse sticks. Lotz played on three national championship lacrosse teams (1929, 1930, and 1931) that beat much bigger schools, including Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Maryland. He was Edwin Lotz { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } named to the All-American Lacrosse Team in 1930 and in 1931. In 1966 he was inducted into the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, as “one of Lacrosse’s all-time great defensemen.” The December 1999 issue of Sports Illustrated named Edwin Lotz one of the top 50 greatest sports figures from the state of Maryland in the 20th century. In a letter he wrote to The Reporter in 1998, Lotz said that he once believed that his participation on the St. John’s championship teams and being named to the Hall of Fame would stand as his life’s greatest achievements. “However, something happened to me shortly after my 86th birthday that changed all that,” he wrote. Lotz described how in the midst of the Great Depression, unable to find a job, he decided to attend graduate school at Hopkins: “During the research work on my thesis… I discovered the basic principle of electric countershock as a means to stop the fibrilla- �41 {Obituaries} tion of the heart. Using dogs as subjects, I found that a very small electrical shock of 1 milliampere would cause the heart to go into fibrillation and a countershock 100 times stronger would stop the fibrillation. “This basic discovery in 1934 led to the development of the defibrillator that is now used worldwide in all hospitals and doctors’ offices to stop fibrillation of the heart, saving many lives every day. About the size of a portable typewriter, the defibrillator sits over in the corner of the room awaiting its turn to save another life.” It was his life, Lotz noted, that was saved by a defibrillator when his heart stopped during the implantation of a pacemaker. “This remarkable story illustrates the importance of basic research, because you never know where the discovery of new facts or information will lead.” Lotz and his wife, Kay, had four children. After his wife died in 1991, Lotz lived with his daughter and her family in Charlottesville, Va., until his death. CALVIN BAUMGARTNER, CLASS OF 1944 Calvin Baumgartner, a member of the class of 1944 who survived the sinking of the Merchant Marine ship on which he served during World War II, died in May at the age of 90. Baumgartner was born in Baltimore County, Maryland, and received his first education in a two-room schoolhouse. During high school at Baltimore’s City College, he delivered telegrams for Western Union. He attended St. John’s before the war interrupted his studies. After the U.S. entered World War II, he joined the Merchant Marine Army Transport Service. In April 1945, he was assigned to the S.S. Black Point, which on May 5, 1945, was off the coast of Rhode Island, carrying coal to Boston. A lookout at Point Judith heard an explosion and saw the ship come to a stop: a German U-Boat torpedoed the Black Point just eight hours after the U-Boat command was ordered to stop attacks on Allied ships. The torpedo blew off the last 50 feet of the nearly 400-foot ship. Minutes after the last survivor was rescued, the Black Point rolled over. Twelve men lost their lives in the attack; 34 men were saved. Baumgartner was the last crew member to be rescued. A program assembled by his family for a celebration of his life spoke to Baumgartner’s enduring pride in his military service. “He felt that World War II was America’s finest hour and the most outstanding event of his lifetime. He was so proud of how the Calvin Baumgartner country came together and the troops rallied.” After the war, Baumgartner went on to several different enterprises: managing an apartment complex, converting coal furnaces to natural gas, and operating a grain hauling company on the Chesapeake Bay. With a partner, he hauled grain from Norfolk to Baltimore until his barge, the B.S. Ford, sank in 1960. Baumgartner retired in 1980 from a job as stationary engineer for the Maryland Training School for Boys. Baumgartner and his first wife, Dorothea, had four children. After her death, he married Violetta S. Bateman, who died in 1996. His goal, his family said, was to live to be 90. He celebrated that milestone on April 22, 2004. RICHARD “WOODY” WEST, CLASS OF 1961 Richard W. West, a long-time Washington journalist, died in May at his home in Hagerstown, Md. He was 70. A high school football star, West was recruited to play for the University of Missouri, said Annapolis attorney Darrell Henry, also a member of the class of 1961. West served in the Marines in Thailand and Japan for three years before enrolling in St. John’s in 1957. “We used to kiddingly call him the ‘Old Marine,’” Henry recalls. “He had both feet firmly on the ground, he was very bright, an excellent manager. He was a good athlete, and a very intelligent guy.” John Pekkanen, class of 1961, shared all his classes with West for two years. “He was five years older than me, and he was very much a big brother to me,” he says. “He showed me the ropes of life.” History, especially the great battles and heroes of the Civil War, and literature were West’s great interest, and he left St. John’s to complete Richard West { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } a bachelor’s degree in history at American University. His first newspaper jobs were in Nebraska, at the Lincoln Star and the Omaha World-Herald. After moving to Washington in the early 1960s, West worked first as a reporter and later as an editorial writer for the Washington Star. When the Star folded in 1981, he moved on to the newly founded Washington Times as an editorial writer and quickly climbed the ranks, becoming managing editor in 1983 and later executive editor, the newspaper’s chief editorial position, from 1985 to 1986. West decided to step down from that stressful position because it consumed all of his time. “Now I’m going to sit on the porch and read, go out and scare a few geese in the winter,” he told the Washington Post in 1986. Since 1986, West worked part time as the associate editor for the Times. He edited the weekly Civil War page and served on the committee overseeing the Sunday book pages, choosing books for review and matching them with reviewers. He was also a frequent reviewer himself for the Times, Insight, and the Weekly Standard. “Woody saw life a little off-center, and I mean that as a compliment,” says Pekkanen, adding that West encouraged and helped him when he was starting out in journalism. “He was a skilled and perceptive writer and a great thinker. He was a newspaper man.” West is survived by his wife of 43 years, JoAnn Wochos West, of Hagerstown. x ALSO NOTED: GEORGE BONIFANT, class of 1939, died in March. CHARLES HYSON, class of 1937, died in March. JOHN LOGUE, class of 1950, died in June. ALEXANDER MORSE, class of 1945 and SFGI73, died in September 2003. LESTER H. PALMER, class of 1930, died in February 2004. ROBERT SNIBBE, CLASS OF 1937, died in June 2004. WILLIAM JOHN RICHARD THOMAS JR., class of 1935, died in June 2004. �42 {Croquet} Cruising to Another Croquet Victory Santa Fe Seniors Join the Party by Rosemary Harty ith The College’s veteran croquet correspondent Sus3an Borden (A87) taking on new duties in the Advancement office this year, this editor planned to capture the action at the 22nd annual croquet match against the Naval Academy, held on the customary date of the last Saturday of April. But I was recruited for champagnepouring duty in the Alumni tent, where in an attempt to weed out impostors, would-be imbibers were quizzed on senior essay topics. (“Um, something about…Homer,” was a typical response.) The sound of cheering reached the alumni tent, but we had a hard time following the action, like most of the estimated 1,200 spectators who crowded onto the campus for a great party on a spectacularly sunny April day. Good thing the press was there. The match brought out the local papers, the Associated Press correspondent, and a shamefully biased correspondent from The Trident, the Naval Academy’s newspaper, who again blamed the loss on the allegedly rigorous Naval Academy schedule. The most interesting development this year was the participation of 28 Santa Fe students who came to Annapolis on their own dime to see for themselves what croquet fever is all about. Most caught a red-eye flight from Santa Fe after seminar Thursday W night, but a couple of determined Johnnies of the West drove all the way to Annapolis and back. “Most of us had never been to Annapolis, so we wanted to see the campus,” explained Chris Coucheron-Ammot (SF04), who organized the outing. Being an honest fellow, Coucheron-Aamot readily acknowl- edged that the contingent came first “for a fabulous party” and second for a show of solidarity. “The senior class in Santa Fe really believed in the ‘one college-two campuses’ ideal of St. John’s,” he said. “We don’t feel like there’s a big difference between Johnnies in Santa Fe and Johnnies in Annapolis.” The visitors understood “parts of the game,” and were particularly taken by the contrast in traditions between the rivals, he said. “We liked the way the Mids had Plebes in white jackets carrying around water bottles for them, and Johnnies had their girlfriends carrying around bottles of Colt 45.” Johnnies put their Western classmates up on couches and floors in their apartments around town. Sarah Stickney (A04) and John Okrent (A04) organized barbecues to feed them. The campus community out West would welcome an Annapolis contingent out for one of its best parties, Oktoberfest. “We usually bring snow down from the mountains because it hasn’t snowed on the campus yet, and we have a snowball fight,” he explained. Why not include a croquet match in Oktoberfest festivities? “Have you seen our soccer field?” Coucheron-Aamot asked in reply. x Imperial Wicket Sam Spalding lines up a shot. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �43 {Croquet} Clockwise: Johnnies adopted an Army look to intimidate Navy this year. A group of Santa Fe Johnnies enjoy the party; Ronald Fielding (A70) strikes the first ball. photos by david trozzo Highlights: Score: Johnnies 4, Mids 1. Record: 18-4. Team: Sam Spalding (A04), imperial wicket; Nicholas Whittier (A05), vice wicket; Ian Morochnick (A04); Kabe Erkenbrack (A04); Justin Berrier (A04); Aurora Cassells (A04); Jackson O’Brien (A04); Nick Garklavs (A04); Riley Ossorgin (A05); John Gerard (A05); Shunji Matsuzawa (A06); and Matt Mangold (A06). Dramatic moment: Dressed in camouflage outfits, faces smeared with grease paint, Johnnies emerge from Woodward Hall to the Top Gun theme. Ceremonial first ball: Struck by Ron Fielding (A70), a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Press highlights: The Capital: “Tim Kile, a St. John’s junior, wore a straw hat, a sleeveless orange T-shirt and suspenders and held an acoustic guitar—the ‘wandering cowboy minstrel look.’ ‘I don’t know anything about croquet, but my roommate made ice cream—that’s the best part so far,’ he said.” The Baltimore Sun: “Before the 1 p.m. start of the 22nd Annapolis Cup, Naval { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } Academy player Brock Zimmerman got in some last-minute practice shots. The first-year mid hoped to make a dent in St. John’s series advantage of 17 victories to the academy’s 4. ‘I think we have the best chance to bring one back to Navy in a long time,’ he said.” The Associated Press: “Special attire— much of it harkening back to the days when croquet was played on grandma’s lawn while everyone sipped lemonade on sultry days—is popular at the annual croquet game. “Elizabeth Durham, a St. John’s junior, was a little more inventive, wearing shimmering gossamer wings and a saarilike cloth draped over her long white dress. ‘Honestly, I just threw it together in 10 minutes,’ she said.” x �44 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } One Less Car on the Block Santa Fe Graduates Go Car-Free aul Cooley (SF90, EC98) and Laura Hunt Cooley (SF92) were married in 1996 and live in Santa Fe. Paul is a writer and an athome dad to Sadie, 4, and Zebediah, 2. Laura is a librarian at the Meem Library on the Santa Fe campus. The two have been dedicated bicyclists for many years, but last spring they reached a point of no return: On May 5, 2005, they sold their only car and committed themselves to getting around by bicycle, bus, and other means. Here’s how they coped with the first few days of the transition. P May 6 Laura: We are now officially car-free! We’d been thinking about it for a while, but only got serious whenever the car needed an expensive repair. Usually this was in the fall or winter, when it’s harder to get motivated to use the bike and bus to get around. I’m extremely sensitive to the cold and have to bundle up in crazy ways to stay warm in the winter on my bike. Once we had made the decision to sell the car we had to figure out an asking price for it. To us, it was no longer valuable–we were through with it. In fact, it felt stupid to sell it because we weren’t stopping it from contributing to the sick automobile culture in this country. We ended up selling it to a girl who didn’t already have another car, which was a relief. The kids have started using the driveway for their chalk art. We all started writing each other little messages that we could see john hartnett Paul: The Saab sold yesterday. We priced it at $4,200 based on its book value, but knew a few things were not working well. The prospective buyer took the car to the dealer, and the cash value of the repairs came to over $2,000. We settled on $3,600, which seemed fair. Getting rid of the car is not all about the money, but the money is certainly one of the things I focus on. Gas is almost $2 a gallon and seems to be going up. The repairs and constant maintenance are irritating. There was a time when I felt extra responsible, changing the oil, rebuilding the engine. But now it doesn’t seem to be that important to me—the cost and the waste of oil and time are not repaid by enjoyment of the vehicle. The cost of insurance every six months threw our financial balance off kilter. I cancelled the insurance this morning. The company is sending back $140, and we will not get billed again. The empty driveway stirs up a variety of emotions. There is something strange about it, in spite of the fact we haven’t used the car for over a month. I feel as if I am waiting for someone to come home. The fact the driveway was built specifically for cars, and now there is no car there, makes it seem like an unneeded appendage. I plan to go out there later in the morning and do some chalk drawings or something. I fantasize about building a deck out there or putting out some lawn furniture. when we swung into the driveway on our bikes. Today, Paul proudly wrote, “One Less Car!” May 7 Paul: Today there is a complicated situation with Sadie’s nursery: everyone is going over to the big Waldorf school for their Maypole and carnival. Laura has an acupuncture appointment in the morning, and I am supposed to help with a commuting workshop at the Runnels Building at noon. One of the changes that we have noticed now that the car is gone is a growing impatience with other people imposing “running around” on us. It is certainly possible to make it out to the school, but we are irritated that we are expected to do so. There are several possibilities: I can bike Sadie and Zeb over, and Laura can come join them after her appointment; we can keep Sadie out and do something fun with her; or we can take her car seat over to the nursery and hope someone will give Sadie a ride there and back. The first two options are what we are considering. With the children doing so well with the bicycles, I am not as worried about feeling trapped anymore. I don’t know if there will come a time when they are too big for the trailer and will not want to bicycle as far on the tandems and triples. We will deal with that when we come to it. Perhaps we will use the bus more often. Of course there are always rentals, and I suspect that we will rent a car a couple of times a year. We will probably need to in order to get to the airport for our trip to the beach, or maybe we can use the Park and Ride and spend the night in Albuquerque. I hope we can begin to use the train more often. The airplane is the only transportation Not having a car means keeping the driveway free for playing. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �45 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } method less fuel-efficient than the private automobile. I hope that we never have to resort to buying another car. May 9 Paul: Yesterday, I ordered the Bike Friday Family Triple bike. I think it is going to be a good bike, but it is costing us quite a bit of money, almost $700 over what we received for the car. We are getting the May 18 john hartnett Laura: At first I felt a bit nervous about not having a car. I didn’t really have any good reasons—it was just unsettling. We had heard, and answered, many of the arguments against getting rid of the car altogether. What if there’s a medical emergency? Call an ambulance. What if you’re in a hurry? It can’t be helped, even with a car. What if you want to haul something big and heavy? Get a heavy-duty bike trailer or rent a car for a day. What if you want to go on a trip? Rent a car, or take public transportation, trains, or planes. I think what was behind most of my unsettled feelings was the big step we had just taken outside of mainstream culture. We’re already a little outside mainstream culture. We don’t own a television, dishwasher, clothes dryer, or microwave, and we went to St. John’s College. But something about the car seemed so essential to the American identity. And we were abandoning it. Now we have to think through each trip to see if it is worth the effort. I like having to be creative about how we’re going to get places. I like the freedom of traveling outside the main stream of traffic. I like providing a respectable role model for my kids. I’ve even stopped impulse-shopping at thrift stores and yard sales. Now I wait until there’s something I really need before I go on a shopping trip. The other day, Paul expressed exactly how I felt about the car. He said he changes his behavior when he catches himself doing something that makes him feel like an idiot. Like using the plastic produce bags at the market, rather than some of the hundreds of bags we have stuffed in a drawer at home. Once he reaches the idiot point, he changes his behavior. I realized that the car enabled me to do idiotic things—things for which I could not summon any self-respect. I was adding to pollution, road rage, the economy of cheap plastic crap, and I was getting no benefit from it. The Cooleys found a better use for their garage. suitcases and trailer kit, so we will be able to bike to the train station when we get to that point in our lives. In the afternoon, we bicycled out to Eldorado for a baby shower. I wanted to mention that we sold the car, but I was somewhat uncomfortable, almost apologetic about it. Getting rid of the car is a bold move, but if it works out, it is, in a way, an indictment of others’ behavior. And people are apologetic about their own car use when I talk about getting rid of ours. I suppose that’s a good thing, but I wouldn’t want to lose any friends over our decision. Laura: Yesterday, Paul ordered us a triple bike. We already own a tandem bike. Paul rides on front and Sadie rides on back. Together they haul Zeb in a bike trailer that we refer to as “the Chariot.” We now have nine bikes and one on order. I have a backup in case mine needs repair. We own three tandem bikes, two of which we ride a lot. The first one we bought has sentimental value (we got it for each other as an anniversary present). Paul has three bikes. He’s a collector at heart, but he tries to ride all three. And we have a kid trailer and a bike trailer for stuff (not people). Everyone seems to think Santa Fe is not a safe town to bike in, mostly because there isn’t a good trail system. Personally, I feel safer on the roads. As long as I follow the traffic rules and act predictably, I get to flow easily with the traffic. I think Santa Fe is a very bikeable town, only seven miles across, and most rides within city limits can easily be done in less than an hour. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } Paul: It’s been almost two weeks since we sold the car. I am working on a book on being car-free, focusing more on the difficult-to-describe social impacts of the reliance on automobiles. Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity contains many of the ideas I would like to focus on and which I am still struggling to understand. He speaks of the growth of time and space scarcity as vehicles begin to pass 15 miles per hour. He also points out that our freedom to travel is restricted by industry once we begin to rely on motor vehicles and transportation engineers for our means to get from one place to another. We make a fundamental shift from travelers to consumers of transportation. Has the ability of our intellect to wander over vast and shifting fields of imagination been influenced by the restriction of our physical wandering to well-laid roads and clear destinations? Behrman’s The Man Who Loved Bicycles captures some of the spirit of what I would like to say. How can I express the freedom I feel at not being restricted to driving when so many people would look at the same thing as a deprivation? We do have more friends taking to their bicycles, if only for short rides. Laura: We just got back from an overnight camping trip to Hyde Park. I never thought I’d spend three hours riding up, hauling kids and camping gear. It’s amazing to see how my perspective is changing. It’s very empowering to know that we can take our family on a self-supported bike tour–even one that includes mountains. Lately, we’ve found ourselves drawn to bike activist meetings, trying to get more rights for bicyclists in our city. If we don’t do it, who will? Paul’s wondering again what to do with the driveway. He’s mentioned digging up the concrete and putting in a garden. He’s talked about putting in a bike shed for storage, or a bike rack to encourage visitors to bike over. But for now, I’m enjoying the new open space and the satisfaction of one less car on the block. x �46 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Dear Alumni, Exciting things are happening with the Alumni Association and for alumni around the world! Here is a quick update on what’s happening in your Association these days. It was great to spend time with friends old and new at Homecoming in Santa Fe the beginning of July. It is always intriguing to make connections with others who share the passion for books and talk and to see where their paths have led them since they left the college. Consider joining us next year to enjoy seminar, sun, and Association Honors Three at Homecoming A New Mexico educator who brought the Socratic method of teaching to many schools was honored with an Award of Merit, and a retired faculty member and staff member in Santa Fe joined the ranks of Honorary Alumni during Homecoming 2004. Michael Strong (SF84) received his merit award during the Homecoming banquet July 3. Strong is the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice, the definitive account of how to implement Paedeia, a teaching approach emphasizing Socratic questioning, academic coaching,and interactive learning. Strong is the former director of Moreno Valley High School in Angel Fire, N.M., a charter school. Over the years, he has worked as a Paideia/Socratic Seminar consultant for dozens of schools and organizations. He has worked with the Alaska sunsets that grace the campus! Though I wasn’t able to attend the Summer Alumni Programs this year, I understand that they were stimulating and satisfying. Art, music, philosophy, and fun—what more can one ask? The annual Alumni Art Fair was a raging success thanks to Santa Fe staff member Maggie Magalnick and Liz Jenny (SF80). The range and quality of the work were amazing. As a bonus for alumni, the college hosted a special breakfast for the artists with a presentation by an art consultant about how to build and maintain their passion for art as a business. We are planning again this year to host a picnic and reception for incoming freshmen in Santa Fe in August. We introduced this event last year. It welcomes new students into the SJC community, gives local alumni an opportunity to meet new alumni-to-be, and begins the bond-building process that is part of every Johnnie’s experience. Another new event was added to the alumni calendar last year when seniors on the Santa Fe campus invited alumni to join them for Fasching Ball. For you Easterners, this is a celebration that takes place in February. Istvan Fehevary, long-time friend and director of the Student Activities office in Santa Fe, brought this tradition to the college from his native Hungary. The party gave another opportunity for students and alumni to get to know each other, practice their dancing prowess, and raise a glass in farewell to the long days of February. Of course the Alumni Association Board continues to pursue the more serious and business-like aspects of our work. We’re updating our operating resolutions to reflect changes in technology, policy, and practice. We recognize members of the community with prizes and awards. We select members for work on the Board of Visitors and Governors, and we explore new and interesting ways to help alumni stay connected to each other and to the college. If you have suggestions, questions, or requests, please feel free to give me a call or drop me an email. Until then . . . see you at seminar! Paideia Project, and served as the director for the Center for Socratic Practice at the Judson Montessori School in San Antonio, Texas, as the founding headmaster of The Winston Academy in Fort Lauderdale, and as the founding director of Middle School Programs for the Early Learning Institute in Palo Alto, Calif. He attended Harvard University in addition to St. John’s College and earned his master’s degree in Social Thought from the University of Chicago. Glenn Freitas, who retired in 2003, touched the lives of many members of the St. John’s College community in his 34 years of service to the college. Freitas attended St. Mary’s College in California and received his undergraduate degree in classical languages, a Th.L. in theology from Laval Universite in Quebec, and another licentiate in sacred scripture from The French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem. Ginger Roherty, who recently retired as director of the Annual Fund in Santa Fe, was a devoted member of the St. John’s College community from 1989-2004, one noted for her warmth, energy, and skill. She shepherded the Library and Fine Arts Guild into a healthy membership, with more than 400 participants. She also nurtured the growth of the Philos Society and its seminar program, “Inviting Conversations.” x Merit award recipient Michael Strong (SF84) has devoted his career to bringing the Socratic method to education. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } Glenda Eoyang �47 {Alumni Association News} Passion for Proust by Kevin R. Johnson (A93) At a bookstore, I saw a posting for a reading group. This gave me a romantic idea. If I put up a posting to read all of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, perhaps I could find a mate. I never carried out this absurd plan, but it would sometimes haunt me. And so, when Jason Bielagus (SF98) proposed that our local alumni should create a group to read the magnum opus, it seemed fate was knocking at my door. I was more than eager to answer. Little did I know that one of Proust’s central objectives was a comprehensive critique of the romantic imagination. The pace that Jason set for the readings was harrowing. He wisely considered the importance of finishing before we had forgotten the beginning, and relentlessly held us to our schedule. We had to find time to read several hundred pages of dense prose every three weeks. Casualties were heavy for even the second and third seminars. By the end of the second volume (of six, in my edition), we were left with a hardy band whose passion for Proust alone could have given the stamina to withstand the pace of our schedule. None of them were single contemporaries, and Proust was delivering devastating blows to my romantic sensibility. My hopes had been dashed completely. Or had they? On the train one morning, I looked across to see an attractive woman who was also reading Proust. It turned out that she was leading a discussion of the first volume at the Boston Athenaeum, a private library of which I am a member. Unfortunately, none of these synchronicities could outweigh her sour personality, which became apparent all too quickly. Now, even my resurrected hope had been dashed to the ground. CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-275-9012 BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen 410-472-9158 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon 410-280-0958 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 AUSTIN John Strange 210-392-5506 Bev Angel 512-926-7808 CHICAGO Amanda Richards 847-705-1143 I attended the Athenaeum discussion, but it only served to give me greater gratitude for the company of my fellow alums on my journey through Proust. These were people who knew how to talk about books. The fellowship of these companions proved to be just as enriching as the book itself. Through our dialogue about Proust, we came to know each other well, and I think dearly. And, of course, we came to know Proust very well and very dearly. We emerged from the seminars as different people. We had absorbed to some extent the world that a great genius had created and lived. New images and themes had woven themselves into the tapestry of our inner lives. My own romantic life would never be as innocent as before; I would suffer less as a consequence. The time had been well spent, but it was lost. Writing this has won back some of the experience from the shady realm of oblivion. If I ever read Proust again, these 10 months of my life will be evoked and live again. Proust’s memories had become mine, and a time in my life will forever be linked with In Search of Lost Time. x The intrepid members of the Proust Reading Group began their journey on February 17 2003, and, meeting once or twice a month, completed their discussions of the work on December 14, 2003. They met in January 2004 to view and discuss Time Regained, a film based on the final installment of Proust’s masterpiece. “Johnnies are attracted to Proust not only because of what he talks about, his choice of themes and books, but also because of the way he talks,” says Jason Bielagus(SF98). “Proust states the Johnnie appetite for articulating ideas. Proust’s language is superlatively articulate and DALLAS/FORT WORTH Suzanne Lexy Bartlette 817-721-9112 DENVER/BOULDER Lee Goldstein 720-746-1496 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 NEW YORK Daniel Van Doren 914-949-6811 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 Alumni Association news and events of interest. President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary –Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair – Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76 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. precise. There is little that is vague and ambiguous. A common seminar question is something along the lines of, ‘Could you clarify that?’ or ‘What do you mean by that?’ Proust obviates those questions; he anticipates them and addresses them without needing to be asked.” Bielagus had tried to read the work on his own, but “there was too much to keep up with. In the group, each person naturally gravitated to one theme, so when we met, each could share his observations on the theme he tended to follow. Our discussions were like culling the fruit of several reads of the text.” NORTHERN CALIF. Suzanne Vito 510-527-4309 SANTA FE Richard Cowles 505-986-1814 WASHINGTON, D.C. Jean Dickason 301-699-6207 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 215-465-0244 SEATTLE Amina Brandt 206-465-7781 PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray 724-325-4151 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Julia Ward 413-648-0064 PORTLAND Dale Mortimer 360-882-9058 SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 619-423-4972 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } TRIANGLE CIRCLE (NC) Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 ISRAEL Emi Geiger Leslau 15 Aminadav Street Jerusalem 93549 Israel 9-722-671-7608 boazl@cc.huji.ac.il �{St. John’s Forever} st. john’s college archives/greenfield library 48 An Accidental Architect O ne of the most important men in the modern history of St. John’s College was also one of the preeminent figure of 20th-century architecture. John Gaw Meem was born to missionary parents in Brazil, earned an engineering degree at Virginia Military Institute, then went to New York to work for his uncle’s construction company. After World War I, during which he served as an army captain, Meem choose a career in international banking. He had just begun a new job when he developed tuberculosis, and to regain his health, went to the Sunmount Sanatorium in Santa Fe. His interest in architecture and the culture of the Southwest was kindled during the five years he spent at the sanatorium, and after he recovered, he took a job with the Denver architecture firm of Fisher & Fisher. From 1924—when he designed a home for a fellow patient at the sanatorium—until his retirement in 1959, Meem was one of the most influential architects of the West. He was credited with creating the Territorial Revival style of architecture. In addition to his professional accomplishments, he was a civic leader in Santa Fe and a major figure in the preservation of the city’s historic architecture. The idea for an expansion campus of St. John’s initially came from a citizens’ group in Monterey, Calif., but though the interest was there, the funding was not. In 1960, then-president Richard Weigle was corresponding with California backers when a group of Santa Fe citizens came forward to make their bid for the college. Meem and his wife, Faith, donated { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } John Gaw Meem (left), shown with thenpresident Richard Weigle and shaking hands with former assistant to the president William Hooton, was a founding benefactor of the Santa Fe campus. His gift of 225 acres of land made the founding of the campus possible. 225 acres northeast of their home for the college. Meem later assisted with his successor firm, Holien & Buckley, on the design of the college. In Facing Southwest: The Life and Houses of John Gaw Meem, the architect is described as someone that any Johnnie would welcome at the seminar table: “Meem knew how to ask questions and then be quiet and listen, how to identify common interests, and how to allow imaginations and enthusiasms to mingle.” In 1990, the college named its newly completed library in Santa Fe for Faith and John Gaw Meem. x �{Alumni Events Calendar} Clockwise top: PARALLEL UNIVERSE, by Betsy Williams, SF87; REDUCTION, by Donna Loraine Contractor, SF82; SILVER BARK BROOCH, by Nancy Kahn DeMulder, SF80. Santa Fe Alumni Art Show A Success Whitewater Rafting Trip June (details on date and location pending) This year’s Alumni Art Show featured paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, jewelry, video, textiles, and glasswork from 22 Santa Fe and Annapolis alumni. Opening over Homecoming Weekend July 3, the show was on display in the college’s Fine Arts Gallery through August 30. In addition this year, the Alumni Association Board’s Events Action Team sponsored a breakfast and meeting for alumni artists seeking some guidance in Homecoming 2005 Friday July 1-Sunday July 3, 2005 Join the classes of: 1970, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, and 2000, celebrating their reunions, at Santa Fe this summer. Summer Alumni Program July 4-8 A special Eastern Classics Alumni Seminar week will be offered with two additional seminars. turning their art into a business. Geoffrey Gorman, from Advisory Services for Artists, offered a presentation on how to put together a professional portfolio and how to approach commercial galleries. Interested in including your work in next year’s show? Contact Maggie Magalnick in Santa Fe: Maggie.magalnick@sjcsf.edu Annapolis Third Annual Alumni/Student Networking Reception Sunday, November 21, 4-7 pm. Check the Alumni section of the Web site for updated calendar information. Back cover: Photo by Peter Howard, 1998 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 } �P ERIODICALS P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 2004 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 30, Issue 3 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Fall 2004. 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_2004 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/46ec33268c4dacd9a8300dc8b9655bf8.pdf 8d39ce9603c29f99dab973a4f153b4b3 PDF Text Text �On St. Augustine ugustine’s life and works reflect intellectual rigor, curiosity, STJOHN’S and a desire to see beyond the surface of things to find real understanding. Driven by a restlessness that at times turned College to self-loathing, he engaged in a relentless quest with many a SANTA wrong turn and dead end. He was determined to distinguish “the charm of words from the truth of things,” as he writes in the The College (usps 018-750) Augustine was born in Tagaste He (modern dayabout Soukdifficult Ahras) in North Africa in 354. in Confessions. thought questions we confront is published quarterly by As a schoolboy he hated Greek, Latin, and faced was idle many worksloved we read at St. John ’s, beatings from the when Bible he to War andin Peace-. What is sin? St. John’s CoUege, Annapolis, MD, his studies. At times,Why his education waspleasure interrupted because of the family do men take in doing the wrong thing?’sIsfinances, free will real-or an illusion?and Santa Fe, NM but Augustine What is love? was clever, had an excellent memory, and excelled at the art of Known office of publication: rhetoric. He went to Rome and then Milan to teach rhetoric, and did well in his Communications Office St. John’s College public life, seeking out applause and recognition for his talents. He saw rhetoric as a Box a8oo way to “conquer” others, but ultimately, his success as a great orator gave him no Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 real satisfaction. Periodicals postage paid His search for wisdom led him to the Manichaean religion, which ultimately at Annapolis, MD disappointed him with empty answers to his questions. “Nearly nine years passed in postmaster: Send address which I wallowed in the mud of that deep pit and in the darkness of falsehood, striving changes to The College often to rise, but being all the more heavily dashed down,” he writes in Book Three. Magazine, Communications His restlessness and dissatisfaction led him to the works of Plato and Plotinus. Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD He found a harmony between Christian belief and neoplatonism that paved the way 21404-2800. for his eventual conversion. In 387, at the age of 33, and on Holy Saturday, Augustine Rosemary Harty, editor was baptized. His mother, St. Monica, never gave up on him. Patricia Dempsey, Soon afterward he returned to Tagaste, where he lived a monastic life. In 391, while managing editor he was visiting in Hippo, he became a priest. For the rest of his life he remained in John Hartnett (SF83), Santa Fe editor Hippo, where he became auxiliary bishop in 395 and bishop soon after. He died in Jennifer Behrens, art director 430, as the Vandals lay siege to Hippo, and he spent his last days reading in his library. Annapolis 410-626-2539 His Confessions (written in his 40s) is considered a classic of Christian autobiogra­ phy, as well as a compelling account of one man’s intellectual and spiritual journey. Santa Fe He spent 13 years writing The City of God, which he finished in 426. 505-984-6104 Sophomores at St. John’s read from the Hebrew scriptures and from classical Contributors Roman poetry and history before moving on to Augustine, Aquinas, and Anselm. Jason Bielagus (SF98) In the reading list today, Aristotle’s On the Soul serves as a bridge between the great Barbara Goyette (A73) shifts of thought occurring between Roman and medieval times. “Augustine was a Andra Maguran man caught between two worlds: that of paganism and Christianity, of being a Jo Ann Mattson (A87) believer and a nonbeliever,” says Brother Robert Smith, Annapolis tutor. “In the Erica Naone (A05) Libby Vega (SF06) Confessions, he works that all out, and all the moral problems that are connected with Roseanna White (A05) that. Besides that, he’s a very good writer.” A ANNAPOLIS • FE Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �{Contents} PAGE IO DEPARTMENTS St. Augustine a FROM THE BELL TOWERS How should we think about the concept of sin? Does the average person really have the capacity for evil? Augustine scholar Kim Paffenroth (A88) offers perspective on the Confessions. • • • • • • • Faculty study groups Making Johnnies out of GIs A new vice president in Santa Fe Opportunity Initiative Enterprising Greek scholars A garden grows in Annapolis New tutors 9 LETTERS PAGE l8 Commencement 2005 16 ALUMNI VOICES In Annapolis, one speaker imagines Callicles as the perfect commencement speaker; in Santa Fe, another tells graduates that great riches lie beyond the land of the Phaiacians. PAGE A Johnnie way of life-only different. a8 STUDENT VOICES Through photography, Donald Stone (A06) helps teens find their own paths. 30 BIBLIOFILE 2121 A Long A new two-volume history by Joseph Baratta (A69) explores the world federalism movement. Time Coming In her years away from St. John’s, Peggy O’Shea (SF87) sold BMWs. Nick Colten (A97) worked as a baker. Ultimately, their paths brought them full circle. PAGE 3a ALUMNI NOTES PROFILES 32 Antiques Roadshow’s Peter Fairbanks (A73) knows the real McCoy. 36 An island of her own: Sarah Mara (A61) and life on Lone Pine. 38 Kira Zielinski (SF95) takes to the skies. 42 Chris P. Nelson (SF99)-blogging his way to fame and fortune. 2Zj. Homecoming A birthday party for Eastern Classics, Shakespeare in action, and a new president in Santa Fe make for a lively Homecoming. 46 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS 48 ST. John’s forever PAGE a4 ON THE COVER Augustine ofHippo Illustration by DavidJohnson �2. {From the Bell Towers} Faculty Study Groups Sustaining the Life ofthe Mind Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses is one of the most famous passages of modern literature, with the final few lines punctuated by the repetition of the word “yes”: . Iput my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he couldfeel my breasts allperfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. ” As he prepared for a faculty study group meeting on the novel last July, Santa Fe tutor David Carl planned to play a recording of an actress reading part of the soliloquy. “My opening question will be, ‘what is Molly saying yes to?’” Carl explained. “The book is about the Blooms’ marital problems, her infidelity, the death of their child, and there are a lot of things that have been said no to. But she’s affirming something at the end of book, and I’d like to hear thoughts from the group.” Carl was actually a bit surprised to find him­ self leading an eight-week faculty study group on Ulysses. He had proposed War and Peace, but the Instruction Committee had settled on Joyce, and he gamely accepted. “It’s a very difficult book,” he says of Ulysses. “But it’s been fun, because talking about it out loud helps sort out the meaning.” Faculty study groups have been a part of sustaining the intellectual life of St. John’s tutors since the New Program was established in 1937. Groups of 4-12 tutors meet under a variety of circumstances, reading and working through a variety of texts, both Program and non-Program. This kind of study is important to tutors: it enables them to think in-depth about a certain subject or book, when their normal teaching schedule calls them to cover material more quickly; it helps them consider proposed changes to the Program; and it helps them prepare to teach in areas of the curriculum where they may not have much experience. This past summer, about 25 faculty members in Santa Fe took part in five funded study groups. In Annapolis, 43 fac­ ulty members took part in six funded groups. (On both campuses, several tutors took part in more than one group.) Because it is such an essential part of keeping St. John’s a true community of learners, faculty development-as it is often called in the academic world-is among the college’s most important strategic goals. To allow more tutors to take part, the college has been seeking-and finding, from entities such as the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, the A.W. Mellon Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-outside funding for study groups. A grant supported the Ulysses study group, and Carl was gratified to be paid for the time and effort he put into leading the group. “In the Nichomacean Ethics, we read that a life of study and contemplation is the happiest life a human being can lead,” he says. “Tutors really believe that, and if that’s what you believe, surely someone doesn’t have to offer you money. On the other hand, leading a group is time consuming, and it turns out the compensation is pretty gener­ ous. That helped because of all the things that turn out not to be a part of the life of the mind, but still matter-like rent and insurance.” Spontaneous and informal study groups spring up frequently at St. John’s, says Santa Fe Dean David Levine (A67). However, on a practical level, funded study groups allow tutors to be released from their teaching schedule. “Now that we have the financial support, it means that tutors can concentrate on a study group in ways they haven’t been able to before,” he says. “We’re working Supportingfaculty development is one ofthe colleges most important strategic goals. Thursday afternoon with Joyce: Santa Fe faculty MEMBERS (l. to R. ) BoB Richardson, David Carl, AND Peter Pesic took on Ulysses in a summer study GROUP. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } J �{From the Bell Towers} 3 toward giving tutors more release time to pursue their his most satisfying experiences has been holding the NEH Chair, own inquiry.” which gave him a year off from teaching to study Plato’s Philebus, Study groups solidify the faculty community and feed tutors then lead a faculty study group and deliver a lecture on thumos in with energy and ideas. “At other colleges, faculty study groups The Republic. are the icing on the cake, whereas here, they’re a necessity-they Providing compensation for study groups ensures more oppor­ are part of the cake,” says Levine. Because tutors teach across tunities for all tutors, Dink says. “It levels the playing field to the curriculum, the college asks “everyone to extend themselves allow anyone-regardless of financial need-to engage in the study beyond their area of comfort.” group,” he says. “Tutors will always want to keep learning. Their Last summer, Ingo Farin, a Santa Fe tutor since 2002, took part appetites are not exhausted by the Program.” in a srx-week mathematics study group led by John Cornell and a Tutor Erik Sagengwas asked to lead a faculty study group on two-day session on Einstein’s 1905 paper on Brownian motion, probability and statistics, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical led by Peter Pesic. They were both exciting, says Farin, whose Institute. He spent a year planning, originally expecting to focus doctoral work was in philosophy. “It’s good to offer study groups on techniques of statistical analysis, but the study group eventu­ for those who are not experts, so they can catch up with what ally took a more philosophical look at the topic. “I had no idea more experienced tutors say about the matter,” he says. “But the that there were so many different and actively debated systems of primary focus of study groups should be the intellectual focus of foundations for probability and statistics,” he says. “I found that tutors. That means that [the groups] go outside the canon of really interesting and exciting.” things we teach here. If we don’t do that, there’s a danger we The group had three two-hour meetings each week for eight could become experts in the Program.” weeks. Four members of the group had fund­ For that reason, he was pleased to lead a ing, but one took part without any compensa­ study group on “ Todesfuge” (“Death Fugue”) tion. They read works by Richard von Mises, by Paul Celan, a Romanian-born poet whose Karl Popper, F.P. Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti, parents were killed in the Holocaust and and John Maynard Keynes. “This particular who escaped death by working in a Nazi topic was especially valuable, because it can labor camp. bear on how we learn and how we change our Claudia Honeywell has been on the faculty opinions in the face of evidence,” Sageng says. for 12 years and has yet to teach senior labora­ WTiile some study groups meet for just one tory. After completing a study group on the summer, one Annapolis group has been meet­ Michael Dink, Annapolis dean first half of senior lab, led by Howard Fisher, ing for 21 years, two hours each week, for eight she feels that she can approach Faraday, weeks, to read works in phenomenology. Millikan, and Rutherford with They’ve spent years on each more ease. It was enjoyable to work, just completing a fiveconduct the experiments with year exploration of Hans-Georg her colleagues and talk about Gadamer’s Truth and Method the results. “This has really last summer. The works they opened up something for me. Or, don’t. A/oZ>y-7)ZcA:-considered by some to be the great read may not be on the Pro­ When I go into laboratory. American novel-hasn’t been on the seminar reading list in gram, but they help us under­ I’ll have more confidence, Annapolis since 1974. It hung on in Santa Fe several years stand the Program, says tutor and I’ll feel I can engage the longer before vanishing. Relegated to preceptorials, the Jon Lenkowsi, who also took students,” she says, adding novel has been replaced in seminar by Benito Cereno. part in a Donne study group. with a laugh, “I’m still afraid Here’s your chance, readers of The College. What should be “What we do in our classes can to teach music.” on the official Reading List of St. John’s that is not there now? be traced back to some kind of Annapolis Dean Michael Joyce’s Ulysses, instead of The Dead? Proust’s Remembrance phenomenology. We’re always Dink (A75) still remembers the of Things Pastl Should we bring back Gibbon’s The Decline reflecting on our own experi­ and Fall ofthe Roman Empire I study group he participated in ences and on our own lives,” Make your case in a few hundred words or less why a par­ during his first year as a tutor he says. ticular work should be added to the Reading List. Note that in Annapolis in 1984. “Curtis Lenkowski is one of the The College has no sway with the Instruction Committee, Wilson led a group on the idea original members of the group, which decides such things. We invite your suggestions in the of universal gravitation in which also comprised John interest of sparking lively conversation. Newton’s thought. It made a White (A65), Sam Kutler Those whose suggestions end up printed in the Winter big impression on me.” (A54), and Debbie Renaut 2006 issue will be rewarded with either an Albert Einstein Over the years, he’s partici­ {A68). The composition of or Jane Austen action figure (retail value: $8.95). Please pated in many groups, some the group has changed from mail submissions to: Editor, The College, P.O. Box 2800, with funding, most without. year to year. “The excitement Annapolis, MD 2T404-2800. The current reading lists for Last year, he formed a twocomes in having the leisure the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses can be found on person study group with tutor to do this with like-minded the college Web site: www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on Nathan Dugan. The two met people.” Academic Program. once a week to translate —Rosemary Harty Genesis from Hebrew. One of ''Tutors will always want to keep learning. “Call Me Ishmael” {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } �4 {From the Bell Towers} Making Johnnies Out of GIs At St. John’s new undergradu­ ates forge bonds in shared classes, meals, intramural sports, and parties. At the Graduate Institute in Annapolis, students’ ages range from 22 to 72, they are in different life stages and careers, and they can live an hour or more from campus. But none of that has stopped Annapolis GI Director Joan Silver (A76) from launch­ ing new initiatives to make graduate students feel that they’re part of a wider community. “Creating more community for the GI students both within the GI itself and within the college as a whole remains a challenge,” says Silver, now in her second year as director. Energetic, creative, and familiar with what it’s like to be an older student in a young population. Silver has been determined to make GIs feel like full-fledged Johnnies. When she came to St. John’s as a student. Silver already had a bachelor’s degree. She ended up becoming a parttime tutor while she finished the Program, eventually earning a master of arts from the college. After earning a doctorate in the­ ology, she became a full-time tutor in Santa Fe in 1989 and returned to Annapolis in 1996. There are obstacles to build­ ing a community for a diverse group of students, many of whom are juggling their studies with full-time jobs and family obligations. Silver acknowl­ edges. Some attend part time, and not all can linger late for regular after-seminar gather­ ings on Monday nights. This fall Silver began inviting each of the 93 Annapolis GI students to join her and other students for lunch or dinner. Recently, President Chris Nelson began hosting recep­ Broadening the Search Crystal Watkins grew up in Annapolis and attended The Key School, founded by St. John’s tutors. However, except for attending an occa­ sional event on the campus, she didn’t know much about the college. When it came time to apply to colleges, St. John’s was not on her list. “It was totally based on a stereotype,” she says. “I just didn’t think I’d fit in.” Since July, it has been Watkins’ job to dispel stereo­ types about St. John’s. As part of the college’s Opportunity Initiative, Watkins joined the college as admissions counselor for diversity, sharing regular admissions duties along with taking on special initiatives to introduce St. John’s to minority students. She will attend col­ lege fairs, visit high schools, and establish relationships with community groups. for In Santa Fe, the college has a similar initiative, with a special emphasis on introducing the college to Hispanic and NativeAmerican students. The goal for both campuses is to broaden the college’s recruitment efforts to ensure that qualified high tions for graduate stu­ dents. Silver is helping several GIs who are reviving the Graduate Council as a way to foster academic and social events, while connecting with the undergraduate Student Committee on Instruc­ tion. “As a result, we now have undergradu­ ates participating in our orientation seminars on the Meno at the beginning of each semester,” she says. Krishnan Venkatesh, director of the GI in Santa Fe, says the campus has done much to make graduate students feel like part of the community. In Santa Fe, GIs are invited to attend under­ graduate preceptorials, bring­ ing the two populations together in the classroom. This year, the GI has 71 students in Joan Silver hopes to STRENGTHEN THE GI COMMUNITY. the liberal arts program and 31 in Eastern Classics. “The GIs usually live and work about 15 minutes from campus, so they are able to be here during the day for some­ thing as informal as lunch with fellow students and extracurric­ ular activities,” he says. — Patricia Dempsey Prospectives school students from a wide variety of ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds have a chance to hear about St. John’s. Watkins majored in English and African-American studies at the University of Virginia, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts. She became interested in issues of access to higher education and began volunteering in the undergraduate admissions office and as a peer adviser in UVA’s Office of African American Affairs. She later earned a master’s degree in Education, Policy, and Leadership from the University of Maryland. Crystal Watkins hopes to DISPEL STEREOTYPES ABOUT St. John’s. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } Watkins recognizes that many things keep a student from applying to the college, among them, the availability of merit and athletic scholarships at other colleges, the small size of St. John’s, and more than any other factor, the college’s academic program. It’s hard to find students who are right for St. John’s, and Watkins’ work is just one part of a highly developed admissions strategy geared to identifying those students. Watkins’ role is to make sure that unspoken fears about “not fitting in” do not deter prospectives. “I think it’s a valid concern that if you visit a college, and you don’t see many minority students, you wonder, ‘well, why aren’t they here?’ My job is to show that although St. John’s isn’t right for every student, we are a welcoming community. �{From the Bell Towers} 5 Linking a College with a Community Jim Oslerholt Leads Development Efforts in Santa Fe James W. Osterholt heard his calling in 1971, when he was attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City on a Rockefeller Fellowship. Although he soon decided that the ministry wasn’t for him, Osterholt discovered a new vocation while working in Union’s development office. “I decided then that I wanted a job where I could be a part of the sub­ stance of the academic environment but also a part of the world outside the university-to be a bridge between the institution and the society it serves,” he says. In a similar way, fate played a hand in bringing Osterholt to St. John’s College. Santa Fe President Michael Peters and Osterholt had a mutual friend at Pepperdine University. When the friend heard that Peters had accepted the job as president and that the vice president’s position was open, the friend thought Osterholt and Peters would work well together and “played matchmaker,” explains Osterholt. In July, Peters welcomed Osterholt to Santa Fe as the college’s vice president of advancement, successfully concluding a national search for a key position on the college’s management team. The Santa Fe campus and the college are fortunate to have someone with Osterholt’s background and experience, says Peters. “He will be a strong and effective partner, not only for advancement, but also in the broader management of the campus and the college,” he says. Osterholt finds his new position challenging and rewarding. In addition to directing plans for the president’s inauguration in October, Osterholt’s priorities include planning for the college’s upcoming capital campaign, scheduled to launch in spring aoo6. He has begun working to strengthen relationships between the college, the community of Santa Fe, and St. John’s alumni. He also intends to increase the breadth and depth of the college’s friends and supporters. How will he do it? “By working my tail off,” he says. “But I’m fortunate to have a marvelous group of faculty, colleagues, and staff to support these efforts.” Osterholt is a self-described collaborator who most enjoys being part of a successful team of professionals. His ai-year tenure at UCLA culminated in serving as the associate vice chancellor of development. There Osterholt planned a $i billion campaign. Most recently Osterholt worked as vice president of external relations at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where he managed an array of external programs including development, trustee relations, public information, government relations, and marketing and communications. At the Milken Institute, he served as vice president for development. He also was executive Advancement is all about building RELATIONSHIPS, SAYS JaMES OstERHOLT, Santa Fe’s new VP. director of development at the RAND Corporation, and director of develop­ ment and alumni affairs, director of annual giving, and assistant director of development at Union Theological Seminary. Osterholt attended Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in American history in 1970. After his year as a Rockefeller Fellow at Union, Oster­ holt went on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1974. His greatest pleasure so far has been learning to convey the essence of the Program to existing and potential friends of the college. Explaining what St. John’s is all about gives more people the oppor­ tunity to become involved in the life of the college. “There are a number of special attrac­ tions that contribute to the quality of life at St. John’s in Santa Fe, such as really getting to know members of a smaller community. It’s all about building relationships,” he says. “When you have a real relationship, you are sincerely helping friends of the college express something they are already interested in accomplishing. In a way we are working on the same objective­ furthering St. John’s.” Osterholt’s wife of 30 years, Debbie, has been a part of every institution her husband has served. She works as an executive recruiter for development officers, but has never found her husband a job. “She has, however, steered me away from a few,” he says. Throughout his many years in advancement, Osterholt has acquired a collection of interesting anecdotes. One involved a gift request that occurred over lunch with a prospective donor in a uni­ versity dining hall. Osterholt recalls, “There had been a lot of prior discussion about how large a request we should make. When the conversation finally turned to the point where he was asked for his gift, the gentleman passed out, literally. I guess he was asked for too much.” In fund raising, however, no gift is ever too small or insignificant, and even the most modest gifts are appreciated. Osterholt saw this firsthand when his daughter’s school had a financial emergency and he was drafted to do the fund raising. “One of the smallest gifts in that drive was a gift of $5, paid at $i per month for five months,” he recalls. “It was from my daughter, who was in first grade.” The Osterholts’ daughter, Katie, has since graduated from the University of Arizona and is studying to become a paralegal. {The College. St John’s College • Fall 2005 } —Andra Maguran �6 {Bell Towers} Paradigm Shift Initially, self-interest inspired Erikk Geannikis (Ao6) to try to assemble a Greek paradigm handbook designed to “take the heartache out of Ancient Greek.” During his junior year, he had planned to apply to graduate school for study in the classics and was advised that completing an independent project-such as compiling a didactic tool for Greek-would look good on grad school applications. Although he’s now more interested in neuroscience, Geannikis decided to pursue the project anyway. He recruited Andrew Romiti and Paul Wilfordpartners in his Greek study group and both juniors planning to study the classics-to help. Working independently in three different cities and meeting in an Internet chat room to compare notes and exchange their sections, they completed the project over the summer and sent it out for review by the faculty and Dean Michael Dink. Romiti took care of the copying and binding at Kinkos. By the time the fall semester started, loo copies of their “Greek Paradigm Handbook: Reference Guide and Memorization Tool” were sold out. Pocket-sized and spiral bound to lie flat when opened, the little booklets include paradigms for nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, and participles and go for $9.95. The three charged just enough to cover their costs, and may pursue finding a publisher and marketing their project beyond the college. But they weren’t in it for entrepreneurial reasons. They just love Greek, explains Geannikis. They had all been making quick-reference charts they carried in spiral­ bound notebooks, and these served as the genesis of the handbook. Giving up a large portion of their summer vacation to the project wasn’t easy, says Wilford. “But when we saw the copies, it was all worth it.” Dink was impressed with the trio’s final product. “I suspect students-and tutors-will find it useful both for learning paradigms and as a reference tool. It does for Greek morphol­ ogy something analogous to what Green Lion’s The Bones does for Euclid’s Elements^ he says. “People told us it was some­ thing that should have been done long ago, so it’s been very gratifying,” says Romiti. Even though they no longer have Greek in tutorial, the three will use their own refer­ ence guides as they pursue their next independent project together. Last year, they worked on Philoctetes and the Sympo­ sium, meeting every week for most of the year. They’re also compiling notes and preparing an index for the next volume of their handbook. If they ever make a profit on their book, Geannikis, Romiti, and Wilford don’t want to make it from John­ nies. They consider the project a gift to the commu­ nity-even a type of offering-to the Program, to Greek, and to St. John’s. —Rosemary Harty Ancient Greek meets the Internet: (l. to r.) Erikk Geannikis, Andrew Romiti, AND Paul Wilford used a CHAT room to compile THEIR PARADIGM HANDBOOK. Ariel Program Emily Meyer (SF06) pictures herself as a psychologist, helping children with developmental disorders. Her interest in clinical psychology stemmed from a conversation with the mother of a classmate who works with autistic children. Thanks to her Ariel Internship at the University of New Mexico’s Genter for Development and Disability, Meyer has a better picture of what it would be like to work in the field, along with practical experience for a resume and grad school applications. Born out of the Santa Fe Initiative-a college-funded program to improve student services and the physical environment on the college’s Western campus-the Ariel Internship Program provides up to $3,600 to support a student in an internship. In 2005, approximately 30 students applied; Meyer was one of nine whose internships were funded. She administered tests, assisted with research, and visited rural communities in New Mexico, where she helped with consultations. “I got experience in all areas that I could,” she says. “I worked with other profes­ sionals in the field, including physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists.” The Ariel Program is similar to the Hodson Internship in Annapolis, a program funded by money from an endowment established with a grant from The Hodson Trust. Both programs are coordinated through the Career Services offices on campus. As with the Hodson program, Santa Fe students can use the funding for income while working in an existing unpaid internship or develop their own internships. Her St. John’s studies prepared her well for the internship expe­ rience, says Meyer. “Other interns I met were just not as flexible as I was in the way I could learn. The people I worked with were all surprised that I didn’t come from a psychological educational background and that I could work at a graduate level.” {The College- St. John's College • Fall 2005 } — Andra Maguran �{Bell Towers} 7 A Garden Grows in Annapolis To anyone who has sat in the courtyard of Mellon Hall in years past, the small reserve of green space must have seemed a pleasant enough place to pass an afternoon. A lawn, a few magnolia trees, and concrete benches under a spectacular willow oak gave the courtyard some charm. But now, thanks to a gift from one of the col­ lege’s board memhers, the courtyard has a true formal garden with graceful rows of perennials and annuals, flower­ ing trees, teak benches, and a birdhath in the center of a lawn rich, green, and thick enough for croquet. The courtyard wasn’t an original part of Mellon’s design; originally, the long classroom wing faced an open field. Adding an administrative wing to the building created the courtyard in the late 1980s. For many years, college plan­ ners have hoped to improve the space, but other buildings and grounds projects took priority. The transformation began last year when the college received a gift from Frederika Saxon, a memher of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, to fund a formal garden. Saxon is a builder and developer in Baltimore, and she has frequently shared her expertise with the college. Other gifts helped the college complete the project. Both Ted Wolff (A74) a landscape architect and partner of Wolff Clements and Associates, and Cathy Umphrey, a garden designer and wife of tutor Stuart Umphrey, worked on the project for substantially reduced professional rates. Wolff provided the design for the plan, while Umphrey worked closely with Wolff and the campus planning committee to choose the native plants and arrange them in beds. Cathy Umphrey, the director of horticulture at Historic London Town and Gardens, said the magnolias gave her a starting point for planning a garden that will be beautiful year-round. “The magnolias have this wonderful brown fuzz on the underside of the leaves, and we took that color as one to pick up again in perennials and deciduous trees. The crepe myrtles in time will develop this really pretty brown bark structure. The flower heads of the Annabelle hydrangea along the back of the garden will turn brown in the winter,” she says. Local Annapolis firm Eden Contracting did much of the work last fall, returning to add new plants in the spring. Together with the glassenclosed Mellon Cafe, the inviting garden offers the Annapolis community another pleasant refuge for reading, discussion, or just sitting in the sun. “It’s a beautiful natural sanctuary, a private reflective space that students, especially, seem to enjoy,” says Don Jackson, director of operations. {The College - St. John’s College • Fall 2005 } Above: A lush lawn, teak BENCHES, AND A VARIETY OF NEW TREES AND PERENNIALS HAVE CREATED A WELCOME NEW REFUGE IN Annapolis. Left: Board member Freddie Saxon’s generous gift made the garden a reality. Saxon visited the garden last spring when the fall plantings were in and the first annuals were in bloom. “She thought it was wonderful,” Jackson says. In addition to three different planting beds, new sod was laid and an irrigation system was installed. Tutor Nick Maistrellis, who has been on campus long enough to remember when the courtyard was part of an open field, is pleased with the way the garden enhances the natural environment on campus. “The garden looks good no matter where you’re sitting,” he says. “It’s another welcom­ ing place on campus.” —Rosemary Harty �{Bell Towers} 8 News and Announcements New Tutors_______________________ Eleven new tutorsjoined the Santa Fefaculty: Keri Ames received a B.A. from the University of Chicago, where she did her graduate work with the Committee on Social Thought, earning master’s and doctoral degrees. Her disserta­ tion was entitled “The Conver­ gence of Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s UlyssesF Lauren Brubaker received his B.A. from Swarthmore Col­ lege, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Philosophy from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His dissertation was titled “Religious Zeal, Political Faction, and the Corruption of Morals: Adam Smith and the Limits of Enlightenment.” He has been a visiting instructor at the University of Notre Dame and at the Air Force Academy. Kenneth Davis (SFGIoa) received his B.A. in Music Edu­ cation from Georgia State University. He holds a Mas­ ter of Divinity from South­ western Baptist Theological Seminary, a Master of Music from the University of Tennessee, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, where his dissertation was entitled “A Performance Analysis of Mendelssohn’s Five Psalm Cantatas.” Jessica Jerome received her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where her dissertation was titled “A Politics of Health: Medicine and Marginality in Northeastern Brazil.” She recently completed a research fellowship at the Pritzker School of Medicine. T. Andrew Kingston received his B.A. in English Lit­ erature from Kenyon College. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Aesthetics, History of Music from Boston University, where the title of his dissertation was “Rhythm in the Aesthetics of Western Music.” He has taught and lectured in humanities, phi­ losophy of the arts, and music at B.U. and Kenyon College. David McDonald (SF95) comes to St. John’s from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he was a senior techni­ cian for the Influenza Sequence Database, Theoretical Biology and Biophysics Group. Frederick Monsma (A82) holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, where his dissertation was titled “Descartes and the Gods of Piety and Science.” Before com­ ing to St. John’s, Monsma worked in computer program­ ming, Web design, academic journalism, and education. Laurence Nee received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Illinois. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees in politics from the University of Dallas, and a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law. His dissertation was entitled “Lockean Rhetoric and Toleration: Language in the Thought of John Locke.” Previ­ ously, he was on the faculty at John Cabot University and the American University of Rome. Gregory Schneider joins the college from the Gallatin Community Clinic in Bozeman, Mont. He received his B.A. from the University of Dallas and his medical degree from the Moving In With a light to read by and a refrigerator for goodies, sophomores Josephine Drolet and Haley Thompson have the essentials covered for a NEW YEAR. In Annapolis, 149 students became Johnnies; Santa Fe welcomed Z19 One new tutorjoined the Annapolisfaculty thisfall: Matthew Caswell (A96) received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston University with a disserta­ tion entitled “Kant’s Conception of the Highest Good.” He has been the recipient of a Presidential Fellowship and a Disserta­ tion Fellowship at B.U. He spent 2002-03 at Philipps-Unitersitat in Marburg supported by a DAAD research grant. Awards___________________ Michael Ehrmantraut received his B.A. in Political Theory and International Relations from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston College. His dissertation was titled, “Heidegger’s Philosophic Pedagogy.” He received a Bradley Foundation post­ doctoral fellowship at Boston College, where he was visiting scholar for a year. University of MissouriColumbia. Alan Zeitlin received his B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of California, Davis. He received a J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Law, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation was titled “Terence’s Dark Comedy.” He has taught at Bard College and Emory University. William Donahue (A67) will serve as Director of Laborato­ ries. Donahue received his Ph.D in the History of Science, from the University of Cambridge. A former St. John’s tutor, he is the publisher of Green Lion Press. He has also worked as supervisor for the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge and as a laboratory technician for the National Bureau of Standards. freshmen. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } _ The builder of Gilliam and Spector halls on the Annapolis campus has been recognized with an Excellence in Construction award from the Washing­ ton, D.C. chapter ofthe Associated Builders and Contractors. Bovis Lend/Lease completed Gilliam Hall late last sum­ mer. Spector Hall, the second new dormitory, will open in January, �{Letters} Fine Memories___________________________ The article on Brother Robert brought back some fine memories for me, and I would hke to share an anecdote to show how Brother Robert influenced other people in addition to his St. John’s students. A year and a half ago, I had occasion to have dinner with the poet Robert Hass, when he came to give a lecture at our school in Monterey, California. His wife told us that she worked at St. Mary’s in Moraga, California, and that gave me occa­ sion to mention Brother Robert. It turned out that Hass had Brother Robert as a teacher and had always considered him one of the most influential people in his life. He also felt that he had betrayed Brother Robert when he was a student, because it was a time when St. Mary’s was deciding whether to remain true to the eternal ideals or to become more contemporary and polit­ ical. Hass sided with the contemporary, while Brother Robert decided to leave St. Mary’s and come to St. John’s. Hass told me that he had always wanted to get back in touch with Brother Robert, but he was reluctant. I urged him to do so. I hope that he has. Gerry Kapolka, A74 Piercing Festival 9 City. Yet, at journey’s end, they found that one of them used more gas. The only dif­ ference was that one of the twins went by way of St. Louis, the other by way of Miami Beach. Voila-the Gasoline Paradox! Wigner’s point was that many things are path-dependent. The only weirdness is that time happens to be one of those things. It is a loss, I believe, that the Program excludes textbooks. Some of the great books were textbooks (the Summa for example). The Program has wonderful benefits. It excludes rote learning, which many an inferior text promotes. And yet, when Johnnies face the original literature without pedagogical support, something else is at risk, and that something is the substance, James H. Cooke BROTHER ROBERT, IN HIS St. MaRy’s DAYS. Welcoming Women This was the inspiration for a career in psychology which has been most satisfying. I think Stuart would be proud to know he has been instrumental in creating another generation of therapy helping families, marriages, children, and above all, teen­ agers. Thanks Stuart, you were right. I was myself, and I did just fine. Joe Tooley, SF69 The College featured articles on Johnnies’ experiences abroad. John Hartnett (SF83) A Clear Account wrote a piece about the piercing festival he I’m sure many Johnnies could respond to witnessed near Kumarakom, Kerala, India. Mr. Newell’s comments on “Weird Sci­ He tried to find out the origin of this pierc­ ence” (Letters, Spring 2005), but as a for­ ing festival during the rest of his trip in mer tutor (Santa Fe, 1999-2001), please India, but to no avail. My husband, Stephen allow me. Neither the “Electrodynamics...” Joseph, is from that area of Kerala, and nor the Minkowski readings state or resolve when I asked him about the festival, he told the twin “paradox.” A clear account is me that it was a Shiite Muslim festival cele­ given in Spacetime Physics, by John A. brating Muharram, the first month of the Wheeler and Edwin F. Taylor, particularly Islamic calendar. Shiites also mark the mar­ in Ex. 49 in the first edition. Briefly, the tyrdom of H az rat Imam Hussain, the grand­ rocketing twin does not remain in an iner­ son of the Prophet Muhammad, during this tial frame, while the earthbound twin does, time. The observances can range from at least approximately, because the surface wearing black to the more unusual practice of the earth is almost free of acceleration. of self-injury witnessed by Mr. Hartnett. The rocketing twin must decelerate and Laura O’Keefe, SFga then accelerate back. The situation is not at all symmetrical, and both the earthling and Remembering Mr. Boyd the rocketeer agree that the earthling’s Stuart Boyd changed my life. As a young, world line is nearly straight, while the confused student at St. John’s, I went to rocketeer’s world line is bent. Stuart for counseling and guidance. After a Eugene Wigner made it a practice to few meetings he asked me to help him lead present “The Gasoline Paradox” to each a therapy group of students. I was a little class he taught on relativity: Two identical taken aback and said I wouldn’t know what twins drove two identical Volkswagens to do. Stuart said, “Don’t worry, just be (with consecutive serial numbers from yourself. You will do fine.” Wolfsburg!) from Los Angeles to New York {The College. St, John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } A small comment on “Coeds Invade St. John’s.” At the time, the 1950-51 academic year, I managed the labs, taught a sopho­ more lab section, edited the Collegian and served as president of the Student Polity. When the subject was broached, Dick pVeigle, president] asked me to convene a meeting of the Polity to assess the student body’s reaction to the notion of co-educa­ tion. The college’s financial problems were well known. We met in McDowell. Members of the Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washing­ ton press were welcome, but as observers only. When the meeting was adjourned, I would answer any questions they might have. All but one [reporter] understood this. He was ignored. There were a few loonies in the group, it was after all, St. John’s. A couple of Roman Catholics objected to the presence of women on traditional grounds. Most of the concerns expressed were practical. The sense of the meeting was that co-ed dorms would be impractical, but women would be welcome. Stuart Washburn, Class of 1951 The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters maybe edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or by e-mail to rosemary.harty@sjca.edu. �IO {On Augustine} AUGUSTINE Seeing Our Lives in the Confessions BY Kim Paffenroth, A88 his fall marks the 20-year anniversary of my first having read Augustine’s Confessions. Ironically, the huge role it would play in my professional life was not apparent on that first reading. Although the Confessions are central to the sophomore seminar readings that would lead me in the direction of studying Christianity in graduate school, I was much more moved hy some of the other readings that year: the Bible, Dante, Luther, and Shakespeare. Like many other first-time readers, my initial reaction to Augustine was mostly negative: he was, by turns, too gloomy and pessimistic, and then too triumphalistic, judgmental, and arrogant. I don’t think I ever could have gone all the way down the interpretive roads that I have since found out are so popular in the academic study of Augustine-“Augustine as neurotic” and “Augustine as miner of Western civilization’’-but I did not immediately connect with his life and ideas. But I also did not completely forget or ignore Augustine and his idiosyncracies, mostly because he had one quality that most other theologians lack: he had a story, full of fascinating characters, compelling conflicts, and messy emo­ tions. The often overwrought and melodramatic quality of his story is exactly what puts off many readers, but it is also what makes him undeniably memorable. Such a preference for narration, rather than exposition, is what would lead me to go on to study the Bible, a book almost entirely composed of stories, whose theology usually has to be inferred and is not necessarily completely consistent. It would also lead me not to reread that other giant of sophomore seminar, Aquinas, for whom theology seems to be a series of problems to be solved, not a collection of problematic stories to be lived and told and retold. But appreciating Augustine for his narrative power and his greater sense of ambiguity and drama puts him at a distinct disadvantage in the long run, for it puts him in competition with authors of much greater artistry and beauty. In short, compared to Aquinas, Augustine may sound like a Shakespeare, but compared to Shakespeare, on aesthetic grounds, Augustine is a complete dud, a theologian who rather {The College. St. John’s College Fall 2005 } �{On Augustine} Painting of St. Augustin by Simon Marmion {The College- St. John’s College - Fall 2005 } n �Ta, {On Augustine} “ . .Our sinfulness is almost alwayspathetic and meager and childish, just like Augustine s. ” heavy-handedly uses some episodes from his own life to make his theological points. This is one case, however, where the dialogue begun in seminar decades ago has continued most fruit­ fully for me, because over the years 1 have found many dia­ logue partners for Augustine in the books 1 have read. Although many of those partners-Dante, Pascal, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Melville, Flannery O’Connor-are much more talented artists than Augustine, they engage him in an ongoing dialogue that is enriching to our understand­ ing both of Augustine and of their works. They all draw on Augustine, especially his Confessions, as a source, a source that helps illuminate their work, even as they elab­ orate and complicate Augustine’s ideas. And, of course, the ultimate goal of such a dialogue is not just to put Augustine in conversation with other “Augustinian” texts, but to put all of them in conversation with the intel­ lectual and spiritual problems and questions of living human beings in the present. 1 have had the pleasure of participating in such conversations first as a student at St. John’s, and now continuing as a student and teacher in many classrooms in the years since. In a different, more sustained but more static form, it is also the kind of conversation 1 try to create and encourage in the books I write on Augustine and others. Scholarly work on Augustine strives obsessively to place him in his time period, to understand all the religious, historical, social, political, philosophical, and literary influences of the late Roman Empire, and fit Augustine into them. When this is done, we will presumably “under­ stand” him, the way we would understand some fossil by knowing its geological strata and the other dead objects that surround it. Earlier scholarship tended to put a judg­ mental tone on this process, usually leading up to some statement that maybe crudely given as, “Poor Augustine (or Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed), he was smart, but he was just a man of his times! He thought the sun went around the earth, he thought women were inferior to men, and he thought slavery was okay. Aren’t we lucky we’re not like that?” Postmodern thought may be thanked for being less arrogant (at least on this one point) and acknowledging that we are equally as determined and limited as the poor, benighted people of the past, but the effect on study and an ongoing conversation is just as chilling: the ancient text and person are still utterly irrelevant, because each and every person lives isolated in his or her historical context, a cubby-hole whose walls are transpar­ ent to the enlightened historian, but which are never permeable to anyone. What I propose here instead is a very naive, but constructive, objectivity: of course Augus­ tine and we have our different historical contexts, but I regard them not so much as prisons, but as the unique baggage each of us carries, and 1 assume that baggage is being carried by women and men who are essentially very similar, people who can even discuss and analyze either their baggage or their fundamental human similarity, and who can therefore learn from one another. I offer here three of the striking scenes from the Confessions, three vignettes which, it must be confessed, form the basis of almost all my work on Augustine. I hope this does not only show the narrowness of my own intel­ lect, but the power of Augustine to make his story ours, and to compel us to see our lives in his. Sin Confessions, Book Two Augustine begins his Confessions famously with a scandalous analysis of sin. Having alienated many readers by asserting-not proving, I think, but asserting-that all babies are just bad (Book One), he goes on to analyze a youthful, though not infant, sin of his own (Book Two). Augustine tells us how when he was i6, he and some other naughty boys stole pears from a neighbor’s tree. What focuses Augustine’s attention on this incident is that the boys did not need or even want the pears: “I stole that of which I had plenty, even of much better quality” (Conf a.4.9, my translation, as are all subsequent); they do not even eat them, but throw them away. Augustine, try as he might, cannot come up with a reason for this sin, and this {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2005 } �{On Augustine} is what bothers him, and what he thinks should bother us. Plato-who, according to Augustine, is correct on many, perhaps even most, theological points {Conf. 7.9.13-15)had taught that sin was always a mistake, an incorrect assessment of the situation, and could never be a deliber­ ate, knowing choice of something evil. But that is exactly what Augustine thinks was going on with the pear tree: “It was foul, but I loved it. I loved to perish; I loved my own ruin, not that for which I ruined myself, but rather I loved my very ruin itself’(Co/^ 2.4.9). Augustine claims here that doing something for no reason does not defuse or diminish the wickedness of that act, but instead increases it beyond all previous estimations and beyond any previous ethicist’s ability to explain or cure it. Even that exemplar of senseless cruelty, Catiline, was suppos­ edly analyzable under the assumption that sin is the 13 In Augustine’s thought, sinfulness is linked to the “fragile, UNPREDICTABLE STATE IN WHICH WE ULTIMATELY LIVE,” WRITES Kim Paffenroth. pursuit of a mistaken good {Conf. 2.5.ii), while Augustine claims that at the other extreme of human behavior-not in the outrageous, powerful violence of an emperor, but in the paltry prank of a teenager-there lies an unexplain­ able mystery of self-destructive evil. Augustine goes on to suppose that this self-destructive urge comes from pride, from the desire to be God, rather than to love and serve God, “a dismal imitation of omnipotence” {Conf. 2.6.14). I think the profundity and longevity of Augustine’s story lie in our ability to tease out its implications and bring it around full circle, as it were. Starting with what is a pretty laughable scene, one can delve into the theological profundities behind it, but then see once {The College. St. John's College ■ Fall 2005 } �14 {On Augustine} 'Augustine bequeathed to Christianity a much stronger divine grace than others had imagined... more both the humor and profun­ dity in it, when one tries to put one­ self in the story. Perhaps more than other episodes in the Confessions^ this is easy to do, for the scene of teenage idiocy is surely universal: I and another dissipated youth ignit­ ed about a half-gallon of gasoline in a dumpster when we were i6, and could offer no better explanation than boredom and laziness, the sense of “ennui” and the need for “diversion” that Pascal would seize on so powerfully in his analysis. In exactly the same way, I remember a student in my first semester teaching at Villanova University also agree­ ing to the plausibility of Augustine’s story, admitting in seminar that he and some friends had stolen watermelons from a store and then gleefully but painfully gorged themselves to the point of physical illness. When another student asked when they had done this, expecting an answer that it had happened in fifth or sixth grade, the first student replied, “The beginning of August.” The whole class laughed, quite appropriately. Laughing at ourselves has an important educational value here, I think: it is not that we are discounting our sins, but that our sinfulness is almost always pathetic and meager and childish, just like Augustine’s. If honest with ourselves, we would realize that we don’t have it in us to be a Milton­ ian Satan, or a Hitler or a Khan: about the most any of us could pull off would be to become a petty thief, liar, or lecher, with little to show for our misdeeds, except the pain we cause others, and the complete buffoons we make of ourselves. And what of Augustine’s assertion of the universality of such pathetic sinfulness? Perhaps my student and I and a few other immature rakes can identify with Augustine, but is it good or accurate for everyone do so? I will only relate another anecdote that suggests that admitting sin, dwelling on it seriously as well as laughing at it, is anoth­ er important and useful lesson that Augustine has taught us in this story. Also at Villanova, I remember one student who didn’t say much in class, often seemed bothered if I said something irreverent about the Bible, and always wore a cross necklace. She literally came undone in the first class on Confessions, however, berating Augustine for hating babies and me for defending him. At first I appreciated her vigor and umbrage, and did not see the harm in someone believing in the innate goodness of babies, or of people in general, even if I didn’t share her estimation. Then I caught her flagrantly plagiarizing later in the semester. She didn’t seem the least bit apologetic or remorseful, only angry at me for catching her, and a little angry at her­ self for not being more adept at cheating. While this is no proof that optimism and hypocrisy go hand-in-hand, it at least suggests that introspection, analysis, and admission of guilt may play some role in moral formation and improvement. As I said above, however, most of us aren’t that sinful, if “sin” means really bad things that we do to hurt other people. Most of us will probably outgrow high school pranks and college cheating, and settle down to a middle age of mediocre virtue, rather than move on to bigger and worse sins. But there is another aspect of sin in Augustine’s Confessions, to which we now turn. Life and Death in Sinfulness Books Four and Nine In Confessions Book Four, Augustine gives one of the most beautiful descriptions of the joys and rewards of real friendship: There were other things done with them that captivated my mind more: talking together and laughing together, and happily taking turns at giving in to each others’ wishes; reading well-phrased books together, joking together, and showing each other respect; disagreeing sometimes, but without anger, as a person disagrees with him-or herself, the infrequency of our disagreements making our many agreements all the more enjoyable; teaching and learning from one another, sadly longing for those who were absent, and joyfully welcoming those who joined us. Such signs, coming from hearts that loved and were loved in return, were shown in our faces, voices, eyes, and a thousand pleasant gestures, and were like {The College. St. John’s College • Fall 2005 } �{OnAugustine} kindling to inflame our minds and make the many of us into one. [Conf. 4.8.13) But the conflict and drama of Book Four stem from the fact that one of these friends has died, leaving Augustine devastated and in despair. In Book Nine, Augustine gives an equally beautiful, if rather more succinct, description of his love for his mother, “A single life had been made out of hers and mine” (Conf. 9.12.30), and then she too dies, leaving him with another conflict over his painful emo­ tions. These two stories together form a profound work­ ing through of the implications of sin: not a dissection of the actual act of sinning, as in Book Two, but a long look at the facts and limitations of human life lived in a sinful world. In these two episodes, Augustine shows vividly the main and unavoidable symptom of original sinfulness: not that we inevitably sin, but that we inevitably die. And dealing with others’ deaths is even more difficult for us than our own mortality, for the sadness in which we live after they’re gone can last indefinitely. This past year has brought this unavoidable and uncomfortable truth home to me more than in previous years, and with Augustine’s help it has become both more meaningful and (a little) less terrifying. In the months leading up to and then fol­ lowing my 20-year high school reunion, I was constantly reminded of Greg, a friend who died right after high school. Never mind the sins that I and others commit every day: I can think of no clearer proof that the world is “fallen,” “broken,” or just plain “wrong,” than to observe that in it a person of such obvious virtue as Greg would die a slow, lingering death from cancer, at such a young age, leaving no progeny, while a lazy, impatient, short-tempered, sinful person like me gets the chance to raise kids, surely with much less success than Greg would have enjoyed. And shortly after the reunion, my father died, after 24 years in which he never successfully mourned or got past the death of my mother: his loneliness and bitterness festered that whole time, till the only emotions he could feel were hate and rage. Again, one needn’t judge him an awful sinner to think that what he did was “bad”-for it contributed to his misery, not diminished it. In both these cases, as in the mysteriously 15 painful deaths that Augustine recounts, the world’s sinfulness is shown most clearly not in the sinful things we do, but in the faulty, sickened, fragile, unpredictable state in which we inevitably live. Augustine offers us not just a diagnosis of the diseases of sin and death, however, but also the hope of a treat­ ment. Though Book Two and the gravity of sin are the most memorable parts of Augustine’s Confessions, they are not the final word-just as hideous punishments are the most memorable parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but not his ultimate point. Augustine bequeathed to Chris­ tianity the idea of a much stronger divine grace than oth­ ers had imagined, stronger precisely because only it could cure the horribly enlarged idea of sin that Augustine had developed. And one of the simplest and most frequent graces that Augustine saw in the world was the blessed­ ness that comes from loving, human relationships: “Blessed is the one who loves you [God], and his friend in you, and his enemy for your sake” (Conf 4.9.14). The very relationships that cause us pain, because the people we love must inevitably suffer and die, can bring us joy when God is a part of the relationship, for we acknowledge that every moment spent with the beloved person is a gracious gift of God, a gift meant to lead us back to the giver. As in Plato, but with a far greater appreciation for how difficult the ascent is, Augustine believes this urge to love our creator is built into us from the very beginning: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is troubled, until it rests in you” (Conf, i.i.i). Frequently titled a “Doctor of the Church,” Augustine-like Socrates, who also claimed to offer therapy for wayward souls-would probably prefer the image of nurse or midwife for himself, for according to him, only God can ultimately heal human hearts that are broken by sin and mortality, but which still retain the unique imprint of their creator and their only physician (Conf. 10.3.3-4). Kim Paffenroth (A88) is associateprofessor ofReligious Studies and chairperson ofthe Religious Studies Department at Iona College in New York. {The College. St John’s College • Fall 2005 } �{Alumni Voices} A JOHNNIE WAY OF LIFE The ExaminedLife Guides a New Journey BY Brother Ezra Sullivan, O.P. (A04) Shortly after he graduated from St. John’s in 2004, Randall Sullivan entered a formation program of the Order ofPreachers, also known as the Dominicans. He moved to Cincinnati to live at the order’s friary, bringing to his small and austere cell few personal belongings beyond his favorite Program books (Plato, Aristotle, Dante). He traded hisjeans and t-shirtsfor a white robe and a black cloak. He took the vows ofpoverty, chastity, and obe­ dience, and a new name, choosing Ezra because Scripture por­ trays Ezra, a priest and scribe, as a man who saw study as a means to holiness. Several months into his new life, Brother Ezra noticed the similarities between a Johnnie’s life ofthe mind and the spiritual and intellectual life ofhisfriary. nyone can tell what a college thinks of itself hy looking at the glossy promo­ tional pamphlets they use to recruit stu­ dents. In one photograph, foothall play­ ers and cheerleaders are prominent; in another, students and professors in lah coats. In the promotional material St. John’s College sent me, one image is predominant: hooks. Stacks of hooks, students reading books, tutors and students discussing books. Books and conversation capture the essence of the college. In a similar way, if you were to leaf through a book of Catholic saints, you would find that they are often pictured with a symbol representing their characteristic quality. St. Peter is shown with keys, reflecting his spiritual power over heaven and hell; St. Augustine is shown with a pen in hand because he wrote exten­ sively. There is one saint that many people do not know about, perhaps because his symbol is so ordinary. It is St. Dominic, and his symbol is a book. Since August of 2,004, I have been a Dominican friar, a follower of St. Dominic, and that means a book-lover. Almost 800 years ago, Dominic started the Order of Preachers, based on the monastic Rule of St. Augustine, known to be a great reader and writer of books. Since then, men and women have been a part of Dominic’s Order, which was founded, like St. John’s, on the insight that good books can do much good for the individual and the community. The order’s mission-ropass on to others the fruits of our contemplation-vs, strikingly similar to the college’s goal to endow young men and women with critical thinking skills in order to take their place as responsible citizens. The Dominicans were founded on the insight that reading should lead a person to contemplate, and contemplation should lead him to share his insights. Though friars preach and Johnnies do not, they are similar in that they read, contemplate and share insight as a community of learners and for a community of learners, with the goal of enriching community life and the world. Consider first the main paragraph on the St. John’s Web site, which describes the aims of the college: “Through sustained engagement with the works of great thinkers and through gen­ uine discussion with peers, students at St. John’s College culti­ vate habits of mind that will last a lifetime: a deepened capacity for reflective thought, an appreciation of the persisting questions of human existence, an abiding love of serious conversation, and a lasting love of inquiry.” Notice its similarities with this passage Ifom the Dominican Constitution: “[A brother’s] intellectual formation consists principally in the development of judgment. Therefore, a critical knowledge of sources, an understanding of principles, and an ability to reason properly must be carefully cultivated, so that the brothers may be fitted to study by themselves and to take part in serious dialogue.” I saw clear parallels between St. John’s and the Order of Preachers during a Dominican studies class earlier this year. The class was structured like a seminar: the novice master (in charge of first-year Dominicans) opened class with a question about a reading we had done the night before. Seated at a square table, we would discuss the reading for a couple of hours. The novice master would guide the conversation, but he certainly did not dominate it. Everything you would expect from a good conversa­ tion arose: opinions, arguments, questions, clarifications, and the occasional dogmatic claim. These conversations, which often cropped up again at dinner or recreation, illustrate a Dominican saying about intellectual disputes: “Never deny, rarely affirm, and always distinguish.” One incident around Lent showed me that friars are like {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 200s } �{AlumniVoices} Johnnies in their desire to be free from the ephemeral in order to think on things that are more lasting. Every morning we had newspapers in our eating area; these papers distracted some friars, who tried to fix the problem by throwing them away. This caused some controversy, which the commu­ nity addressed by keeping papers out of the eating area during Lent. This is remarkably like the controversy at St. John’s about put­ ting a Washington Post\)<yti in the Annapolis coffee shop. (The box prevailed.) At St. John’s, the routine was very much the same for four years: many hours spent alone reading, writing essays, working out proofs, or translating alone in our rooms. Then the bells of McDowell would summon our mandatory attendance to laboratories, tutorials, and seminars. In the friary, I awake at 6:15 each morning to start the day with prayer, read until 7:30, then join the community for common meditation in the silence of a dark chapel. After breakfast, there is usually a lecture or seminar discus­ sion, followed by lectio divina—^xvi2i\i& study of the Scripture in our cells. Midday prayer and lunch are followed by an apostolate in the afternoon; it might mean a speaking engagement or shelving books (I was the librarian this year). A free afternoon can mean time for a walk in the woods or personal reading. We have Mass and vespers at 5:15, followed by community recreation. Dinner is sometime spent in silence (during Lent, for example); when we can speak, theology is almost always a topic. After dinner, it’s time for sacred study, followed by night prayer. Some in the community go to bed afterward, but I stay up to read for a few more hours. Like St. John’s, such a seemingly rigid regimen actually allows for great freedom. It’s like the freedom of writing a fugue or a musical piece: inside those rules that give something its form, there are infinite possibilities. At St. John’s, I could choose what to doubt and what to accept as truth. In the friary, I can choose what to read, I can choose who to speak with and what to speak about-and those are the most important things. I have the free­ dom to develop my own talents or hobbies, like playing the penny whistle in our small Irish band. At St. John’s we had Don Rags each fall and spring. At the friary, I meet privately with my novice master once each month and give him an account of my institutional life: my thoughts about the readings, my performance in class, my relation to brothers here, and what that means about my character. It is like a self-led Don Rag. Once or twice a year I receive an analysis by the senior friars who live with me to determine whether I should continue being here. This June, as I stood in line with other friars 17 In service to his order. Brother Ezra, formerly Randall Sullivan (A04), finds freedom. for our “examinations,” I had very little anxiety. Three years of Don Rags had prepared me for this type of evaluation. While there are many similarities in the life I led for four years at St. John’s and the life I have entered into now, there are of course many fundamental differences. A friar is devoted to a life of prayer, and our order is devoted to preaching the word of God. In addition, a friar is permanently in a Catholic religious institution; a Johnnie may be changed forever by his St. John’s experience, but he will typically go on to many different endeavors in the outside world. Given the special place of St. John’s in American higher education, some might bristle at their secular college being compared to a band of medieval preachers-a perfectly reasonable objection. It is a little like comparing the philosopher Plato with the theologian Thomas Aquinas, men vastly separated by creed and culture. For some, such a comparison will only produce difficulties. For others though, for that rare breed of people intrigued by difficult questions-what is the meaning of life? What is truth? What is virtue?-the comparison might produce a worthwhile conversation. Brother Ezra Sullivan can be reached by e-mail at rg_sullivan @hotmail. com {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 200s } �i8 {Commencement} PARTING WORDS “GREATER EXPERIENCE, MEASURED PASSIONS” Alumni Send Grads on a Magn^centJourney The Perma-Johnnie In this excerptfrom his commencement speech, tutor Joe Macfarland referenced the Gorgias as he explored the idea ofthe ''Perma-Johnnie in one sense, the graduate who hangs around the Annapolis campus as long aspossible; in another, more profound sense, the individual who is never willing to abandon a lifelong questfor a deeper understanding ofimportant ideas: .. .In past ceremonies, when I have sat to the side of the stage, I have wondered. .. .What could I say to persuade you to rejoice, all at once, at your accomplishments here as well as at your departure? At that moment, in a darker, cynical turn of thought, I imagined that the perfect commencement speaker would be Callicles. A strange choice, you’re thinking, given that this Platonic character seems wicked, or at least deeply troubled, since he argues that the rule of the stronger is by nature just. But a few sentences from his speech will explain my thought: For philosophy, to be sure, Socrates, is a delightful thing, if someone engages in it in due measure at the proper age; but if he fritters his time away in it further than is needed, it is the cor­ ruption of human beings. For even if he is of an altogether good nature and philosophizes far along in age, he must of necessity become inexperienced in all those things that one... must have experience of.. .It is fine to partake of philosophy to the extent that it is for the sake of education, and it is not shameful to phi­ losophize when one is a lad. But when a human being who is already rather older still philosophizes, the thing becomes ridiculous.. .For seeing philosophy in a young lad, I admire it, and it seems to me fitting, and I consider this human being to be a free man, whereas one who does not philosophize I consider illiberal, someone who will never deem himself worthy of any fine and noble affair. But whenever I see an older man still phi­ losophizing and not released from it, this man, Socrates, surely seems to me to need a beating. . .It falls to this man. . .never to give voice to anything free or great or vigorous... .(Gorgias, 484c, ff.) Callicles has a low reputation among us admirers of Socrates, and the seniors would, I suspect, never invite him to speak; nevertheless, I find it hard to avoid hearing at least a faint Calliclean echo in many commencement addresses. He does not A “PERMA-JOHNNIE,” SAYS JoE MaCFARLAND (A87), IS ONE WHO NEVER STOPS SEEKING WISDOM. say, after all, that you should not philosophize; he says you should philosophize when you are young so that you may become a free human being, well-educated, and capable of good and noble deeds. So rather than giving you a Calliclean echo. I’ve given you the outrageous original. I’ve even made it partly my own, because whatever the faults of the man, there might be just enough truth in {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } continued �{Commencement} ''What are the sources of this excellence within us?'' Joseph Macfarland (A87) In Santa Fe, Sarah Holmes and Christopher Horne are PLEASED TO HAVE DIPLOMAS IN HAND. { TheCollege.5?. John’s College • Fall 2005 } 19 �ao {Commencement} Annapolis GRADUATES ( L. TO R.) Sandeep Das, Janae Decker, and Marshall Derks. continued this speech for me to adapt it to my own purposes and to send you on your way. I have, how­ ever, two thoughts on how to reconcile his harsh words with the things we admire. . . My first thought is his association of philosophy and youth rings true to me, not because philosophy is child­ ish, as he implies, but because youth seems somehow more philosophical; there’s less of wisdom in it, and more yearning for wisdom. Among these seniors it seems fitting to recall Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov, ig and 33 years old, having tea and cherry pre­ serves at the Metropolis, while they pursue the eternal questionsthe existence of God and the immortality of the soul-and while they weigh the strenuous demands of justice and freedom against a faint hope of forgiveness and love. I find the conversation intoxicating at least in part because it is the conversation of young people: earnest, impassioned, open-ended, revealing a hunger for rebellion that is at odds with a simultaneous longing for solidarity. Wise and foolish in confused ways, their words reach further than they themselves ini­ tially understand because of the way in which their youth blends naivete and audacity. When I go to seminar I count on all these qualities being present. In the afternoon I mull over questions distilled from what I have learned since I was an undergraduate, but in the evening I wait patiently until you no longer feel obliged to discuss my question, when it is safe to shift the conversation to your own, a question arising from your own convictions and doubts; it is often a question I didn’t think of, yet still a question for me, and thus a question I did­ n’t recognize as my own. Thus, I believe that philosophy is rightly associated with youth, but I’ll draw a somewhat different conclusion from this: however much our adult life is occupied with seemingly more serious and urgent pursuits, we must not feel compelled at all times to act our age; we must not be ashamed, in the company of a good friend and prompted by a good book, to recover the intoxicat­ ing audacity and naivete of youth, so that we do not fail to reopen the eternal questions now and again, in the light, we may even hope, of greater experience and more measured passions. The second point I want to touch on is Callicles’ emphatic elevation of an active public life over a private life of conversation and inquiry. It is this emphatic assertion that makes his words seem so fitting to commencement as well as so jarring to us. Recoiling from the shock of the assertion, I am made aware of a tension between the openness of our spirit of inquiry and the customs that bind us together in it. Prompted by the various opinions of our authors, we wonder how to weigh the active life against the theoretical. We wonder: does human excellence take multiples forms, or one above aU? What are the sources of this excellence within us? If the virtues are disparate, how are we to weave them together into a single life? For years we have come together on Monday and Thursday evenings to pursue these and related questions; everything else in our schedule has been organized around this fact. The force of this immutable custom tacitly implies a specific answer to such questions, the answer that lured us here in the first place. After you have crossed the stage, and said your good-byes, when your Monday and Thursday evenings are uncannily free even well into autumn, when you are free from the customs that bound us in practice to a certain kind of a theoretical life, those questions may seem more open-ended to you than they ever did before, and what you then do in your freedom will consti­ tute much more of an answer to such questions than anything you have said here. In the Land of the Phaiacians____________________________________________ After earning an engineering degreefrom Princeton University, water rights attorney John Draper studied consumer law in Swe­ den, then earned a law degreefrom the University ofNew Mexico. He completed the college's Graduate Instituteprogram and earned his degree in ujgr. He spoke, in this excerpt, ofHomer: One of the things that I have found personally rewarding over the years has been a focus on the stories of Homer, both through the Program here, and through weekly meetings over many years of [a] group .. .of about six people who get together for an hour and a half every Sunday afternoon to translate from the original Greek for discussion by the rest of the group. Our progress might look outrageously slow to those outside the group, like my wife, but I think of it as being like sipping a fine wine. {The College. Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } �{Commencement} For me, one who has never formally studied ancient Greek, this weekly exercise of many years stemmed originally from a desire to get as close as possible to the people and gods of Homer’s world. As a result, many of the Homeric episodes have stuck with me. For instance, I imagine you remember, from the Odyssey, how the Phaiacians, after entertaining Odysseus on their island, listening to his stories and showering him with gifts, brought him to a beach in a well-protected cove on Ithaka. He didn’t at first recognize that he was in his own home country. He wondered whether the people in that seemingly strange land were “savage and violent, and without justice,” and whether they were “hospitable to strangers.” Athena arrived and showed him a cave near the beach in which to store his gifts from the Phaiacians. Homer described the cave as having the sea-purple weavings of the nymphs on stone looms and, strangely, as having two entrances-one for mortals-and one for the immortals. Homer left unexplained what he meant by an “entrance for the immortals.” I’m pretty sure I’ve been in that cove and in that cave. Our family had the opportunity a few years back to sail to Ithaka. It’s in a fairly remote part of Western Greece, far from Athens. About 300 yards behind the beach of the cove that is so well protected, as Homer says, that you don’t even have to anchor or pull your boat up on the beach, is a cave. Its entrance is very narrow, so narrow that it was difficult for us to slip through it-but then it opened up into a large room with a high arching ceiling and with the purple weavings of the nymphs on the walls, the work of water seeping down the cave walls since time immemorial. And there was the entrance for the immortals-a shaft of sunlight coming down at an angle through a hole high in the ceiling of the cave-not a place for mortals to try to enter! Those treasures of Odysseus were stored for safekeeping in the cave, while Odysseus and Athena went out and “took care of business.” He had arrived on Ithaka after a dream voyage, and now he had to go out and take care of some practical issues, hke ridding his kingdom of the insolent suitors, rescuing his wife and son, and re-establishing law and order before he could retrieve his gifts. John Draper (SFGI97) likened commencement to leaving a “lovely island of a campus.” Treasures await, he said. Below, Santa Fe grads process to the Placita. This sequence of events in the life of Odysseus may have some similarity to the sequence of events in your lives at right now. You, too, have been in the land of the Phaiacians, sharing stories and lessons on this lovely island of a campus. Today, you are being deposited on what may look like a foreign shore at first, but it, too, is really your home. You, like Odysseus, may be wondering whether the inhabitants of the seemingly foreign world outside this campus are savage and violent, and without justice and whether they are hospitable to strangers. Like Odysseus, you will find, I think, that this new world is not so foreign after all, that it has a place for you in which you can make a home. While there will be battles you will need to fight, just as there were for Odysseus, you are likely to be successful because you are well-equipped from the lessons you have learned here and, like Odysseus, you will have Athena at your right hand whenever it is necessary for you to fight against savagery and injustice.” The complete commencement addresses are available on the St. John ’j Web site: www.stjohnscollege. edu {The Colleges?. John’s College • Fall 2005 } �{Commencement} aa A LONG TIME COMING Graduates Savor Completion after Many Years Away BY Rosemary Harty Santa Fe: Peggy O’Shea In high school, everything came easily to Peggy O’Shea (SF87)*. So it was with shock that she quickly felt overwhelmed after joining the freshman class of St. John’s College in 1983. “Bottom line, I really wasn’t prepared for the kind of personal challenge I found at the college,” she says. O’Shea grew up in Wilbraham, Mass. She chose St. John’s because she was eager for an education that didn’t involve memorizing and repeating back answers. But when she arrived at the college, she found it hard to shift to what her fellow Johnnies seemed to be doing so easily. “I think what I had the most trouble with was that I didn’t know how to read the material analytically and ask the right questions,” she says. “I was still reading the material to spit it back. I didn’t have the skills to challenge the books. When I would go to class, it was very difficult to participate in the discussions. I was intimidated in class, and everyone else seemed to be doing so much better.” After three semesters, O’Shea left the college and took a job in health insurance. She began as a claims processor, but her super­ visors noted her ability to pick up new things and promoted her frequently. “Even though I was only at St. John’s for three semesters, it made a huge difference in my analytical skills and reasoning-I think freshman math helped a lot with that,” she says. “I found myself in the information systems department, even though I didn’t have a computer or a degree. I could look at the software, figure out where the logic was breaking down, and give evaluations to the programmers on how to fix it.” O’Shea prospered in the field for 12, years. “Then managed care came along and took the fun out of everything,” she says. She moved into sales, where she also did well, particularly in a favorite job: sell­ ing BMWs in the Baltimore area. She was making a nice income, she was having fun, and fife was good-until February 16, aoot. “I was driving home from work and was hit head-on in an intersection a mile from my house,” O’Shea recalls. Her car was totaled and she suffered a serious neck injury. Taking customers for test drives seemed less appealing, and after she was rear-ended in 2002 and the lingering injuries from the accident worsened, O’Shea knew it was time for a change. She began job hunting. “For the first time in my life, I found they weren’t even interviewing me because I didn’t have a degree,” she says. O’Shea had attended college part time, off and on, and consid­ ered applying her credits to a program in which she could earn a degree after about a year of full-time study. One program she looked into would grant credit for her work experience. Good grades would probably come more easily than at St. John’s. It was tempting. But instead, O’Shea sat down and filled out an application for readmission to St. John’s. “I really wanted that accomplishment of challenging myself,” she explains. “I chose St. John’s because to me, it’s more about who I’m going to be as a person.” Returning to the college in Santa Fe would allow her to make a fresh start. With Buddy, her chocolate Labrador in tow, O’Shea drove west and settled into an apartment. Being about 20 years older than most of her classmates made her feel a little self-con­ scious, especially when a bookstore clerk tried to give her a tutor’s discount. Overall, O’Shea felt warmly welcomed by the campus community. Through the Career Services offices, she learned of an internship in the Gover­ nor’s Office, applied, and got it. Since it was unpaid, she held down a second job, working on a FedEx loading dock from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. each morning. “It was really hard getting up for work after seminar nights,” she says. Through her internship O’Shea discov­ ered a passion for public service. In Gov. Bill Richardson’s Constituent Services office, she was doing interesting work that she felt was important. At the end of her junior year, she was hired as a contract employee. {The College -Si. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } Celebration: Peggy O’Shea’s parents, Patrick and Mary Ann O’Shea, were on HAND FOR COMMENCEMENT IN SaNTA Fe. �{Commencement} In the classroom, the Program was just as difficult as O’Shea remembered it, and there were times during junior and senior years when the workload became oppres­ sive. After struggling with her sopho­ more essay she took advantage of writing assistance and improved her papers. Her tutors were encouraging. “I worked as hard as I possibly could and just stuck it out,” says O’Shea. “There was no way after so many years away and giving up so much to go back that I would drop out.” “When Peggy O’Shea joined my sopho­ more seminar, after ao years away from SJC, I wondered if this quiet woman would be able to hold her own among her far younger classmates,” says Santa Fe tutor Patricia Greer. “ Well, not only did she hold her own, she shone! With tremendous determination and dedica­ tion, Ms. O’Shea found her voice at the table and her stance on the books. She struggled to remember how to write a seminar paperand then began to produce fine work! During the two and a half years she was with us in Santa Fe, she became such a solid and important member of our community.” On May 21, O’Shea’s parents, brother, and great-nephew; her girlfriend, Susan; and Susan’s parents were all in the audience when she received her diploma. “It was a great celebration,” she says. Within weeks, she had packed up again, this time starting a new phase of her life as a student in the LB J School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin. She will take the LSAT this fall, and if accepted into the program, hopes to shift to a four-year joint degree program in which she would earn a J.D. and a Master of Public Affairs. Ultimately she’d like to work as a policy adviser at the federal level. O’Shea can’t help but wonder how her life might have been dif­ ferent if fate hadn’t set her on a course back to St. John’s. Some­ times she misses that thrill of closing the deal. But the same skills she used to put customers in a slick new 3 Series will come in handy when she’s ready for Washington. “In politics, you have to sell your ideas,” she says. “I really think I’ll be good at that.” Annapolis: Nick Golten For many years, Nick Colten (A97) was a baker. Day after day, he’d rise in the dark for his 4 a.m. shift at a neighborhood cafe in St. Paul, Minn., his hometown. Bundled up against the icy winters, he’d walk to work and spend the day baking bread, rolls, muffins, and cakes. Most of the time, he hated it-but he was stuck in a hold­ ing pattern after leaving St. John’s in the spring of 1994. “I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do next,” Colten says. Several things had prompted him to drop out. Perhaps he wasn’t quite ready for the full scope of the Program. He loved to read, and he thought St. John’s was the place for him. “Academically, I did all 23 Nick Colten joined clues and made CONNECTIONS WITH OTHER JoHNNIES WHEN HE RETURNED TO CAMPUS. right,” Colten recalls. “And I liked the give-and-take of discussions.” Yet he didn’t feel connected to the community, so after his freshman year, he went home. Colten first found a restaurant job as a line cook, and that led to baking. Baking may seem a pleasant way to earn a living, Colten says, but he found it hard, tedious work. “For one thing, I was chronically sleep-deprived. And managing so many different tasks at the same time-that’s the difficult part. Mix up the dough, knead the bread, get that batch in the oven, start a second batch, check on the bread in the oven.” After work, he’d take a nap, later heading out to the Oak Street Cinema, an art house where he volunteered in exchange for free admission. He loved Buster Keaton and Francois Truffaut films. Citizen Kane and Casablanca. His other intellectual refuge was the Minneapo­ lis-St. Paul chapter of the St. John’s Alumni Association. “The chapter seminars sustained me for a long time and ulti­ mately got me interested in going back to school,” says Colten. Friends and family nagged him. Eva Brann, whom he had visited often while she was dean and he was a freshman, encouraged him. After about eight years with his arms elbow-deep in bread dough, Colten was ready to come back. He started in the fall of 2002. “I was nervous about the Greek-I had my old manual and tried to prepare,” he recalls. After a seminar on Genesis went “especially well,” Colten found himself excited about his studies in a way he hadn’t experienced the first time around. “I also felt a great desire to be connected to the community,” he says. “I joined the fencing club, study groups, EnergeiaC He joined the waltz committee and learned to dance. He became a reg­ ular contributor to the Gadfly, where he found an outlet for his passion for politics and public affairs. Colten worked on campus, in the mailroom and at other jobs he could pick up. Supporting himself and keeping up with the Pro­ gram was exhausting, but it was all so much better the second time around. “I didn’t want junior year to end,” Colten says. Every year, for his birthday, he’d bake a big birthday cake and leave it in the Coffee Shop for others to eat. On May 15,12 years after first coming to Annapolis, he graduat­ ed. His plan is to attend law school and eventually work in public interest law. “Holding public office-I don’t think that would be good. But helping to get the right people elected, get the right things done, that’s something I’m interested in,” he says. *College tradition assigns alumni status based on the originalyear ofmatriculation, for graduates and nongraduates alike. {The College - St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } �{Homecoming} 24 -- ........ JOHNNIES JOURNEY HOME By Libby Vega (SF06) anta Fe Homecoming 2005 welcomed seven nnderHomecoming seminars. “I cherish the seminar,” noted Khin graduate reunion class years back to campus July i BLhin Guyot Brock (SF88), and many agreed. Elaine Pinkerton Goleman (SFGI88) made time for homecoming “for the chance to 3, and also brought together more than 20 to really converse about great literature, and the mental Graduate Institute alumni to commemorate the loth anniversary of the Eastern Classics program. challenges.” Reunions this year included class years 1970, ’75, The Eastern Classics ’80, ’85, ’90, ’95, and 2000. Seminar topics ranged from graduates celebrated a decade of inquiry into the foundational texts Nietzsche to Chekhov to Joyce. of India, China, and Japan with a Alumni this year were also treated special reunion at the Hunt House to Shakespeare Reader’s Theater, a on Friday, hosted by President seminar and minimalist theater Michael Peters, enjoying his first performance in which there are no homecoming. The EC party was full sets or costumes. The script is followed by a lecture and concert used openly, as the emphasis is on by renowned sitar player Allyn the text itself. Both Reader’s Theater Miner, a senior lecturer in the performances, of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, were Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, student-led under the direction of where she is a teacher and scholar Marnelli Hamilton (SF05), assistant of Sanskrit, Hindi, and Urdu director of alumni and parent music. Drawing on her extensive activities. musical and historical knowledge. “When I first learned how Reader’s •r.u- Annval Homm-omim; Miner spoke on the cultural Theater works, I thought it would be background and compositional a unique and original way to examine structure of sitar music, demon­ texts many of us have read but few of strating on the instrument. us have performed,” Hamilton said. “In classical Indian music,” Later in the afternoon attendees she explained, “a rag or raga is were treated to a “Speaking Volumes” the melody, whereas a ras or rasa lecture entitled “Euclid Made Me is the emotion of a rag.” What I Am Today,” by William « fc»»> . After the concert, the music Kowalski (SF94), author of the novels played on with a rock ‘n’ roll party X Eddie Bastard and The Guardian. in the coffee shop. Many alumni In his talk, Kowalski discussed why said the spark of memory was his lifelong ambition to be a writer led ignited the minute they caught a him away from creative writing pro­ glimpse of old friends. “I came to grams and toward St. John’s College: reconnect with my classmates, most of whom I hadn’t seen for 10 a desire to study more than just the craft of writing, and to years,” said Ben Friedman (SF95). become a more well-rounded and interesting person. On Saturday morning, alumni gathered for what might be con­ continued onpg. 26 sidered the most familiar and popular offering of the weekend; {The College - John’s College Fall zoos 1 �{Homecoming} Homecoming in July in Santa Fe FEATURED MANY HAPPY ENCOUNTERS: (clockwise from top: Sharing Homecoming yfith a future Johnnie; Danilo Marrone (SF90) catches up with a classmate; Elaine Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI88, left) and Dianne Cowan (SFgzjpERFORM A Shakespeare play; Santa Fe tutor Robert Sacks (A54) engages an alumna in conversation. {The College. John's College ■ Fall 2005 } 35 �a6 {Homecoming} ALEXIS Brown (SFoo, EC03) RAISES HER GLASS IN CELERRATION. continued Continuing the celebration of authors and artists, the doors swung open to the All-Alumni Art Show immediately after the lecture. The show featured works in an array of media, including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, jewelry, video, textile, and glasswork. With children ushered to special games and a pizza party, alumni took part in a Homecoming banquet on the Placita. Each class offered its own group toast, and toasts were made for new honorary alumni Bonn Duncan and Elliot Skinner. Elliot Skinner joined the Santa Fe campus a year after its founding, having studied the classics and philosophy at Princeton University and the University of Colorado. Alumni Association President Glenda Eoyang remembered Skinner as an outstanding tutor and a “gentle spirit” from her student days in Santa Fe. “We know that then, as now, each tutor and each student engaged with others to make discoveries about themselves and each other, the part and the whole, knowledge and opinion,” Eoyang said. “Mr. Skinner was a master at such engagement. One alumnus, a particularly snotty one, reports that in sopho­ more language Mr. Skinner taught him to see that he was a snot and how not to be one-a good lesson that we could all teach and learn more often!” Skinner, she noted, had a talent for drawing out reticent students in seminar. “Though there are many examples of his generosity and insight, one that distinguishes him in this com­ munity is the support he has given to help quiet students find their voices in seminar,” she said. Duncan, Eoyang said, has been a true friend to the collegeone of the many people in the Santa Fe community who donate their time and talents to support the college. As chair of the Philos Society, Duncan leads an organization of Santa Fe residents who support the col­ lege and its program of study through fundraising and other activities. Duncan earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and his medical degree from the University of Missouri School of Medicine. He completed his residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and specialized in head and neck surgery. After a visual injury ended his surgery career, he became the chairman of Health Systems International, a computer company which he brought from Yale University to the private sector. “Not only is Dr. Duncan, himself, a friend of the college, but as the chair of the Philos Society, he is also a leader of friends and a friend of leaders,” Eoyang said. “Those ofyou who are my vintage may be surprised that the college has committed and active friends in the Santa Fe community-they were a rare breed in my day. Because of Dr. Duncan and his friends, there is a different story to tell today. Under his stewardship, the Philos Society has demonstrated friendship to the college in many different ways, including initiating the ‘Inviting Conversations’ program and hosting events such as Summer Classics and wine tastings.” With hunger then abated and the night sky resplendent, the Midsummer Ball commenced with a swing band. As the weekend drew to a close, the final event was a Sunday brunch at Hunt House, home to President Peters, and his wife, Eleanor. Always well-attended, this year’s brunch gave many alumni their first opportunity to meet President Peters and the new vice president for advancement, Jim Osterhoft, and his wife, Debbie. Glenda eoyang welcomes Elliot Skinner to the ranks OF ALUMNI. {The College -St. John’s College • Fall 2005 } �{Homecoming} a? Artwork Unites Johnnies over the Years t is said that art transcends the hounds of time, and so does the fellowship that unites St. John’s College alumni. The college’s annual All-Alumni Art Show has always been a stimulating venue for alumni of all ages and backgrounds to celebrate the spirit of art and creativity that the Program inspires, but it is not often that the artist and patron are separated by more than 6o years of age, especially when the purchaser is only 21. At the 2005 alumni art show, one piece of artwork stood out for Mia Posner, (SF07). It was a small wooden sculpture entitled Flash Dancer, created by Billy Lieb (A45). Despite the fact that Ms. Posner is an undergraduate student on a tight budget, she knew she had to have it. What com­ pelled her was not only the charm of the piece, but also the fact that it is the craft­ work of an alumnus so much her senior. “It’s so important for Johnnies to support each other, even if we’re separated by generations. There is no formal art The annual Alumni Art Show continues to be a FAVORITE PART OF Homecoming WEEKEND in Santa Fe. Above, Santa Fe SENIOR Mia Posner with Flash-Dancer, by Billy Lieb (A45). Below, I GALLERY VISITORS ARE TAKEN WITH THE ARRAY OF ARTWORK ON DISPLAY. program here, so I appreciate Johnnies who can explore their artistic side as well as the academics,” she says. She wanted to buy the piece before the art show even opened. The sculpture had caught her eye one afternoon while she helped Maggie Magalnick, the gallery curator, set up the exhibit. The artist attended St. John’s College in Annapolis for two years during and just after World War IL He then went on to get his degree in film from UCLA in 1952. He spent 25 years working in film before retiring to become a peace activist and attend art school. Since then, he has studied with Jill Geigerich, Laddie Dill, Georg Herms, and Betty and Allison Saar, and shown his work at the University of California, Riverside. The sculpture is also significant to Ms. Posner because she, too, is very inter­ ested in film and art. She sees the piece as inspiration. “It serves to remind me that St. John’s alumni are a community. We may be separated by years and miles, but nonetheless, we are a family.” —Andra Maguran {The College -St. John's College ■ Fall 2005 } �a8 {Student Voices} “I AM A DISTANT SON 99 Annapolis Senior Joins Youth in a Questfor the Self BY Donald Stone (Ao6) “The whole ofthis doctrine leads as to a conclusion, which is ofgreat importance in the present affair, viz. that all the nice and subtle questions concerningpersonal identity can neverpossibly be decided, and [because ofthis, they] are to be regarded rather as grammatical than asphilosophical difficulties. David Hume. ‘Tam a distant son, a man, a convict and a cousin. lam charitable, smart, strong and talented. lam happiest when I’m on the good side ofpeople and they think lam a good person. ’’-Will P., 17. " ill wrote these simple, poetic words while par­ ticipating in Insights: Identity Project, a Vision Workshops program. Will’s words seem to echo Hume’s conclusion that one’s personal identity is not so simple as to be articulated. According to Hume it is possible for Will to be a convict and everything else he lists. However, it is not possible for one to ozt^be a convict, for Hume would say that is our imagina­ tion creating simplicity in a perception of a person’s identity for the sake of articulation. In Treatise ofHuman Nature, Hume explains that we are inclined to ascribe identity to objects because of our incapacity to always appreciate the great variety of parts that compose these objects. For instance, because of our imagination “a ship ofwhich a consider­ able part has been changed by frequent reparations, is still considered the Justin E., a self-portrait. same” and “an oak that grows from the small plant to a large tree, is still [consid­ ered] the same oak,” although in each case them. More specifically, participants in the not even one part of the whole may be program learn to use the tools of a photothe same. journalist-writing and photography-to As a photography instructor for Vision explore and express aspects of their Workshops, I am introduced to students identities. who have grown and experienced frequent Based in Annapolis, the nonprofit reparations. It is my job and my pleasure to organization Vision Workshops partners learn from the participants what else there is with the Juvenile Drug Court of Anne besides “juvenile delinquency” in their iden­ Arundel County and National Geographic to tities, and then I assist them in identifying cultivate alternative means of expression in parts of their lives, environments, and per­ underserved youth. With the guidance of sonalities that are particularly important to writing and photography instructors and W {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } dedicated volunteers, students are given the opportunity to learn collaboratively with their peers, gaining new perspective on their self-image and controlling which parts are shared with the world. On the first day of the program, held at Maryland Hall, a cul­ tural center not far from campus, each stu­ dent is put in charge of a camera. Over the next month, he or she will be responsible for its safety and will use it to complete home assignments. Some have never used a camera before; others are sur­ prised to be entrusted with it. In the first two hours of the workshop they shoot their first roll of self-portraits, and later print their own photographsalways a highlight of their experience. By the end of the program each stu­ dent creates and polishes a short poem or essay and a self-portrait photograph. A great strength of the program is the gratification the students feel in having success in learning a unique skill, and the pride associated with sharing the final product they create. An effort is made to have the students’ work widely displayed in exhibits at the District Courthouse on Church Circle and at the Chaney Gallery in Maryland Hall. I became involved with Vision Work­ shops at the end of my sophomore year, when photographer Kirsten Elstner, the director of the program, accepted my request to volunteer in the fall of 2004. The exceptional group of people I worked with, coupled with the capabil­ ity of exploring my interests in photog­ raphy and in working with teenagers, made my time volunteering a lot of fun and helped balance out all the time I spend with the “old dead guys’ on the reading list. Along with the support of volunteers. Vision Workshops succeeds through the energy and direction of Kirsten Elstner and freelance writer Cindy Edwards, and with the support of the Anne Arundel County Juvenile Drug Court, Maryland Hall, National Geographic, Nikon, and the Target Corporation. �{Student Voices} Donald Stone (Ao6) volunteered last year with Visions Workshops, helping youth who have heen involved with the court system to express their feelings in words and images. He also drew Chester Martin (Ao6) and Freya Thompson (A07) into the program as volunteers. “I’ve heen grateful for its influence in informing my post-St. John’s thoughts and aspirations,” Stone says of the pro­ gram, to which he returned for anoth­ er year this fall. Self-portraits by (clockwise, top right) Raymond H., Henry M., and Paula T. {The College.Si. John’s College . Fall 2005 } 29 �30 {Bibliofile} World Federalism: Idealism Meets the Cold War The Politics of World Federa­ tion: Vol. i: United Nations, U.N. Reform, Atomic Control. Vol. 2: From World Federalism to Global Governance.______________________ by Joseph Preston Baratta (Praeger, 2004) By Rosemary Harty n his thorough two-volume history of world federalism, Joseph Baratta (A69) shows that the political climate of the 20th century could have heen vastly different, if after World War II the idealists and intellectuals had heen effective in drafting a world constitution to unite governments across the globe, if national leaders had seen the necessity of founding a much stronger United Nations to keep the peace, and if millions of people had been prepared to follow wiser leadership. The Politics of World governments must seek newways to World Federation is a comprehensive UNITE FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL HUMANITY, SAYS history of a movement supported by a wide Joseph Baratta. range of people of differing backgrounds and political ideologies. Instead of world federal government, Baratta shows, the on to establish a new program at world got the Cold War-complete with the SUNY, Old Westbury, inspired in part by Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and St. John’s. decades of arms production that consumed Baratta, who teaches history and resources that could have been directed to international relations at Worcester State more beneficial uses. College, labored for 25 years on the The world federalist movement included project. His interest was first piqued by atomic scientists, such as Albert Einstein encountering the “Preliminary Draft of a and J. Robert Oppenheimer; intellectuals, World Constitution” of 1948, republished including Robert Hutchins and E.B. by Robert Hutchins in 1965. Baratta White; lawyers once connected to U.S. admired the ideals of the movement for government, such as Grenville Clark; many reasons, first, after serving in the energetic and passionate young students, Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, such as Harris Wofford; and seasoned and second, studying works such as the politicians, like Brooks Hays and Henry Federalist Papers and Plato’s Republic at Wallace. World federalists were men St. John’s. “In the Marine Corps, we were and women who reacted to the use of the told that the purpose of a battle is to reach atomic bomb with horror and with the a decision,” said Baratta. “I wondered if deep conviction that nations must join there were not a more rational way to reach together or face an inevitable third a decision. At St. John’s I saw that the world war. reason why wars continue is that the world The movement also attracted the has no working rule of law.” attention of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Baratta began reading volumes of Com­ Buchanan, founders of the New Program at mon Cause, the journal of The Committee St. John’s, and many others intimately to Frame a World Constitution, written by involved with the college, including Mark Hutchins, G.A. Borgese, and Adler. Van Doren, Mortimer Adler, and Wofford, “These people explored the anarchy of the a close friend of Buchanan, who would go national state system in the spirit of the I {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2005 } conversation of the great books,” Baratta says. He combed through thousands of documents and conducted dozens of inter­ views. He wrote his doctoral thesis at Boston University on world federalism and continued his research for what would become The Politics of World Federation. “I discovered a movement that hadn’t made it into the history books,” he says. His final product is not only an outstand­ ing scholarly achievement, but also a personal testament for his own strong views that today’s governments must seek out new ways to bring the world together for the benefit of humanity. Baratta concentrates on the period after the failure of the League of Nations. In 1939, a journalist named Clarence Streit, alarmed by Hitler and the portents of another world war, published a book called Union Now, which proposed a federal union of democracies against the Axis powers. “If ever a book made a movement. Union Now was such a book,” writes Baratta. Publication of the book led to organizations including Federal Union in the U.S. and Great Britain and World Federalists in the U.S. The most active years for the movement were those immediately following the bombing of Hiroshima. Internal dissent, a lack of adequate funding, and McCarthyism weakened the movement, and by 1954, Baratta writes, it was largely defunct. A pivotal issue in the failure of the move­ ment was the rejection of the Baruch Plan for the international control of atomic energy, presented to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 14, 1946. The plan proposed the creation of an International Atomic Development Authority that would manage “control or ownership of all atomic-energy activities potentially dangerous to world security,” ultimately placing America’s nuclear weapons in the hands of an international body, which would have had many attributes of a world government. If the world federalists had the power and numbers to back the Baruch plan, the story might have been different, but “they didn’t unite themselves until 1947,” says Baratta. “Then President Truman announced the Truman Doctrine, which inaugurated the Cold War. Federalists got organized too late.” �{Bibliofile} In his second volume, Baratta devotes a chapter to another pivotal time: the events surrounding the Pocono Conference of T948, when Stringfellow Barr was most actively involved in world federalism. Barr and Buchanan had left St. John’s in 1946, following a successful but bitter fight against a Naval Academy takeover of the campus. They attempted to start a new college in western Massachusetts, but could not attract adequate funding for their vision. Barr took a year off, Baratta writes, but he quickly became very involved in the most revolutionary wing of the world federalist movement. While others worked gradually by U.N. reform, Barr and others felt that the atomic bomb required recourse to a “people’s convention a grassroots approach to working outside of national governments by selecting international delegates who would draft a world constitution. McCormick reaper heiress Anita McCormick Blaine gave $T million to the cause. Barr became chair­ man of a planning committee, aiming at election of 143 American delegates to a constitutional convention in Geneva in 1950. Britain had a similar movement, led by MP Henry Usborne, to elect 2,8 popular representatives to the convention. Scott Buchanan, who later worked with Barr, opposed the people’s convention. He believed the place to start was with the U.N. and with national governments: “World government is a revolutionary idea. It would touch every last item of our political life. Most people who believe in it do not realize this. They also don’t realize Michelangelo’s Mountain: The Quest for Perfection in the Marble Quarries of Carrara by Eric Scigliano (SF75) Free Press, 2005 Eric Scigliano has roots in Carrara, a village in the Apuan Alps in northwestern Italy, that run as deep as the veins of prized marble that have been quarried there for more than 2,000 years. Scigliano’s great-grandfather and his relatives were quarrymen and stone carvers in the quarries of Carrara, the same quarries that Michelangelo frequented to select the finest marble for his sculptures. In Michaelangelo’sMountain, Scigliano offers a historical perspective on Carrara and its famous how much opposition there will be to it. For this reason the PC horrifies me.” Barr, however, continued the approach. The money was used to establish the Foundation for World Government, but it all came to naught in all the difficulties of the time for forming a more perfect union ''Contrary to so many ofmy experiences in life, I continue to have faith in human reason. Worldfederation offers apositive vision ofpeace. Joseph Preston Baratta with adherents of the Communist party. Mrs. Blaine wanted Henry Wallace, the Progressive party candidate for president, to be a board member. Leaders among the United World Federalists feared the Com­ munist strains of Wallace’s challenge to Truman in 1948 and would not take any money. Barr, writes Baratta, “found himself in possession of a million dollar foundation for world government, whose support the American movement would not accept, at a moment when money was marble-pietra viva, “living stone”-as evoked in the gospels, Plotinus, Michelan­ gelo, and folktales. Scigliano unearths surprising Carrara connections, such as how Dante’s wanderings in the marble country influenced The Divine Comedy. Long interested in the Italian Renais­ sance, Scigliano wrote his sophomore essay on Giovanni Bellini’s painting, St. Francis in Ecstasy and Boticelli’s St. Augustine, and drew insight and inspiration from a preceptorial on Michelangelo. “I’m sure I would have gone to Italy anyway, but this preceptorial sharpened my eye and laid the groundwork for this project,” says Scigliano. In recent years, he has made several trips to Italy, where he reconnected with his rela­ tives who still work in the marble business. {The College • St. John’s College • Fall 2005 } 31 never more urgently needed to build up a popular movement for an East-West settle­ ment and permanent peace through world government! ” Nevertheless, the world federalist movement had major achievements. It brought about resolutions favoring U.S. participation in a world government in aa state legislatures, and some 16 bills were introduced in Congress. Hearings were held on the topic in the House in 1948 and ’49 and in the Senate in 1950. Senators Hubert Humphrey, Wayne Morse, Claude Pepper, and J. William Fulbright supported these bills. A large literature from over 70 nations on fundamental U.N. reform has been produced, including the Chicago draft constitution and Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn’s World Peace through World Law. Even Barr and Buchanan’s foundation pioneered new international fields like functional eco­ nomic and social cooperation, Gandhian nonviolence, and individual educational field work anticipatory of the future Peace Corps. Most federalists, like international­ ists, have today mended their differences in favor of universal membership, repre­ sentation of democracies, maximal powers affecting both peace and justice, and U.N. reform for the transition. “I’m an idealist,” Baratta says. “Con­ trary to so many of my experiences in life, I continue to have faith in human reason. World federation offers a positive vision of peace. Its history exhibits a new kind of world political wisdom.” The narrative traces Michelangelo’s passion for his art and his grueling journeys into the mountains of Carrara to find mar­ ble that had never before been extracted. He weaves Michelangelo’s life story with the story of Carrara itself-a region of intrigue and rivalries, including Medici conspiracies to overturn the Carrarese marble monopoly. It was also a region of conflicts, such as those that took place between Roman legions and Liguri tribes, Napoleonic and Austrian invaders, and in modern times. Fascists and resistance fighters. Scigliano also considers Michelan­ gelo’s legacy in today’s international sculpture community, —Patricia Dempsey �{AlumniProfile} 3^ Peter Fairbanks, A73, Values the Authentic BY Patricia Dempsey t the Montgomery Gallery in San Francisco, founding director Peter Maynard Fairbanks (A73) cuts a tall figure, wearing his trade­ mark bowtie and sipping tea from a china cup as he confers with clients at a round, inlaid igaB Saarinen table. Trained at Sotheby’s, London, as an art connoisseur, appraiser, and auction­ eer, Fairbanks is also an art dealer and a consultant appraiser to Antiques Road­ show, the popular PBS series now in its ninth season. Fairbanks’s work requires expertise developed over 30 years in the art world: the ability to distinguish the authentic from the false. One afternoon, Fairbanks received a call from a man who had just purchased on eBay two watercolors allegedly by Picasso and Miro; the caller wanted to know if the works were genuine and asked for an esti­ mate of their value. “I told him, T can’t tell you anything from a phone conversa­ tion; I need to see them,’ ” says Fairbanks. “He brought the two paintings to me and besides it being immediately apparent to me that they were fakes, I also recognized the hand of the forger. After 3a years in the auction and art business. I’ve learned to distinguish the authentic from the false-both with objects and the people I meet.” Fairbanks glides easily between describ­ ing the billion-dollar fine arts fairs at which he exhibits in London, New York, Paris, and Maastricht, the Netherlands, to nature. I enjoy the physicality of handling his stint as an instructor at the Hurricane objects, the discovery, the research, the Island Outward Bound School in Maine. He authentication. I needed to see the front often draws upon his roots as a pragmatic, and back of a painting, see what stretchers flinty New Englander for the perseverance and canvas it’s on, not just look at photo­ to succeed in the art world. He combines graphs or slides and learn from footnotes.” his flair for business, nurtured during boy­ Fairbanks’s desire to examine all aspects hood summers when he “farmed” no lob­ of a subject drew him to St. John’s. Fair­ ster pots off the Massachusetts coast, with banks came to St. John’s in his aos, having his love of art. Growing up in Gambridge, first attended Bard College for a year, Fairbanks developed a deep appreciation followed by three years of conscientious for fine art, especially from his mother, objector’s alternative service during the who studied art history in the graduate Vietnam War. “Given my way of learning, program at Harvard’s Fogg Museum. “I thought I would be a professor as well, but I the structure at St. John’s suited me-the regular regime of small classes, daily read­ found that academia was too dry for my A {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 200s } Is IT REAL, OR A VERY EXPENSIVE FRAUD? Peter Fairbanks knows the difference. ings, dialogues, and theorems on the black­ board, and most difficult for me, the fixing of one’s thoughts in the written word. It was a terrific education. It’s impossible to compare St. John’s to any other higher education institution-there is no place like it. It’s like being in a monastery for four years, where the students are speaking their own language, so deeply immersed in the ‘life of the mind.’ ” There’s a connection, Fairbanks says, to the type of careful analysis done in the �{Alumni Profile} Program and the work he does today, “I think it was at St. John’s that I learned the process of how to examine, and that has been invaluable throughout my life, both personally and professionally,” says Fairbanks. “At St. John’s I learned to question accepted postulates.” After graduating from St. John’s, Fairbanks took on a yearlong executive program at Sotheby’s, London. The course was directed by the late Derek Shrub. “His approach to the history of art and antiques was as unique as the education at St. John’s,” Fairbanks says. “I was trained to identify the style, date, nationality, and perhaps author of an object with the idea being that every object is a part of its culture, a part of the spirit of that time. I was expected to examine a leg of a chair, a part of a candlestick, passage of a painting and determine: Is it Southern German, Eastern French Baroque, or Northern Italian Baroque? While wildly annoying at the time, this approach allowed me to look at that Miro watercolor dated 194a and the Picasso dated 1934 and determine they were both most likely executed in the 1960s.” Following his training at Sotheby’s, Fair­ banks worked in the auction business for 15 years as an appraiser, executive adminis­ trator, and auctioneer in New York, London, and San Francisco. He went to San Francisco to “grow” the then-small regional Butterfield Auctioneers, making it the 1949 third-largest auction house in the United States. By 1984, Fairbanks was “consumed” by administrative tasks. “I realized my work was far from the fine art objects that origi­ nally inspired me to enter this profession. So I founded the Montgomery Gallery with two former employees.” Even when he delivers the news that a Picasso purchased on eBay is a forgery, Fairbanks wants people to understand how he arrives at that conclusion. He wants them to be at ease with art. “A large part of this profession,” he says, “is educating your clients about the art they are attracted to, assisting them in understanding that their own-often unexplored-visual vocabulary is valid. I try to help them feel comfortable and show them they already have taste. But many feel a tremendous imbalance between the knowledge I have and their lack of it.” Through his work for the past decade as an appraiser for Antiques Roadshow, Fairbanks has helped make knowledge of fine art accessible to the wider public. “I never thought of myself as a good student, yet at St. John’s the great books were accessible to me. It’s the same in the art world-knowledge is accessible to every­ one,” says Fairbanks. "Antiques Roadshow has helped to demystify the world of fine art. It has also been a lot of fun.’ 1950 The Rev. Fredemck P. Davis John R. Garland is continuing writes: “Let me report to the alumni of the early to middle years of the ‘new’ program that Rachel (Hinman) Hovde, widow of Chris (class of 1945), died at 91 years on May i, 3005. Long­ time organist and choir director at St. Anne’s Church, she became a clergy wife when Chris took orders in Chicago.” in an informal seminar group started years ago by Tom Williams (class of 1951). “After 55 years I’ve finally learned how to finish reading before the discussion,” he writes. 33 Good News, Bad News Fans of the popular PBS series Antiques Roadshow tune in to see some guests discovering a valuable find among their attic treasures, oth­ ers learning that their item is nothing but yard-sale fodder. In a February 2004 episode, appraiser Peter Fairbanks-who has been with the show since its debut-had good news for a California man who brought in a por­ trait of his ancestor. Commodore Thomas Tingey, painted in the early 19th century by John Trumbull. Along with a framed copy of Tingey’s commission (signed by President John Adams) and his uniform, the portrait represented “a great collec­ tion of American history.” History, swell-but the cash value? Fairbanks estimated the well-preserved and dis­ tinctive portrait as worth $30,000 to $30,000. Too bad the painting wasn’t in its original frame though, Fair­ banks noted; that might have brought the value as high as $50,000. 4" attend Homecoming for my 50th reunion, hut I felt poorly and soon was told I had to undergo open heart surgery on October 38.1 am only just now really pretty much back in living trim. I am writing this to assure those of my class­ mates I missed seeing this 50th Homecoming that I hope to see them at the next 50th.” 1964 1954 Richard B. Carter hated to miss Homecoming last year in Annapolis; “I fully expected to William C. Triplett, II, and Eleanor Noon Triplett are pleased to announce the birth of their first grandchild, Evelyn Berwanger Triplett, born July 3. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } 1967 Ginger Kenney (Gay Singer) writes with professional and family news: “Along with Sasaki Associates’ principals Daniel Kenney and Ricardo Dumont, I have completed a book on campus design for the ACE/Praeger Series on higher education. Written for institu­ tions leaders and the planners and designers who work for them. Mission and Place: Strengthening Learning and Community through Campus Design shows how institutions can leverage one of the most �{AlumniNotes} 34 powerful resources they have for overcoming today’s challenges: the campus and its environs, providing a foundation for making decisions about the physical campus that are grounded in the institutional mission. Mission and Place is available from Greenwood Publishing Group (www.greenwood.com) andAmazon.com. In other news, my son Adam, 23, graduated last year from Brown University and is now working in software develop­ ment for Microsoft in Seattle. My daughter Margot, 18, has just started her freshman year at the University of San Francisco and is planning to major in Spanish and Latin American studies. Alas, neither one of them a Johnnie, but both happy in their choices, which is, after all, what counts. Now empty-nesters, Dan and I are hoping to travel a little more in our ‘spare’ time. Can you tell we’ll be heading west from time to time? I am now working in strategic academic planning and in edito­ rial consulting, as I progress toward a certificate in financial planning. I’ve also been active in the Boston chapter for a number of years. The chapter welcomes visitors to the Boston area to join in its activities.” 1969 Beth A. Kupe (SF) writes, “I’ve moved to Longmont, Colo., about 12 miles from Boulder and 40 miles from Denver. I love it here-there is so much commu­ nity spirit! I’m just a day’s drive north from Santa Fe, and I wel­ come visitors: 3800 Pike Road #30-203, Longmont, CO 80503, 303-682-0169, bethkuper@ yahoo.com.” 1970 Jeffrey D. Friedman (A) writes: “We are up to eight kids and eight grandchildren. I am now using the analytical and listening skills from St. John’s in Talmud study, teaching, and life coaching. Anyone in Israel, e-mail, or call and come visit! Friedyo7@netvisi0n.net.il.” 1972 David Carey (A) is a philosophy professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, “tackling Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas annually. Thanks to SJC for the wonderful preparation.” 1973 Jeff Angus (SF) has publishing news: “In what seems a relatively trivial note, my newest book came out at the beginning of baseball season. Management by Baseball: A Pocket Reader (Occam & Dihigo, $12.95) is a management how-to book predicated on the Truth that almost everything you need to know about management you can learn from baseball. Using lessons and stories from the national pastime, it presents practical tools to teach managers and aspiring managers how to be more effective at the work in any kind of organization. A bit like a Stephen Covey book, but less Mormon. Anaximander, Heraclitus and Lucretius (still The One), are all small but essential ingredients in the mix. The book can be purchased through independent book­ New Beginnings NDREW PiETRUS and ZoE Beatty (both A91) have three news items: Sofia was born April 23; she joins Marcel, a, and Matthias, 4. Zoe finishes OB residency in Jnly and enters private practice back in Raleigh (they planned to move in July from Pennsylvania). Andy wraps up four years of being a stay-at-home dad and will return to teaching middle-school students at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Raleigh. sellers or directly online from the Management by Baseball Web site: http://cmdr-scott. blogspot.com “I’m still doing management consulting, still a contributing editor at Info World, writing product reviews and an occa­ sional feature. I’m now writing opinion columns for the online version of the magazine CIO Insight, and sabermetric analysis for The Seattle Times. “I’m about to become a grandfather for the first time. My step-daughter, Alexandra, who lives in Paris with her French husband, will have given birth to a baby in July.” Joan Heller (A) reports: “David Humphreys (A69) and I, for better or worse, are no longer together, and I have reverted to Joan Heller. Our four sons, dialectically educated at home, are: Justin Heller Humphreys, 20-year-old classics major at Reed College in Portland, Ore.; Samuel Barnes Humphreys, 17year-old aspiring ballet dancer in NYC; Nathaniel Harding Humphreys, 14-year-old student of the Emerald Ozma Home School in Ashville, N.C.; and Nicholas Menzel Humphreys, g-years-old with Down syndrome, arguably our most avid reader to date.” {The College. St. lohn’s College ■ Fall 2005 } 1975 Four exhibitions of artwork by Howard Meister (A) began in August and continue through the winter. “Stilled Lives”-lifesize digital scans of dead things exhibited at the Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams, Mass., in late summer. Other recent life-size scans of food and eroticism were on exhibit at the Last Minute Gallery in Northampton, Mass., December 30-January 29. A selection of Meister’s studio “Art Furniture” from the 1980s and 1990S will be on exhibit at The Modernism Show at The Armory (NYC) in November and at Art Basel Miami in December. Howard can be reached at HMMeister@aol.com. 1977 Judy Kistler-Robinson (SF) moved from Minnesota in Febru­ ary and has enjoyed the long spring in Plano, Texas. She is working as a usability specialist, improving voice user-interface designs for banking, communi­ cations, and other automatic voice response systems. Judy heard recently from Katya Shirokow (SF76) inquir­ ing about next year’s 30-year reunion. Katya shared this news: �{Alumni Notes} 35 Barrelhouse: Pulp, Pop, Prose " hy must so-called “literature” and “pulp” always remain at odds? Why, asks Aaron Pease (A98), can’t there be a bridge between modern and clas­ sic, something that will appeal to both those who already love literature and those who don’t know what they’re missing? Barrelhouse is meant to be just that. A literary journal featuring everything from poems to short stories to essays, inter­ views, and comics. Barrelhouse was created by Pease and a few of his friends who meet regularly to critique each other’s writing. Pease has a day job as a proposal writer; by night, he’s simply a writer, one with a love for both classical literature and modern writing. “We toyed with the idea for a while, and it started making sense,” Pease says. “We thought there was a niche for this kind of thing-something not just functional, but site, where they receive writing submis­ appealing on multiple levels. Something sions from around the country in all differ­ that looks good, has solid writing, but still ent genres. From these, they selected a few manages to reflect our culture without a to put into their first print edition oiBar­ jaundiced eye.” relhouse, published late last fall. The goals Barrelhouse was designed to appeal to for the magazine remain fluid: for now, both those who are already avid readers they’re content to remain mostly Web­ and those who are “interested in ideas and based, while getting the print version out brightly colored things.” in the D.C. metro area. Pease and colleagues started with a Web W “My son, Alexander, is now 10 years old. I am producing nature and wildlife films for television and still live in California. We recently produced two films for PBS called Kalahari: The Great Thirstland and Kalahari: The Flooded Desert. I’ve been spending over 10 years traveling frequently to Africa-mostly to Botswana-bits that are still very wild and very empty of people and very, very far from the troubled parts of that huge con­ tinent.” Katya’s next project will be in Latin America. Asks Judy: “Any other class­ mates thinking ahead to this reunion?” Gene Glass (A) writes: “I have become a grandfather much more quickly than I was pre­ pared for! It’s all good, though, as the son of my stepdaughter is now almost five months old. I’m looking forward to seeing friends at our 30th reunion in 2007.” 1979 A LITERARY JOURNAL WITH AN ATTITUDE: Aaron Pease (aSq) hopes to bring culture TO THE MASSES. “Putting together something like this requires critiquing ourselves and our choices, trying to figure out why we like the stories we like,” he says. In selecting material for the journal, the editors try not to dismiss something because it falls into a “type,” while not publishing a submission just because it fills a “type” they haven’t addressed. Eventually, they want to solicit stories and essays from established authors, take out ads in writers’ magazines to target emerging writers, and assign their poetry section to a full-time poet. They’re off to a good start. The first printed edition A Barrelhouse featured stories from a combination of new and recognized writers as well as an interview with country/folk legend Emmylou Harris. When asked how they managed to get to talk with the legendary singer. Pease con­ fessed that they had an “in”-one of their good friends is a relative. “But,” he says, “we’ve found that people are more willing to talk than you might think. It’s publicity for them, and they’re still just people.” teacher, interpreter/translator, and business owner in Japan; 1993-96, law school at Indiana University in Bloomington; 1998 to present, lawyer. “Married to Carmen, and loving it! Contact me at leslie_westmoreland@ yahoo.com. I would love to hear from you!” 1980 Leslie W. Westmoreland (SF) is a deputy attorney general in Fresno, Calif., and here’s how he got there: 1980-82, Peace Corps (Zaire); 1983-84, ESL teacher in Saudi Arabia; 1985-93, ESL —Roseanna White (A04) 1983 This fall Desiree Zamorano (SF) will be a new member of Occidental College’s Education Department faculty, as well as the director of their Community Literacy Center. 1986 Bob Neslund (SFGI) will teach Latin half-time the next two years and write a history of Shattuck-St. Mary’s School for its 2008 sesquicentennial. {The College. St. John ’5 College ■ Fall 2005 } Susan Read (SFGI) writes that she’s “still enjoying my life in Connecticut, teaching. �36 {AlumniProfile} An Island Refuge Sarah Mara, A6i, Has Deep Roots on Lone Pine Island. ot everyone can experience life on a tiny island in the St. Lawrence River, suffer the thrill of plunging into icy water on a summer’s day, or watch the lights of pass­ ing freighters dance on the water at night. Wanting to share some of the most vivid memories of her childhood, Sarah Robin­ son Mara (A6i) joined with her sister, artist Nancy Rohinson Hammond, in creating A Snug Little Island, a children’s hook that presents the joys of life on Lone Pine Island through the eyes of two children. Sarah and her husband, John, spend five months each year on Lone Pine Island, a quarter-acre granite outcrop where they built a cottage. Lone Pine is one of the Thousand Islands, a group of more than 1,700 small islands in the St. Lawrence River just east of Lake Ontario. Farther east of Lone Pine is the slightly bigger Long Rock Island, where Nancy Hammond and her husband, Robert R. Price, Jr., rent a converted skiffhouse. In joining together on their book project, the two sisters recaptured favorite memories from their childhoods in the Thousand Islands. “I’ve been returning to the river every summer for 65 years-missing only a fewsince I was six months old,” says Mara. “The islands, the river, are my roots, where family gathers. I understand the dangers: hidden rocks in the water, navigating at night, watching out for the looming hulls of freighters in the total darkness. I love the color of the blue water, how it sparkles on a clear day when the wind is from the north. Children who grow up here never forget it.” After graduating from St. John’s and marrying plastic and reconstructive surgeon John Mara in 1972, Mara pursued various career ventures. “You come out of St. John’s a true liberal artist,” she said. She worked in London at IBM, United Kingdom, and for Eastman Kodak in Rochester. She adored her stint as manag­ ing editor of a weekly newspaper in New York, writing the editorials and a regular column, managing stringers, laying out the paper, and taking the photos. When John retired in 1992, Mara became the family bread-winner, for several years commuting by boat to her job as administrator of the Antique and Classic Boat Society. Abandoning the mainstream for a quiet life with time for reading, organic garden­ ing, and watching sunsets was a careful choice the Maras made, one Sarah links to her Johnnie days. “Without St. John’s in my background, I doubt we would have had the courage to make such a dramatic decision, or even have known about the pleasure of such a life.” Along the way, the Maras built their cot­ tage on Lone Pine, which Sarah’s parents had owned, and where she and her family camped out in tents during the summer. On the island, self-reliance is key. “Lifting­ all the time lifting! Bringing over filled water jugs, groceries, boxes of books, and taking away garbage. Slippery docks in the autumn, slippery rocks after rain. No septic system, no public sewer system.” {The College- St. John’s College • Fall 2005 } Sisters Nancy Hammond (r.) and Sarah Mara (A61) brought talents and CHILDHOOD MEMORIES TOGETHER IN A SNUG Little Island. Fog can trap the Maras on their island or keep them from returning from the mainland. They stock up on drinking water, canned tuna, and dried fruit to sustain them through bad weather. Once the couple awoke to a violent storm that shook the house. “Trees were cracking in half all around us,” Mara recalls. “Waves slammed against the shore. The storm cut a swath through the islands, uprooting trees and swamping boats. We lost electricity for five days.” Ultimately, the benefits far outweigh the difficulties. “The island is a refuge,” Mara says. “We can be boisterous, we can be quiet. We can be idle or industrious. It’s snug in the cottage, especially with a fire in the woodstove when it’s cold or rainy.” continued on pg. �{Alumni Notes} 37 Policy. He previously served as executive director of The Philan­ thropy Roundtable. Prior to that, O’Gara was a drug policy analyst for the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Earlier in his career, he served as a foreign policy specialist, advising the adminis­ trator of the Drug Enforcement Administration at the Department of Justice. Jennifer Lee (SF) has career news: “My family and I have been back in the states four years now. I am currently teaching third- and fourth-graders at a small progressive school where the money is poor but the teaching is good.” 1990 1989 Matthew Shane Heimann was born to Dave (A87) and Jeannie Heimann on July 4, 2005. He weighed 7LBS. 14 oz and was 19 3/4" LONG. He joins his brothers Jake, 4 z/2, and Noah, 2. parenting, mountaineering, and skiing. I’ve come to appreciate the many natural attractions and cultural events in New England. Best to all.” 1988 James F. X. O’Gara (A) was nominated by President George W. Bush to be deputy director for Supply Reduction at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He currently serves as special assistant to the Director of the Office of National Drug Control continued Each October, when the days grow colder and the river becomes dark and foreboding, the Maras move to a home in Kingston, Ontario. When they return to Lone Pine each summer, they must reclaim the island from a boisterous gaggle of geese. Though she had never written fiction before, Hammond’s encouragement-and her offer to illustrate the project-were all Mara needed to take on the project. Summer on the St. Lawrence River was translated into words and images, and two children, Richard and Kate, were nudged into life, complete with cheerful curiosity, thin limbs, and blowing flaxen hair. In the story, the two children are placed with their duffle bags aboard Captain Harry’s water taxi to be ferried over to Lone Pine Island for a vacation visit with their aunt and uncle. Kilian Garvey (SF) recently Nathaniel Herz (A) writes: “Alexander Shulman Herz was born on Feb. 27, 2004, and he’s a beautiful baby! He joins Charlotte Shulman Herz, born on May 7, 2002-the apple of her Daddy’s eye. Contact Nathaniel at NH237@columbia.edu Refactoring to Patterns, a soft­ ware industry bestseller by Josh Kerievsky (SF) is now in its third printing and has been translated into eight languages. The adventures and mishaps of Richard and Kate spring not only from memories of Sarah and Nancy, but also from those of the real-life Richard, Nancy’s son, now 33, who loved the island life throughout his child­ hood. (Mara named the young heroine of her book after Richard’s wife, Kate.) Along with illustrating the book, her sister provided editorial advice and encour­ agement, says Mara. “Nancy was my editor, my sounding board, my critic. She insisted on the ‘real’ thing-forcing me to dig deeper into my memory. We exchanged memories. I would ask her, ‘do you remember, did Captain Harry wear a hat? What sound do katydids make? How do waves sound hitting the rocks?’ ” From this partnership grew a handsome book in which the children’s activities are wholly familiar: learning to sleep in a tent, operate a boat, shop for provisions, and outrace a storm. The book captures a {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } finished his dissertation (“Cerebral Laterality of False Memories”) and received a Ph.D. in cognitive neuropsychology from the University of Toledo. “I now do research in social neuroscience and evolutionary psychology at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine.” Alexandra Edelglass Stockwell (A) writes, “Gabriel Thomas joined our family June 9, 2005. He was born at home, weighing ii lbs., 8 oz. Eight-yearold sister Josephine, 6-year-old brother Christopher, and his continued on pg. gg timeless child’s world, an endless summer vacation. Hammond’s bright drawings of rock-strewn islands, herons, and barefoot children bring the island world to life. A longtime friend of the college, Hammond is well known for her artwork, which for years she sold in a shop near the campus. Sarah Mara and Nancy Hammond return to St. John’s in November to speak at the the Caritas Society’s Meet the Authors pro­ gram, an annual fund-raiser in Annapolis that also features journalists Steve and Cokie Roberts. A Snug Little Island can be ordered from Pink Granite Press, PO Box 231, Thousand Island Park, N.Y. 136920231; or on Nancy Hammond’s Web site: www.nancyhammondeditions.com. —Nancy Zimmerman and Rosemary Harty �38 {Alumni Profile} High-Flying Ideals Kira Zielinski, SFgs, Finds Fuljillment in the Skies BY Erica Naone (A05) helicopter, to Kira Zielins­ ki, is “a bionic extension of your body.” The energy of the machine, which can stay still in the air or make tiny motions there, “courses through you and you have to feel it.” Accidents happen, she says, “when it starts flying you; when it is a machine.” Zielinski learned to fly helicop­ ters during a seven-year stint in the Marine Corps, which she joined the day after graduating from St. John’s in Santa Fe in 1995. Now a civilian, she pilots Chopper 4 over the streets of Washington, D.C., toting a WRC news crew covering traffic, weather, and breaking news. Her passage from the academic life at St. John’s to the technical and physical training she received to become a pilot makes sense in light of what matters most to her in the Great Conversation. A ques­ tion she keeps at the forefront of her thoughts and actions is, “What is life?” At St. John’s, Zielinski says, “it was a training in think­ ing-in honing your being to the maximum extent, in living consciously and not as an animal.” In the search for a conscious life, Zielinski has tested herself mind and body. She loved St. John’s for its academic intensity, and she chose the Marines in part for the rigorous physical training. She has bicycled through the Pyrenees. She has immersed herself in the history of the Crusades, fascinated by “the sheer corporeal nature of it all.” What becomes clear about Zielinski after an hour of conversation is that when she says she is “not a cubicle girl,” she means that down to her core. She is not satisfied with being told the answer, with hearing about how something works, or with anything besides going out and trying it for herself. It was this that led her to St. John’s in the first place. Zielinski had always been interested in classics. When a guidance counselor at her Massachusetts boarding school told her about St. John’s, she was attracted to an educational philosophy that required students to “read the books themselves, to go out and chart the sun with the Ptolemy stone, not just sit in the classroom.” Not A CUBICLE girl; Kira Zielinski (SF95) ONE DAY HOPES TO FLY FOR HUMANITARIAN AID MISSIONS ACROSS THE GLOBE. Her decision to join the Marines shocked some of her classmates, but Zielinski was driven by a need to get out from behind a desk and explore “the other side of the Greek ideal.” The transition was a bit of a jolt. After four years of discussing honor and virtue in seminar, she was handed a book on her first day in the Marines that had definitions for both. She respected the definitions she found there, but the contrast in her environment was clear. Zielinski looks back on her time in the military with respect and gratitude, but she is also relieved to have returned to {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } civilian life. The only female in a squad of 13 men, Zielinski felt a pressure far differ­ ent from what she had felt as the only female lab assistant in Santa Fe. In the military, she found herself in a situation where “anyone with a sensitive soul was picked on extra hard.” It was emotionally difficult to be the image of a Marine at all times, to be always reserving a private place in herself apart from her identity as a marine. As a marine, however, her peers trusted her to act with a high level of honor and integrity. She enjoyed the respect she was able to earn as an officer and misses the understanding that “your word is your honor.” Sharp analysis of great historical battles appealed to her, as did getting out from behind a desk and learning to fly. After her discharge, and some time off to travel, Zielinksi wound up in Tucson, Ariz. The military taught her how to fly, but she lacked the flying time most civilian employers require and had a hard time finding a job in aviation. “I was flipping through the Yellow Pages, looking up ‘H’ for helicopter and making phone calls,” she says. Her persistence paid off. She embarked on a series of helicopter odd jobs, such as firefighting and flying short sightseeing tours over the Hoover Dam and the Grand Ganyon. Along the way, she gained the flight hours she needed and made connections in the aviation community. Earlier this year, Zielinski began studying for a master’s degree in aviation. Within a few years, she’d like to volunteer for an organization like Doctors Without Borders. As someone who has always sought to be like Tomb Raider’s Lara Groft, she wants to apply her technical skill, sense of adventure, and passion for languages and learning-always keeping in mind both sides of the Greek Ideal. �{AlumniNotes} father, Rodd, and I are happy and grateful. Our holistic medi­ cine practice is growing, although I will be at home work­ ing on the domestic arts as best I can for an undetermined (long) time.” bi-gay, reproductive, and other civil rights and liberties, Nancy will be going on the market next year as a constitutional law professor. 1994 1991 Akiba Covitz and Miriam Spectre (both A) announce the birth of their daughter, Lilah Spectre-Covitz, born in May 2004. She joins her brother, Abe, who turned four in May 2005. Look for us in Virginia cars with the plates “SJC91” and “FERRIES.” 1992 Brad Hodge (SF) was married in November 2003. “My wife and I are in the process of adopting a child from Guatemala. We are very excited! I see Luke Warren (SF) often, since he also lives in the D.C. area.” 1993 Nancy Marcus (A) has received her LL.M, (second law degree) from the LFniversity of Wisconsin Law School and is now pursuing her SJD (third law degree) as a dissertator at UW. Her thesis article, entitled “Reyond Romer and Lawrence: The Right to Privacy Comes out of the Closet,” is due to be published by the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law in the Winter 2005/2006 issue. Aboard member of the National Lesbian and Gay Law Foundation and an activist and lecturer on lesbian- 39 1996 Marybeth Guerrieri (A) Brian and Lea Brock (Brian, completed her master’s degree in Transpersonal Studies at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, Calif. SF, ECoi, and Lea, A98, ECoi) write: “We are conducting an experiment. Can one exist in the world with his notions of the Good, True, and Beautiful? We are renting a farm near Madison, where Brian is starting Sawhorse Recording Studio and playing with a band called Goodbye Kitty. Lea is training her new horse and exploring equestrian and Socratic summer possibilities. The fact that she received a teaching license­ having admitted to exclusively engaging in Socratic Seminar with students and to never teaching to the standards-is a bit of evidence suggesting an affirmative answer to the aforementioned question. David M. Brooks (SF) has Hanan Mikuasz (AGI) writes of relocated to Florida and has successfully opened his own private practice specializing in adult mental health. He is looking forward to start training to become a psychoanalyst in the next year. a recent homecoming: “I took my live-year-old son in July to see the Pyramids and the land where I grew up. The Pyramids haven’t changed much, but just about everything else did. Congestion, people, and noise are every­ where. Still, I was comforted by the defiance of some aspects of Egyptian culture to change and by my son’s smiles.” “I just wanted to share the news of my second baby boy, Owen Louis, born April 29, 2005,” writes Phoebe Merrin Carter (SF). “Brother Dylan has just turned 4.1 am (still) the Youth Services Manager for the Weber County Library System in Ogden, Utah. My husband is an adjunct professor of history at the university here, and we have this great old house, 86 years old! Greetings to everyone with whom I have lost touch! ” 1995 1997 J. Stephen Pearson (A) recently completed required coursework for a Ph.D. in comparative literature: “My main foci are American minority literature and the history of Christian devotional literature,” he writes. “For my dissertation, I plan to explore the similarities between minority experiences and religious experiences.” Cameron T. Graham (SF) is a specialist with Army Intelligence at the Defense Language Institute, Monterey, Calif. While stationed at Fort Jackson, S.C., earlier, he won the award for a perfect score in the physical program. He’s been serving with the Army for about 15 months. Nice to Reminisce Jennifer Swaim (A) is pleased to announce the receipt of her doc­ toral degree in psychology. She specializes in health psychology and is currently a research fellow at a private hospital in north­ eastern Ohio. She would enjoy hearing from old friends at jcswaim@gmail.com. ara Giles (SF95) writes: “My husband, John, and I are enjoying Nebraska’s good life and all it has to offer. He continues to be a biology professor and conduct research in parasitology at one of the colleges, while I am finishing up a master’s degree at the university in anthropol­ ogy, specifically on Mexican immigration and cultural divers I work with numerous people with connections to St. John’s all have wonderful things to say about SJC, so it is nice to reminisce with them. In other news, our daughter, Sofia, turned 10 this year and won top honors at the Nebraska Summer Music Olympics in piano, and her fourth-grade standardized testing demonstrated that her academic and scholastic skills are at an advanced high school level. We have a lot to be proud of in her, but mostly that she is a wonderful person. If anyone is in Nebraska and wants to meet at the Coffee House in Lincoln, drop me a line atyehkatah@yahoo.com.” M {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } �{Alumni Notes} 40 Heidi Jacot (A) is starting Yale Divinity’s School’s Master of Arts in Religion program this fall. 1998 Alexandra D.E. Boozer (A) married Daniel Giguere of Windham, Maine, on September 19, 2004. She has even more news: “Last year I received my doctorate in clinical psychology from George Washington University, with a specialization in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. We are currently living in Holmes Beach, Fla., where I am working toward obtaining Florida psychology licensure. I would love to hear from any old friends or to link with other students/alumni with an interest in practicing psychology. I can be reached by email at: alexandra _FL@hotmail.com” writes Brendan Bullock (A). “Currently I’m putting work together for my first solo show at Santa Fe’s Price Dewey Gallery ATHY GarcIa (SF03) was pleased to be accepted in November. I’ve also launched to the Graduate School of Education and Infor­ my own Web site, which I hope mation Sciences at UCLA. This program will, people will visit: www.brendanat the end of two years, award her a master’s in bullock.com. I would love to education and full credentialing so that she will hear from any and all by e-mail. I be able to teach mathematics to high-schoolers can be contacted through my in L.A.’s inner city. (“In the city, city of Compton.”) If anyone Webtosite or at brendanbullock@ is strolling through Southern California, please feel free hotmail.com.” contact her at PHI_PI_E@hotmail.com. Straight Into Compton C her husband, Rob, are excited to announce the arrival of their hrst child, Evangeline Jane, on November 16 at 5:33 a.m. “At birth she weighed 7 pounds, 3.5 ounces, and was 19 inches long. Her name means ‘Good news, God is gracious,’ and that’s exactly how we feel about her; she is good news and God was so gracious to give us this precious baby. She really is the perfect baby. She has always slept for at least four hours straight at night, and she hardly ever fusses.” Lorna Johnson (SF) has recently started her own business in executive IT recruitment. She has also been accepted as an associate director at The Artistic Home, an equity theater in Chicago, and as a faculty member at the Artistic Home’s training studio, which teaches Meisner method acting to professional actors. She also recently became a member of the Board of Directors. Her husband, Aaron Johnson, continues to play piano and organ professionally. Nathan August Scheifer (SF) reports: “Computer engineering degree completed in December 2004; new house closed in April 3005; my son was born on June 3, 3005; and I passed the Patent Bar Exam on July 18, 3005.” Justin Kray (SF) writes: Jackie (Cavim) Travis (A) and 1999 HonorMoody (SF) writes, “I finally graduated from library school and am currently cataloging 17th-, i8th- and 19thcentury culinary works at the Schlesinger Library and looking for an archival processing gig.” 2000 John M Hunter (AGI) and his wife, Lisa, announce the birth of George Brooks Hunter on March 30, 3005. Baby Brooks joins his brother, Jeb, 18 months. Andre Rodriguez (SFGI) earned his law degree in May 3004. He became a licensed attorney in Texas in November 3004. He is currently teaching nth-grade U.S. history and coaching soccer while working part time as a lawyer. Flame Schoeder (SF) and Jeremiah Roper are intensely proud to announce the birth of their daughter, Sasha Ryan Roper. She was born on May 38, 3005, at 11:59 a ™., after 58 hours of labor. She weighed in at 6 pounds, 7.7 ounces, and was 30 inches long. Writes Flame, “She brings new meaning to the word ‘wonderful.’ ” “Shortly after arriving in Brooklyn, N.Y., it came to my attention that Mike DiMezza (SFGI98) was living in the neighborhood. Although reminiscing about books is great fun, the new bond between our lives has been restoring his beautiful brownstone and discussing urban planning. Thom Barry (SF03), a mutual friend of ours, is also an integral part of our new bond. Tom and I worked together doing carpentry in Marblehead, Mass,, and in exchange he introduced me to some great urban thinkers and new wave music. Now, I am in graduate school at the Pratt Institute for urban design while he has become a foreman in Northampton, Mass. Synergies abound!” Suzannah Simmons (SF) is entering her second year of law school at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, Fla., with an eye toward practicing real estate and animal law. “My best to SJC!” she writes. Patrick B. Reed (AGI) celebrated the birth of his first child, daughter Lucille (Lucy), on his 36th birthday in June. 2001 “Though I never attended the campus here, I ended up finding my way out to Santa Fe, where I’ve been working in the art world and pursuing my photog­ raphy for the past three years,” {The Colleges?. John's College ■ Fall 2005 } Floye Heather Wells (A) writes, “Just finished my master’s degree in ecology at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and got a job teach­ ing middle-school and high­ school science out on the plains of Colorado at the Prairie School. Drop me a line if you ever find yourself out this way: floyewells@yahoo.com �{Alumni Notes} What’s Keeping You? T here’s an online community waiting for you to join. About 2,300 alumni have registered to join the St. John’s College Online Community since the college launched the site last year. That leaves a lot of Johnnies out there who have yet to register and update their information (name, address. occupation, e-mail). Your information can only be viewed by other registered alumni, registration is fast and easy, and you can choose which information you want available for other alumni to view. To register, go to vww.stjohnscollege.edu and click on Alumni. Beyond the usual directory information, the site offers you a place to show off pictures, set up buddy lists for friends you frequently e-mail, and do some online networking. Later this fall, the college’s Career Services offices plan to begin building an online resource for career net­ working, connecting men­ tors, and posting resumes. Registered or not, alumni can use the site to learn about chapter happenings, college events, and St. John’s news. Questions or suggestions? Contact the Web master in Annapolis: victoria. smith@ sjca.edu. Classics in Santa Fe. It was Oedipal, except I wanted to kill my brothers and they wanted to sleep with the tutor. One brother, as well as Martha and Ray Wallace, asked about the lovely Ms. Schoux. Where are you Ms. Schoux? I spend my time between live/work offices in NYC’s Gramercy Park (where I lead a Johnnie-style great books group) and L.A.’s Hancock Park (where I lead a great films group-you have to go slow with Angelenos). I can be reached at Jim@Monk.com.” 2003 Meg Eisenhauer Barry and Thom Barry (both SF) are thrilled to welcome a daughter. Aviva Thomas Barry was born at home June 4 in Northampton, Mass. “We can be reached at m_eisenhauer@mac.com in case you find yourself in western Massachusetts!” infantry platoon leader,” writes Robert Morris (SF). “As an infantry officer, I am being afforded the opportunity to attend some additional schooling before I report to my unit. Right now I am in Ranger School. It is very challenging and extremely arduous. I am about to begin my third attempt to pass. The army has taught me a lot. The army’s lessons are not always fun, but they are lessons that I never would have learned from reading and reflection. Later this year I go to 2nd Brigade of the loth Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. I have a lot of difficult work ahead of me, but it ought to be rewarding in propor­ tion to the challenge.” Last summer Justine Stewart (SF) finished up a year in St. Cloud, Minn., where she has been working as an EKG technician. She was next off to California for a two-month stint as an outdoor instructor“leading groups of students on camping trips and living out of my car and a tent. I am nervous and very excited.” Rebecca A. Dwyer (SF) kept it Jim Crotty (SFGI), is still 2002 Amelia Adams (A) writes, “After returning from a year in Zambia working with an NGO on HIV prevention and treatment, I have started at the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.” John Cottrell (A) completed law school at the University of Richmond in December 2004 and passed the bar exam in April 2005. He is practicing law in Alexandria, Va. co-president of MONK, “the company I co-founded several kalpas ago with fellow “Monk,” Michael Lane, as the publishing arm of our travel quarterly Monk: The Mobile Magazine, www.Monk.com. MONK has since birthed several offspring, including seven-year-old Monk Media, www.MonkMedia.net, a cute and bubbly web and graphic design firm; four-year-old Monk Host, www.MonkHost.net, a hitech tomboy; and recent addition Monk TV, which produces and distributes the inflammatory Crotty Farm Report, www.crottyfarmreport.com, among other channels. This past July I attended a Freud seminar with my two older brothers at St. John’s Summer short: “I’m in China!” What’s Up? Michael Kopp (EC) and Jana Phillips (SFGI) were married May 22, 2005, in Sedona, Ariz. After teaching in France for a year, they are now living in Denver, where Michael edits children’s textbooks, and Jana is a prison librarian. Michael has also been accepted for graduate study in an English Ph.D. program to begin fall 2006. The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in January; deadline for the alumni notes section is November 30. Classnotes posted to the col­ lege’s online community will also be included in The College. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu 2004 “Since graduation, I have been commissioned in the Army as a 2nd lieutenant and trained as an {The College -Sf. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �{AlumniProfile} Just a Good Ol’ Boy Chris Nelson, SFgg, Gives Dukes Fans the Scoop Wi Jason A. Bielagus, SF98 t sounds like a prank, but it’s the God-honest truth: Chris Nelson (SF99), entered a competition to become the vice president of the CMT Dukes of Hazzard Institute. To get the job, he had to demonstrate fanatical devotion to the 1980s televi­ sion series and draw up a marketing plan. (One idea: sponsor a General Lee dog sled in the Iditarod). He beat out 1,900 other applicants, debuting as the new VP at the DukesFest in Bristol, Tenn., last June. And-this is the part that really sounds made-up-he will earn $100,000 for a year of watching Dukes ofHazzard re-runs, writing a daily blog about the episodes, and making periodic public appearances in his official Dukes of Hazzard Institute orange blazer. The “Institute” is funded by CMT, a country-music cable television channel that airs reruns of the Dukes ofHazzard. For those who missed it the first time around, the show featured cousins Bo and Luke Duke driving down the dirt roads of Hazzard County in an orange ’69 Dodge Charger, the General Lee. Their fetching cousin, Daisy Duke, inspired a new fashion trend in her cutoff jeans, and bumbling sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane-firmly under the wing of corrupt Boss Hog-was regularly foiled by the clever Dukes. To promote the series and the network, CMT announced a nationwide search for a vice president. Nelson, an aspiring singer/songwriter who was then working as a part-time temp, caught an ad for the job on CMT and went after it wholeheart­ edly, creating a Web site outlining his campaign platform, sending telegrams to the network’s executives, and writing reams of Duke-inspired musings. In his application. Nelson wrote: “The Dukes ofHazzard is a wonderful program because it delivers comedy, action, and a Chris Nelson (SFgg) meets THE FAMOUS GENERAL LeE. I positive message wrapped up in lovable characters in a mythical place. It brings joy to people’s lives one hour at a time. It is my thought that the Dukes of Hazzard Institute should mirror the series in this way and strive to bring fun and enjoyment to the legions of fans all over the world and make some new ones in the process.” Nelson was one of three people chosen to be flown down to Nashville for intensive interviews, round-table discussions, oncamera interviews, and a photo shoot with the General Lee. As VP of the Dukes of Hazzard Institute, Nelson is tasked with watching the Dukes ofHazzard on CMT and summarizing each episode in his blog. In addition to publishing a blog. Nelson also makes media appearances promoting the institute. For one such appearance. Nelson appeared on the nationally broadcast Fox and Friends in the Morning. Nelson came on just after Ken Mehlman, chairman for the Republican National Committee, and just before singer Harry Connick, Jr. “That gives you an idea of where my celebrity is in the pecking order,” Nelson says. On a day free from media appearances. Nelson awakes in his Manhattan apartment sometime before noon. After having some {The College- St. John's College ■ Fall 2005 } Nescafe while reading the papers. Nelson does his calisthenics, then settles down to work on his blog. Next, he might give a few phone interviews and write treatments extolling the virtue of the Dukes. Evenings are free for socializing. Asked about the contribu­ tion that the Dukes have made to Western thought. Nelson offers, “Part of the reason why the show’s so popular, why it’s so great, is that you have muscle cars driving around on dirt roads crashing into each other, foxy ladies in skimpy outfits, lots of explosions, good fighting, great slapstick comedy, and justice delivered in just under an hour. That’s good, old-fashioned American escapism.” A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Nelson was “pretty directionless” after graduating from St. John’s. “I had heard some people were making money in this thing called ‘the Internet.’ So I moved to Austin, Texas, began selling bandwidth for an Internet company, and eventually ended up in investor relations.” After the tech bubble burst. Nelson spent many lost months in Mexico, Cuba, South America, and Colorado. The next few years found him working a string of jobs including hotel clerk, graphic designer, and food writer. Although his contract with CMT is only for a year. Nelson hopes his experience will open doors for him. “I’ve been talking a little bit about being the president of the My Two Dads Institute or the chief financial officer of the Starsky & Hutch Foundation,” he says, Lookfor Nelson’s blog at WWW. cmtdukesinstitute. com �{Obituaries} Santa Fe tutor Ralph SwENTZEL, CIRCA 1969. Rai,I’ll SwEMZELL, HA95 Santa Fe Tutor Retired Santa Fe tutor Ralph Swentzell died on June 16, 3005, following a lengthy strug­ gle with prostate cancer. Mr. Swentzell was born in East Paterson, N.J., and attended Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M., where he earned his degree in psychology in 1963. He joined the faculty in Santa Fe in 1966 and retired in 3003. He was one of the most innovative members of the faculty, having a profound impact on the laboratory and music tutorials, and contributing to an ongoing dialogue concerning the language tutorials. His extensive handwritten notes on all subjects of the laboratory, mathematics, and music tutorials were his means of making the subjects completely his own, including, for instance, a resolution of the rod-and-slot paradox of special relativity. He created a computer-based Chinese language lexicon for the college’s Eastern Classics program, and his computer modeling of non-Euclidean geometry yielded fascinating insights. He was also adept in class discussions. Above all, his persistent curiosity, spirit of inquiry, and good-willed enthusiasm inspired colleagues and students alike. A memorial service for Mr. Swentzell is planned for early fall in Santa Fe. The College will publish selections from the memorial service in an upcoming edition. John Sarkissian, HA03 Annapolis Tutor by Gerald Bunker John Ludwig Sarkissian, a long-time tutor at St. John’s College, died July ii, 3005, at his home in Annapolis. He was born in Chicago, eldest son of Eleisha and Araxie, both natives of Istanbul who fled the TurkishArmenian troubles. In 1939, he began his studies in biology at the University of Chicago, hut left the uni­ versity in 1943 to enlist in the Army. For the rest of his life he delighted in regaling his friends and family with war stories, which may have improved in the retelling. Some facts are that he initially trained at Princeton as a military administrator in Italy. After the fall of Italy, he shipped out to the Pacific as an intelligence operative, was stationed in New Guinea, and was part of the retaking of Manila. Resuming his academic career, he received his B.S. from the University of Illinois in 1946 and his M.A. in 1948, He was an instructor in biological and physical sciences at the University of Chicago, the Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College, the University of Indiana, and the University of Illinois. The high point of his career as a research biologist came when he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the Institute of Human Heredity at the University of Bologna, Italy. In 1963, he came to St. John’s, where he established a sophomore program that taught biological evolution through dissection. Mr. Sarkissian was an ardent traveler and naturalist. To the end of his life he remained a voracious reader. After his retirement in 1984 he kept active in all his favorite activi­ ties, becoming a docent at the Smithsonian Institution and a lifelong student of world history, Russian, French, Greek, and Latin. He is survived by a daughter, Julia Oaten; his former wife, Flor Bunker; and a brother, Vincent. Jerome LaPides, HA91 Board of Visitors and Governors Jerome LaPides, who served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors for nearly two decades, died on May ii, 3005, at his home in Santa Fe. As a board member from 1973-1991, LaPides was a generous supporter of the college, having {The College. St. /oZira’5 College ■ Fall 2005 } 43 established with his father, Joseph, the LaPides Scholarship Fund in 1979. He also played a key role in overseeing construction of Santa Fe’s Meem Library. Born in Baltimore, Mr. LaPides graduated from the Naval Academy in 1951 and later served as an Air Force captain stationed in Japan. In 1956 he entered the corporate world, joining the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company in Baltimore and opening the company’s Annapolis location. His extensive community service included serving on the board of the Anne Arundel Medical Center, and as a trustee of Key School and Severn School. He was president of the LaPides Foundation, which has supported many different causes over the years, including animal welfare, community development, environment and conservation, fine arts, higher education, women’s issues, and child welfare. In 1988, Mr. LaPides retired as the president and owner of Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company in Annapolis. After moving to New Mexico, he and his wife. Allene, opened the LaPides Gallery. In addition to his wife, his survivors include his son, John M. LaPides; his daughters Ann L. Misenheimer and Jane R. LaPides; and five grandchildren. Admiral James Stockdale Board of Visitors and Governors Retired Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who died in July at his home in California, served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors from 1981 to 1987. Admiral Stockdale, a Navy pilot who endured seven years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, became one of the most highly decorated officers in the history of the Navy. He received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest tribute for valor in action. Admiral Stockdale was born in Illinois and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1947. The Navy sent him to Stanford University for a master’s degree, and there he became enamored of the Greek stoic philosophers. Admiral Stockdale served on the USS Oriskany and flew 301 missions before he was shot down in September 1965. Shackled in leg irons for two years, and in solitary confinement for four, he endured torture and degradation at the Hoa Lo Prison, but would not give in to his captors. continued on nextpage �44 continuedfromp. 40 Admiral Stockdale and his fellow prisoners were freed in 1973. He served as president of the Naval War College, where he also taught philosophy and developed an ethics course, and later was president of The Citadel in South Carolina. In 1981, he joined the Hoover Institution, where he was a senior research fellow. Erik S. Kristensen, AGI99 Navy Seal by Andrew Ranson, AGIoo Erik Kristensen, 33, a lieutenant command­ er in the Navy SEALs, died June 18, 2005, in Afghanistan. He was leading a rescue mission when his Chinook helicopter was shot down by Afghan insurgents. Erik and I were fast friends the minute we met as classmates in the Graduate Institute in January 2000.1 had just moved to Annapolis from San Diego; Erik, a 1995 graduate of the Naval Academy, had lived there off and on for years and was teaching English at the academy. We spent hours upon hours talking about everything we could think of that winter, and during the spring, our conversations continued as we played Frisbee on front campus. Erik lived the examined life that Socrates spoke of; he was the best example of self-reflection I’ve known. Now that he’s gone, those of us who were close to him have been examining our own lives, noting how he influenced us. He had many gifts; he was a terrific writer and had a fantastic sense of humor. Always the life of the party, Erik stuffed a centerpiece into his shirt pocket and then hammed it up for the camera at my wedding. He was smart and creative, laid-back and intense, curious and fearless. Since he had grown up a Navy brat and lived all over the world, he was great at staying in touch with people over great distances and long stretches of time. He had a keen appreciation for the little things in Ufe: the perfect fish taco, good music from all genres, a well-made movie. He was a wonderful listener, making you feel that what you said really mattered. Erik rarely complained about anything; he seemed to see the bright side of life at every moment. One of his most endearing qualities was that he was such a dependable and supportive friend. His generosity, selflessness, and compassion for others were unparalleled. {Obituaries} Erik was sent to SEAL training midway through his studies and had planned to return in a few years, when his Navy commitment was finished. He loved the contemplative life and discussing the Program so much, I had difficulty under­ standing how he could join a Special Forces team where action and danger dominated over contemplation. I realized only after he died that he truly believed that his duty was ''Those who delivered his eulogies spoke ofhis insatiable thirstfor life, his compassion, and his desire to connect with those he loved. Andrew Ranson (AGIoo) to make sure that in potentially volatile situations, there was someone in a position to make decisions who had contemplated the larger truths in life. He knew that others depended on him for just this. At his funeral, more than 2,000 friends and family members filled the Naval Academy Chapel. Those who delivered his eulogies spoke of his insatiable thirst for life, his compassion, and his desire to connect with those he loved. He was laid to rest with full honors on Hospital Point at the Naval Academy. Since Socrates often came up in our conversations, I thought it fitting that this passage from The Republic leapt off the page at me recently. I picked the book up, think­ ing of Erik and how our friendship was cemented over discussions of it. Erik would blush at being compared to Socrates’ description of a philosopher, but I think those who knew Erik will find it quite appro­ priate. Socrates asks Glaucon, “But the one who is willing to taste every kind of learning with gusto, and who approaches learning with delight, and is insatiable, we shall justly assert to be a philosopher, won’t we?” (475d). Farewell to a great man, a true Johnnie, and a wonderful friend. {The College. 5f. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } John David Hindle-Hardt AGI96 A generous nature and giving spirit is reflected in an essay John David HindleHardt (AGI96) wrote on hospitality: “The Greek word Philoxenia means love of strangers. We are apt to forget in our culture that hospitality is not something we extend to friends or neighbors, but rather to the stranger, the outcast.. .The Latin word (hospes, hospitis) specifies the particular shape this love takes: the offering of a place to those who have none. . .” Mr. Hindle-Hardt, who was killed in an automobile accident on September 9, 2004, in Portland, Maine, had dedicated much of his life to helping those who might be considered outcasts of society. He believed that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and this shone through in his life’s work and in his friendships. At the time of his death, he was employed by Creative Work Systems, an organization that sought to enable persons with cogni­ tive, physical, and psychiatric handicaps to gain self-sufficiency. Prior to working in Maine, Mr. Hindle-Hardt had worked as a volunteer for a residential community for the handicapped in Toronto. For three years, he was residential director of a men’s home in Richmond, Va. In addition to working as a teacher for several years, he also tutored Asian immigrants at a refugee and resettlement center and taught adults how to read in Annapolis. In these settings, “his compassion and kindness and giving nature found true expression,” according to his friend Joel Werkema. Those who knew him describe Mr. HindleHardt as someone with a great sense of humor and a serious purpose in fife. “When you were with him, he made you feel as though you were the center of attention,” said Paula Swann (AGI97). “And if he wasn’t making you laugh, he would involve you in deep and meaningful conversations about academics, friendship, and life.” “It was common knowledge that amidst all of J.D.’s hilarious stories and jokes there would be these sensitive and supportive words of encouragement right when someone needed them most,” said Jennifer Stanbro (AGI96). Hardt is survived by his mother, Martha Hindle-Hardt Rice; his stepfather, Donald N. Rice; and his sister, Meg Hardt. �{Obituaries} Tevtna Benedict, SF73 Tevina Benedict, 54, was killed in a fall on May 7, aoof), while hiking on the Oregon coast. Born Decemher a, 1950, in Chicago, Ill., she became a passionate advocate for social justice after graduating from St. John’s. She worked on the New Mexico Review and participated in the founding of La Clinica de la Gente. After moving to Portland in 1980, Ms. Benedict served on the staff of the Governor’s Commission of the Uninsured, on the board of Neighborcare Health Clinic, and for Oregon Health Decisions. She staffed the group that created the first Oregon Advance Directive/living will. After moving to Eugene in 1989 she worked at the Oregon Department of Health Policy and with the Oregon Health Action Campaign to support and expand the found­ ing of what is now the Oregon Health Plan. She later earned a master’s degree in public health policy from the University of Oregon. Her survivors include her husband, Dave Barta, and daughter. Erica Benedict-Barta. 45 Ellen Becker, SFGI87 Ellen “Ellie” Becker died at her home in Santa Fe on June ii, 2005, at age 54, from cancer. She leaves behind her husband, Ron Hale, former director of Career Planning and part-time tutor on the Santa Fe cam­ pus; sons Jesse, 27, and Luke, 24; and two grandchildren. Ms. Becker worked as an editor, journalist, and writer, including stints at Mothering Magazine, the Museum of New Mexico, and at newspapers in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. In addition to her master’s degree from St. John’s, she had received a bachelor’s degree from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt. internship and residency in internal medicine at Union Memorial Hospital. From 1966 to 1968, he served in the Navy. He joined Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis in 1970 and maintained a private practice. “He was one of the most eminent cardiol­ ogists in the area, a Vietnam war veteran, and a wonderful person all around,” said Annapolis tutor Tom May. Dr. Brimhall is survived by his wife, two children, and two grandchildren. Also noted: Robert Gamble, AGI97, April 2005 Rodney Brimhall, AGI89 William C. Hill, class of 1946, December Dr. Rodney Lee Brimhall, an internist and director of a cardiac rehabilitation program at, died July 30 in Annapolis. He was 69. In the midst of his successful medical career. Dr. Brimhall enrolled in the Graduate Institute program at St. John’s. Dr. Brimhall was born and raised in Jacksonville, Fla. He earned his medical degree from the University of Florida College of Medicine and completed an 2004 George Lyon, Jr. class of 1940, January 2005 Robert Scott Massey, SF70, July 2004 Henry Clay Smith, class of 1934, July 15, 2005 John B. Traci y III, A83, May 2005 A Poem for Michael Slakey An obituary for Michael Slakey (A85), who died of cancer earlier this year in France, ran in the Spring 2005 edition of The College magazine. We add this remembrance of Mr. Slakey, taken from the many tributes from the classmates who spoke at a memorial service for him earlier this year. It was written by Eric Vesper (A86). The Old Rooms — For Fred and Lesley Israel When Slakey and I correspond in the high language, I address him as S. Croft and he calls me Leopold. Shut off from one another like rooms, passing letters as if through cracks under doors - we take them like wafers, transubstantiate tokens of the land near St. Michael’s where we learned to laugh at ourselves. Once I found Slakey in town Michael Slakey with his CHILDREN slowly rising to meet the swift tide. Perhaps the fabric of old novels weaves into the present in ways we don’t see yet, asleep in a graveyard on the long stone of S. Croft Register. We know a priest who hunts. He curses us for driving in the fields because geese won’t land when they see signs of humans. It is easier to ignore the clergy, for geese and humans, when they don’t have guns. the turn of the binding opening a place where we see ourselves folded into the page. We no longer have need of prophecy. We have given names to the friends in our story, poured late libations on still embers and watched the sun rise through the shelves By day, we plug our ears with electric guitars. At night we open them to the music in the fire, the slow burn a symphony {The College- St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } of old rooms where we rest, where even dust, floating in the light, or pulled into corners, proves forces are at work against us. �46 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Dear Alumni, As a student, I didn’t want to be bothered with the administrative life of the college. I cared whether tutors were focused on their work, facili­ ties were clean and safe, lab equipment maintained, and food and mail were delivered on time. Like most adolescents, I missed the connections between these concerns and the focus on truth and beauty that filled my time with friends and books in conversation. My mother’s checkbook and the college’s income statement seemed irrelevant then. Today I understand-for myself and my clients-how administrative decisions directly affect real experience every day. Today, alumni are engaged in all facets of the administrative life of the college. Chris Nelson (SF70) is president of the Annapolis campus. Both deans are alumni: Michael Dink (A75) in Annapolis and David Levine (A67) in Santa Fe. Each of these alumni and many other faculty and staff have committed their professional lives to the college’s academic and institu­ tional well-being. CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowforinformation about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-275-9012 BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen 410-472-9158 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon 410-280-0958 BOSTON Diane Cowan 617-666-4381 dianecowan@rcn.com AUSTIN John Strange 210-392-5506 Bev Angel 512-926-7808 CHICAGO Rick Lightburn lightburn@ earthlink.net Others integrate concerns for the col­ lege with their diverse professional and personal lives as volunteers in a variety of college programs. Philanthropia is an all­ alumni organization that supports the fund-raising activities of the college. The Alumni Association Board of Directors, though an independently chartered organi­ zation, works with the college to connect more alumni, more often, and more richly. Local Alumni Association chapters, hosts for prospective receptions, active network­ ers, and class leaders for homecomings and special events-all make significant contri­ butions of time and attention to be sure the college is well cared for and healthy. Another important role for alumni in the college is on the Board of Visitors and Governors (BVG). This body is responsible for governance and oversight of all aspects of the college. As you can imagine, alumni are engaged in many ways in leadership of this body. The chair of the board is an alumna, Sharon Bishop (A65). Of the total 60 members of the BVG, currently 36 are alumni of the graduate or undergraduate programs, and seven are honorary alumni who have been recognized by the Alumni Association for their contributions to the St. John’s community. Nine of these BVG members are nominated and elected by the Alumni Association to serve as contributing participants in decisions that affect the good of the college and its broader community of alumni. In July, three new Alumni Association members joined the board. Michael MacDonald (SF76) has a professional life in the record production DALLAS/FORT WORTH Suzanne Lexy Bartlette 817-721-9112 DENVER/BOULDER Lee Katherine Goldstein 720-746-1496 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 business. He lives in New York City. Sanjay Poovadan (SF83) lives in El Prado, N. M., where he farms and maintains a business consulting practice. Joel Ard (Ag5) is an attorney in Washington, D.C. These three join Susan Allen (SFGI89), Robert Bienenfeld (SF80), Evan Dudik (A72), Bill Fant (A7g), Thomas Stern (SF68), and Steve Thomas (SF74) as Alumni Association representatives to the Board of Visitors and Governors. Our thanks to each of them and thanks to all alumni who commit portions of their busy lives to build and maintain the institutional strength of St. John’s College. If you are interested in exploring ways you can be more involved, please contact me (geoyang@hsdinstitute.org or 763-7837206) or Annapolis alumni director Jo Ann Mattson (jamattson@sjca.edu, or 410-2956ga6). Don’t forget the wonderful online com­ munity that keeps you in touch with the college and with alumni around the globe. As of today, 2,295 alumni have joined the community. That is almost a third of our goal-the 9,000 alumni of St. John’s College. To register, to encourage others, or to use the community to contact your friends, go to; www.stjohnscollege.edu and click on Alumni. I look forward to seeing you online or at our next homecoming celebration! Sincerely, Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76) President St. John’s College Alumni Association NEW YORK Daniel Van Doren 914-949-6811 SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 619-423-4972 NORTHERN CALIF. Deborah Farrell 415-731-8804 SANTA FE Richard Cowles 505-986-1814 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 5^15-465-0^44 SEATTLE Amina Brandt 206-465^781 PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray 724-325-4151 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 PORTLAND Lake Perriguey lake@law-works .com {The College -Sf. John’s College ■ Fall aooj } TRIANGLE CIRCLE (NC) Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 WASHINGTON, D.C. Deborah Papier 202-387-4520 drpapier® starpower.net WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Julia Ward 413-648-0064 �{Alumni Association News} In South Florida, a Multicultural Group Savors Conversation A certain half-truth makes it easy for Pedro J. Mar­ tinez-Fraga (A84) to get a table at a favorite Miami restaurant. “If I call and use the name Pedro Mar­ tinez, they think it’s the pro baseball player, and I always get a table,’” he says. But a thirst for deep­ er truths inspired Mar­ tinez-Fraga, a partner with an international law firm, to form the South Florida alumni group last year. The South Florida group is one of several informal groups around the country bringing Johnnies together for sem­ inars and social gather­ ings. Some just want to keep the conversations going; others hope to eventually form an official Alumni Association chapter. A little more than a year ago, Pittsburgh Johnnies gained their charter as an official chapter. In Miami, the group has been united by its “collective love of conversation,” says Martinez-Fraga. Jon Sackson (A69) co­ founded the group and helps coordinate events, which so far have focused on revisit­ ing Program books. At one of their meetings last spring, Annapolis tutor Nick Maistrellis and his wife, Judy (A71), joined the chapter for a seminar on the last four books of Plato’s Republic. “We savor the process of getting together, talking, laughing, and sharing a time and space where our only concerns are limited to questioning and discussing those issues that have long fascinated the authors of the great and greatest books written in our Western tradition,” says Martinez-Fraga. He describes the group as a “vivid multi­ cultural, professional tapestry” including lawyers, bankers, teachers, an architect, and a self-employed information processor. Some travel from as far as 50 miles away to attend gatherings. The group votes on what to read, when to meet, which tutors to invite to visit.“That the books can bring us together despite the assaults of everyday life, domestic demands, professional 47 ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elect­ ed by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary -Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair- Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76 Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or tt6o Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. The Miami alumni reading Group stemmed FROM Pedro Martinez-Fraga’s Dedication TO St. John’s. exigencies, and personal preferences, in itself is a source of marvelous wonder,” says Martinez-Fraga. These Johnnies’ devotion to the college extends to the famous St. John’s seminar chair. At their initiative, the bookstore in Annapolis worked with the chair’s manufac­ turer, E.A. Clore and Sons, to make a chair with the St. John’s logo available for pur­ chase. “Like the Johnnies themselves, these chairs are so similar, yet so individual and unique,” Martinez-Fraga says. Here’s a look at two other alumni reading groups and what brings them together: Western New England Peter Weis (SF84), a librarian at Northfield Mount Hermon School, hosts conversations at a seminar-style table in his home in Montague, Mass.: “We’re low key, yet serious at the same time. We meet on Sunday afternoons every two months. There has always been convivi­ ality and food but we focus on the discus­ sion. Speaking for myself, it’s nice to get together for a serious conversation about what on the surface is a neutral topic, not {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall aooj } politics, not current events. When we dis­ cussed the Constitution it was amazing how long the conversations stayed away from current events-it was really about the document. We don’t stick exclusively to Program readings. The first seminar, about two years ago, was on Flannery O’Connor.” Salt Lake City Erin Hanlon (SF03), a graduate student in biology at the University of Utah, launched the Salt Lake City alumni group last year: “I formed the alumni group because I really missed St. John’s and my fellow John­ nies. It was a year since I had graduated and I had just started graduate school at a large research university. The difference between the university and St. John’s was so great that I felt a great deal of culture shock. I missed being more active about my educa­ tion. . .Our first seminar was on Martin Luther Kings Jr.’s birthday, and so we read King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Some­ thing in that made us think of the funeral oration of Pericles. From there we went to Job, then the Myth ofSisyphus by Camus. Our next seminar is going to be on The Dream ofa Ridiculous Man by Dostoevski. Occasionally the readings and seminars are more social. Robert Sacks led our last seminar and his visit inspired a bit more socializing. �48 {St. John’sForever} Room for Improvement he college issues no formal grade report today (students can ask the Registrar for their grades), but in 1873, the parents of prep students at St. John’s received a bi-monthly grade report. This featured a “Scale of Merit as applied to Conduct and Studies” that started with “excellent” (5) and went to “blameworthy” (o). On the back was this printed exhortation from James M. Gar­ nett, principal; “I beg leave to call attention to the accompany­ ing Tabular Statement, in which you will find a Report of the sev­ eral studies pursued by your Son (or Ward) during the last two months in this institution and also of his proficiency and stand­ ing in each separate study. The Scale of Merit explains the nota­ tion employed. All marks falling below 21/2 are meant to signify that his deficiency is so serious as to call for animadversion, deserving to be more or less emphatic in proportion as his grade approximates more or less nearly to o.” Grades were earned through a student’s “daily recitations” along with written examinations held at the end of the term. A student whose recitations and examinations “evince an inca­ pacity on his part” to pursue the studies of his class could face being knocked back a grade. This report issued to Hopewell H. Bar­ roll of the second prep class on April 26, 1873, shows good grades for arithmetic, history, English grammar, and modern geography. Garnett added a personal remark: “Doing well, but room for improvement in Latin.” It’s possible that T Barroll-later to become a prominent Chestertown, M<L, lawyer-received a similar report for his son, L. Wethered Barroll, a member of the class of 1907. Garnett was president of St. John’s from 1870-1880; he later went on to become a professor at the University of Virginia. {The College- St. John’s College . Fall 2005 } H.H. Barroll’s report card shows no “Blameworthy” grade. �{Alumni Events Calendar} Windy City Shindig umni in Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco have had the opportunity to attend a special alumni gathering featuring Christopher Nelson, president of the Annapolis campus, and Michael Peters, president in Santa Fe. Now it’s Chicago’s turn. Chicago-area alumni are invited to the “Evening of Conversation” on Tuesday, Nov. 15, at the Standard Cluh, 320 South Plymouth Court. The event has a simple format: socializing begins at 6 p.m. with beer, wine, and hors d’oeuvres. At 7:15, i the presidents provide an overview of the 9 college’s academic and financial status, talk about plans for the future Capital Campaign at the college, answer questions, and visit with alumni. The event ends at about 9 p.m., but Johnnies have been known to gather in small groups and keep the conversation going. The event is free of charge. For more information, or to RSVP, call Gina Lee in the Annapolis Advancement office at 410-295-5557 or e-mail gina.lee@sjca.edu. More events are planned in other for 2006. Matthew Reiter (sFoa) and Katherine Greco (sFoa) were among THE ALUMNI WHO TURNED OUT FOR A GATHERING IN PHILADELPHIA. Santa Fe Summer Alumni Week July aoo6 Santa Fe Homecoming Julya8-3O, aoo6 nd Homecoming in Santa Fe. This year, a special dinner for all alumni, part of the college’s upcoming Capital Campaign, launches the weekend, with picnics, seminars, and parties continuing through the weekend. Annapolis Homecoming Sept. 29-Oct.i, 2006. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Fall 2005 } For information on events, contact: Jo Ann Mattson Office of Alumni Activities, Annapolis 410-626-2531 alumni@sjca.edu Marnelli Hamilton Office of Alumni and Parent Activities, Santa Fe 505-984-6103 alumni@sicsf.edu �Periodicals SIJOHN’S COLLEGE Postage Paid ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE Published by the Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 address service requested »»«»«*»»»«»» DI GIT Q7529 S2SO Pl 15976 ANNl MS. AMV MCCOHHELL FBftHKLlH HC 74 BOX 24512 BL PBftBO HM 87529-9540 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Fall 2005 Description An account of the resource Volume 31, Issue 3 of The College Magazine. Published in Fall 2005. Creator 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, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005-09 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. 31, Issue Fall 2005 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Dempsey, Patricia Hartnett, John Behrens, Jennifer Bielagus, Jason Goyette, Barbara Maguran, Andra Mattson, Jo Ann Naone, Erica Vega, Libby White, Roseanna Johnson, David Pattenroth, Kim Marmion, Simon Sullivan, Ezra Stone, Donald Eoyang, Glenda H. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/62b863c17dfe852b5ecd8eb375e34fb4.pdf f81d63b189fc72af20b996c83b16a20f PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Jane Austen a n d t h e L i v e s o f Wo m e n F a l l 2 0 0 6 �On Jane Austen J ane Austen’s novels offer a glimpse into a world that seems tremendously appealing to those of us vexed with modern society. No one seems to have time to talk today, unless it’s into a cell phone, and that’s only when the iPod or Blackberry aren’t in use. Long, aimless walks through the countryside and afternoons spent sitting in a sunny parlor, catching up on the village gossip, can’t compete with high-definition television and HBO. In Jane Austen’s world, there was always time for writing letters, playing music, lingering over a lavish midday meal, and reading (assuming one’s family could afford to maintain a library). Of course, there was a serious downside to this gentle lifestyle: young, unmarried women without fortune or connections could find themselves—as Jane Austen did— entirely dependent on the generosity of family. Like Marianne and Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, she knew what it was like to leave a beloved home to make way for a male relative. She was whisked away to Bath, just as Anne Elliot in Persuasion, and like Anne, she learned to make the family budget stretch. As the Bennet girls did, she knew well what it meant to have dim prospects for a good marriage. But unlike her poorer heroines, Jane Austen had a marketable skill. She began writing fiction as a teenager and stopped only when her final illness forced her to put down her pen. A shrewd observer of human nature, she wrote both from a burning desire to tell stories and from economic necessity. She never made a fortune from the novels published in her lifetime—Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility together brought in only £250—but she was pleased and proud to have made her own money. Most of what we know about Austen comes from her letters, though only 160 survive from the thousands she wrote. Her sister, Cassandra, censored everything that spoke to illness, unhappiness, and misfortune. The seventh of eight children, Jane was born in 1775 to the Rev. George Austen and Cassandra Leigh. George had a modest living as rector of the church at Steventon, and Jane’s early childhood was happy and stimulating. With only a few years of formal schooling, she read books in her father’s library—everything from Samuel Johnson to gothic novels and burlesque plays. Austen’s life was not without trial: a cousin’s husband went to the guillotine, a sister-in-law died young, an aunt was tried on shoplifting charges. Her life was also not without romance and suitors; she greatly enjoyed flirting and dancing at balls. She was even engaged for one night, but apparently thought better of it in the morning. She became a doting aunt to her many nieces and nephews, and spent the latter part of her life living quietly in a cottage at Chawton, the estate of her brother, Edward Austen Knight. She died in 1817, attended to by her beloved sister, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. Readers respond to Jane Austen because her characters are so richly drawn, her plots so satisfying, and her language so elegant, witty, and precise. We get a glimpse into a long-ago society but we know people like Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh; we can laugh at Austen’s silly and misguided characters because we see our own flaws reflected in them. In this issue of The College, our contributors consider Austen’s women, from spinster Anne to orphan Fanny, examining what these enduring characters say about human nature, society, and the life of women. —RH The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty, editor Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Emily DeBusk, assistant editor Jennifer Behrens, art director Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Eva Brann (HA57) Roberta Gable (A78) Barbara Goyette (A73) Ruth Johnston (A85) Tilar Mazzeo (SF93) Rhonda Ortiz (A05) Namara Smith (SF07) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �Fa l l 2 0 0 6 Vo l u m e 3 2 , I s s u e 3 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 8 Philosophy and War d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 from the bell towers • Febbies: The End of an Era Annapolis Cannon Set Straight A Living Shoreline The Kindness of a Stranger Santa Fe’s Extreme Makeover A Home for the GI in Santa Fe News, Announcements, Honors Commencement speakers Judith Seeger and David Levine (A67) talked of ties that bind Johnnies. 28 letters Bibliofile 12 For the Students 37 Sustaining the college’s need-based financial aid program is a top priority of the college’s $125 million capital campaign. 36 Kevin Ross (AGI97) leads • Santa Fe Tutor James Carey (class of 1967) shares great books and great ideas with future Air Force officers. 10 A Celebration of Community • • • • page • page 10 From the Bible to baseball: a compendium of alumni books. alumni notes page P RO F I L E S 32 Marcus Eubanks (A88) thrives in emergency medicine. 18 The Lives of Women Lynn University. 39 Richard Field (SFGI98) gets high school students hooked on classics. page 12 41 Game show success for page Celeste DiNucci (A87) 43 The women of Jane Austen’s world speak to human qualities we can all relate to, particularly the need to find love and happiness. Remembering Brother Robert Smith 46 48 29 Homecoming page Were members of the Santa Fe Class of 1976 the last of the rebels? Obituaries page 18 on the cover Jane Austen Illustration by David Johnson alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} A Farewell to Febbies Special Bonds, Lasting Memories hardships that Febbies encounter, particularly in the abbreviated summer session; and the camaraderie and conflicts that develop when a small group of students spend a lot of time together, in the same dormitory, at the same Dining Hall table, and in the same classes. In September, the Febbies who stayed at St. John’s melted into the sophomore class, getting to know more students and likely seeing less of each other. But they will be distinguished as Febbies until the day they receive their diplomas, and then at Homecoming gatherings in Annapolis for years to come. Elizabeth Burlington, a student aide in the St. John’s College communications office, interviewed each member of the Class of 2009 Febbies, slated to be the last class enrolled in January on the Annapolis campus. The college first began enrolling freshmen in the middle of the academic year in the 1960s. The January Freshman program will continue in Santa Fe. Several weeks into their “Febbie Summer,” the final 17 students to enroll in January in Annapolis as freshmen were busy writing freshman essays. But in the heat of a June afternoon, the entire Febbie class— the campus virtually their own, since summer Graduate Institute students had not yet arrived—congregated around one small table on the Quad. “After seminar I feel good,” said Michael Cooney, who, at 21, is a bit older than his fellow Febbies. “I feel like the Yin and the Yang.” Sitting next to him, Patrick Jones, who skipped his last two years of high school and attended the University of Maryland for a semester to ease into college, laughed at his friend’s remark. “That’s absolutely right, Mr. Cooney.” Febbies from years gone by cherish the closeness that Febbie summer promotes. What appears to be a period of isolation to outsiders translates into an unusual bonding experience to those who participate in it. Among other things, the students talked about experiences spent at other colleges; “I really like great books, but Columbia University’s great books program was really disappointing. All the teachers were grad students. That wasn’t my type of environment, so I just packed it up and came here.” Wynn Hedlesky On difficulties of the Febbie year: “Finding time to sleep.” Kelvin Chung “Having to do 16 weeks’ worth of work in 10.” Mallory Gill “Not getting time off to write our freshman essays.” Timothy Brisnehan On seminars: “After seminar, usually people are mad or they are very happy. Usually the ones that are happy are the ones that everyone else is mad at.” Sara Luell “After seminar I feel like we have exercised our intellects in the class, and that we are still feeling the burn.” Patrick Jones “We are actually more energetic after seminar, even compared to the seminars in the first semester. We seem to be a lot more interested in the things we’re reading, and of course, there’s a lot that we don’t get to say during seminar that needs expounding afterward. With the tutors coming to our Febbie Snack afterward, there are a lot of fruitful discussions.” Kelvin Chung alex lorman Annapolis’ Febbies cut loose in Spector Hall after seminar last summer. The practice of enrolling January freshmen has ended in Annapolis, but will continue in Santa Fe. On choosing St. John’s: “Once I knew what the Program was all about I didn’t want to go any where else.” Rian Thune “I wanted to read every book on the reading list, and I knew that they were too difficult to understand on my own. Before this, I graduated from community college in Georgia.” Jesse Shearer { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } “I have difficulty doing my Greek and sleeping.” Sara Luell “Socially, I feel like we were isolated from the other freshmen.” Jody Whelan On being a Febbie: “I feel like being a Febbie has made me a different student than I would have been if I would have come here in the fall. I feel special.” Sara Luell “We absolutely do share a bond with each other, more than the regular August freshman.” Kelvin Chung “I was glad I was a Febbie. I like the peace and quiet here in the summer time.” Steffanie Peterson x �{From the Bell Towers} 3 victoria smith Henry Robert, class of 1941, nodded with satisfaction as two welders from the McShane Bell Foundry set to the task of righting a wrong. For 40-odd years, the cannon mounted between Pinkney and McDowell halls has been a source of irritation to Mr. Robert, who spent a year in the old program before becoming one of the few St. John’s students to start again in the new. This cannon “of the type used in the defense of Baltimore in the War of 1812,” according to a plaque attached to the barrel, was presented to St. John’s College by the local chapter of the D.A.R. and the National Star-Spangled Banner Centennial Commission on September 14, 1914. The plaque celebrated the college as alma mater to Francis Scott Key and suggested that it may have been fired in the war that was the subject of his celebrated anthem, “The StarSpangled Banner.” When Mr. Robert was a student, the cannon sat as it should: level, pointing straight ahead to College Avenue. Over time, St. John’s students wiggled the cannon in its mounting, and it eventually rusted into a position about 45 degrees from horizontal— historically inaccurate, and, to Mr. Robert’s eye, ridiculously impractical. “If a shot were fired in that direction, it would fall helplessly before ever reaching its target,” Mr. Robert remarked. Last year, Mr. Robert gave a donation to the college to remount the cannon and to spruce it up. In September, a much improved, shinier cannon was returned to the college by conservators of the alfred eisenstaedt The Cannon: Battle-Ready at Last Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum. The cannon’s original exterior was lost long ago, to time and the salt water of Baltimore Harbor, where it was submerged for untold years before a dredging project uncovered it. The inner surface is heavily pitted and had rusted over the years. Conservator Donna Smith air-abraded the surface, applied a corrosive inhibitor, painted it with black Rustoleum paint, and covered it with a liberal coat of Bowling Alley Butcher’s Wax. McShane workers re-aligned the brackets and re-tapped the bolt holes in the journals in order for the new trunnion collars to fit securely into the mount, then they spot-welded it in place. This should keep future Johnnies from developing “the devilish notion” to try to Henry Robert, class of 1941, was on hand in September to see the cannon remounted. Mr. Robert underwrote the cost for the restoration and remounting of the cannon. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } The cannon, as it was in Henry Robert’s days as a Johnnie. This famous St. John’s photo, by Alfred Eisenstaedt, was taken for LIFE magazine in the 1940s. wiggle the cannon, says Mr. Robert. As for the cannon’s role in the War of 1812, that’s doubtful, says Howard Wellman, lead conservator for the Maryland Historical Trust. It’s too small to have been used on a battleship or in a fort, and was more likely mounted on a merchant ship for defense against pirates. It could even have been mounted on a British ship. Mr. Robert has fond memories of the cannon, even though he recalls taking part in the hazing ritual that employed the artifact. “Shooting from the cannon” required “rats” (freshmen) to run from the cannon to College Avenue through a gauntlet of beltwielding upperclassmen who would try to strike the men as they ran by. “I ran fast,” Mr. Robert recalls with a smile. “It wasn’t so bad.” x �4 {From the Bell Towers} alex lorman This fall, St. John’s students returned to a dramatically transformed shoreline along College Creek, one intended to nurture a healthier and more diverse variety of plant and animal life. Along the shoreline, which was once a bulkheaded seawall, there is now a sloping, ecologically restored wetland protected from erosion with bio-logs and native species of marsh grass. The 885-foot shoreline restoration, completed this summer, is one of the largest projects of its kind along the Chesapeake Bay. It also showcases St. John’s role as environmental citizen, educator, and partner with regional environmental organizations. A volunteer corps including students and local residents (many of them Chesapeake Bay Foundation members) provided several work days to help restore the area to a more natural state, thanks to support from several foundations. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is alex lorman A Living Shoreline Last summer, thanks to student and community volunteers, the hardened bulkhead along College Creek was removed and the shoreline was restored to a natural marsh. pleased that the college is “leading by example,” says Ron Schnabel, one of the CBF staff members who have donated time and expertise to the project. The College Creek shoreline is an ideal site for ecological restoration because of minimal boat traffic, currents, wind, and wave action, according to Don Jackson, St. John’s director of operations. The creek has long been a resource for Johnnies in Tutor Nick Maistrellis donned waders to help plant natural grasses along the shoreline. freshman lab. “We’ve known since the late 1960s how valuable the marsh is,” says Jackson, who worked in environmental conservation before joining the college. “However, support and funding for the project were bolstered by development of new techniques for successfully restoring them.” The bulkhead was installed on College Creek about 50 years ago to keep harmful sediment from reaching the Chesapeake Bay. “Up until the late 1960s, the ecological value of marshes and wetlands were not well understood, and they were often thought of as insect breeding grounds,” explains Jackson. “As a result, bulkheading was often installed along the shoreline and back-filled with earth to create more useable land.” In the past 10 years there has been an environmental movement to curb erosion and look for ways to stabilize the shoreline without using bulkhead and rip-rap. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } Seven years ago the shoreline restoration was begun as a pilot project to restore 125 feet between the Hodson Boathouse and King George Street. The project involved grading the shoreline to a natural slope and planting native species, such as spartina, bayberry, and bulrush on a prepared planting terrace constructed on sand and dirt fill imported to the site. Planning and design for the second phase of the project began two years ago, thanks to a $200,000 challenge grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. This past spring the college received the funding to match it, and in June began restoring the remaining 760 feet of structural bulkhead. Contributors and partners include the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the Maryland Department of the Environment, FishAmerica Foundation, and the Vernal W. and Florence H. Bates Foundation. x �{From the Bell Towers} The Kindness of a Stranger offer. Cooper, after an injuryshortened career in the Army and a disappointing experience at American University in Washington, D.C., had found St. John’s again, many years after a high school teacher recommended the college. She visited the Santa Fe campus. “After sitting in on a seminar on Aristotle, I was sold,” she says. Cooper arranged a time to pick up the books; just as welcome as the gift was the chance to visit with a Johnnie and talk about the Program. “Christine told me junior year was the hardest, and said to take advantage to learn things Lauren Cooper, a freshman from the Denver area, had fewer Program books to buy this year, thanks to Christine Robinson (A90) of San Francisco. Robinson is quick to point out that her act of generosity was inspired by a Johnnie who came before her. In Robinson’s case, the inspiration was Mike Van Beuren (A75), a former housemate in Annapolis who gave all his books to the St. John’s library when Robinson was a student. Since she graduated from the college, Robinson has embraced many careers: tourism, advertising sales, and working for a labor union trust fund. She finished her MBA, immersed herself in the study of foreign languages, lived in Paris for a year, and became a student of the tango. She was expecting to spend a few years traveling in South America, but her mother’s failing health meant a detour to Denver to clean out her mother’s home in preparation for a move to an assisted living facility. “I thought I could ship all these books back to California and put them in a storage unit, but that didn’t really make sense,” she says. “I wanted to get them back in circulation.” Robinson contacted the college, and Roberta Gable (A78), associate director of admissions, alerted Denverarea freshmen to Robinson’s Lauren Cooper (A10) chelsea stiegman Above, Christine Robinson of San Francisco decided a new Johnnie should have her Program books; right, Annapolis freshman Lauren Cooper makes room on her dorm room bookshelf. “After sitting in on a seminar on Aristotle, I was sold.” outside the curriculum.” Robinson’s fondness for the Program just made Cooper more eager for the start of the semester. Her new books— almost two-thirds of the Program works— were in very good shape. She took away two Iliads, one in English and one in Greek, and some books that seem brand new. She enjoys the notes written in some of the margins. “Her giving the books was representative of a generation of ideas and thoughts. I was so pleased that an alum cared enough to do this,” Cooper says. Robinson couldn’t part with Fear and Trembling, Euclid’s Elements, or her volumes of French poetry. But she knows most of the other books she’d { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } 5 like to revisit are online. And she likes the idea of her books making another trip to Annapolis. “They’re going to be there, in seminar,” she says. “It gives me a connection to the college now.” x �6 {From the Bell Towers} “I Just Kept Coming Back” Gratitude Prompts a $5 Million Gift for a Santa Fe GI Center An alumnus of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe has made a $5 million gift to fund construction of a center for the college’s two graduate programs on the campus. Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) of Bakersfield, Calif., made his gift in gratitude for the intellectual enrichment he gained through the graduate program. “The Graduate Institute changed my life,” Dr. Levan said when the gift was announced July 28 as part of the opening celebration for “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. “It was an amazing experience for me, and I’m grateful that this program exists.” The Norman and Betty Levan Hall will be home to the college’s two graduate programs: the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and the Master of Arts in Eastern Classics. The building will house classrooms, faculty offices, and common space for graduate students, and will be situated between Weigle Hall and the Fine Arts Building. The building will also be dedicated to the memory of Dr. Levan’s late wife, Betty, who enjoyed visiting Santa Fe each summer while Dr. Levan was a student. Building a home for the GI, established in 1967 in Santa Fe, is among the top priorities of the campaign for the college’s western campus, says Santa Fe President Michael Peters. Design for the building is underway and the college hopes to break Extreme Makeover For several months last summer, members of the Santa Fe campus community were detouring around work crews and barricades while the Campus Core Renovation project was under way. The inconvenience proved well worth it when the project was completed in mid-September. More than 105,000 bricks were laid from Peterson Student Center to Santa Fe Hall, replacing the concrete pavement. The koi pond was given a new waterfall and additional lighting. New teak benches, tables, and trash cans have been installed throughout the area, along with an additional 14 light fixtures and two ramps installed to provide additional accessibility for the disabled. The improvements were part of the $2 million Santa Fe Initiative. Santa Fe President Michael Peters and Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74). ground for the project in the next few months, he says. “We are exceptionally pleased that an alumnus had such a good experience in the Graduate Institute that he wants to help the college build a permanent home for the institute,” he says. Dr. Levan is professor emeritus and former chief of dermatology at his alma mater, the University of Southern California School of Medicine (class of 1939). He has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in medicine. He established the Hansen’s Disease Clinic at the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center in 1962 at the request of state and federal health officials. At age 90, he still spends one day a week seeing patients in his dermatology practice. He came to the GI in the middle of his thriving medical career at the suggestion of a colleague who had found the experience intellectually invigorating. In Santa Fe, Dr. Levan found a learning community united by a common love of books and ideas, one that welcomed students of all ages. In those days, he said, most of the GI students were classroom teachers who were passionate about improving education. His favorite reading included Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. “I thought I would come for just one summer,” he says. “Then I just kept coming back. 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 ours at USC.” Santa Fe GI Director Krishnan Venkatesh said students, faculty, and alumni have been touched by Dr. Levan’s gift. “This is a magnificent expression of generosity,” Mr. Venkatesh says. “This building will give the Graduate Institute a respected central place on campus, a permanent home.” x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �7 {From the Bell Towers} News and Announcements Annapolis tutor EVA BRANN has been selected to receive the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal of the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association. Miss Brann was scheduled to be feted at an October 12 gala dinner and awards ceremony in New Haven. The Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal is an honor presented each year by the Graduate School Alumni Association to a small number of outstanding alumni. The medal recognizes distinguished achievements in scholarship, teaching, academic administration, and public service. Appointments JON ENRIQUEZ has been named Registrar in Annapolis. Mr. Enriquez holds a Ph.D. in History and an A.B. in American Studies from Georgetown University, and an M.A. in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently, he has served as Registrar and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Institutional Research at Hanover College in Indiana. Still Changing Lives St. John’s College is included as one of only 40 distinct colleges in the United States that “excel at developing potential, values, initiative and risk-taking in a wide range of students,” according to a new edition of a college guidebook. St. John's “is a school that inspires self confidence, that makes its students believe they can do anything,” writes author Loren Pope in a new version of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College. Pope refers to St. John’s as one of the “four most intellectual (and indispensable) colleges in the country.” Scholarship Winner ERICA NAONE (A05) was one of only 77 students chosen nationwide to receive a scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Program. The scholarship supports students who “have a strong appreciation for the arts, financial need, strong academic skills, leadership, and a desire to contribute to society.” Erica Naone (A05), Jack Kent Cooke scholarship winner Combining her love for math and science and her talent for writing, Naone is currently enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s graduate program in science writing. x {Letters} Greatness in a Twilight World There is a small error of fact in your obituary for tutor Thomas McDonald [Winter 2006], the correcting of which will allow me to add my own minor tribute to that great tutor. The obituary stated that Mr. McDonald had a sabbatical year in Germany, 1976-77. However, that was the first year I knew him at St. John’s in Santa Fe. He arrived in the fall of 1976 with his wife and his painful ailment, medication for which made it impossible for him to teach in the mornings. Our section of junior French was scheduled to meet twice a week at 2:30 p.m., with the third meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 9 a.m. He told us at our first class that he couldn’t meet so early on Wednesday, and asked if we could find an alternate time agreeable to everyone. When this proved impossible, we got our first glimpse of his characteristic humor: “How about 2 a.m.? I’m not doing anything then!” It was a romp of a French class. A wrong answer would be met by a swift hand reaching under the table to push a buzzer, sending an imaginary electrical current to the erring student. From time to time he would rise, slowly, painfully, to put something on the blackboard. We wondered if he would make it. Passing him on the Placita, we might ask that question seldom meant seriously: “How are you?” His answer once was, “50-50,” as he bent down, turning his hand from side to side, “comme ci, comme ça.” He was smiling. It was in that French class that we memorized poems. Two of them, to be precise. “Mr. Austin,” he began class one day, “tell us about your youth.” Ma jeunesse ne fut qu’un ténébreux orage, I butchered on, vowels, consonants falling dead all around me. While he was serious about the work of language, he also had a light hand with the serious things. I remember the joy of listening to him read to us Borges’ story about the Minotaur. My recollection is that Mr. McDonald did not participate in academic processions, on account of—I was told—his never having completed an academic degree. I asked him about that once, and he said something about obtaining a degree being an impediment to his education. Again, a smile. Some nine members of the class of 1978 were present at our tenth reunion. There we were, at a picnic table, wondering what it was that we had in common. The answer came: we were all in that junior French tutorial with Mr. McDonald. As we began sharing his jokes and mannerisms, we recalled how he bore his burdens lightly and showed us the joy of touching { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } greatness even in a twilight world. —Victor Austin, SF78 Correction: In the article, “Out of Africa: Journalist Lydia Polgreen (A97)” (Spring 2006 issue), Lydia Polgreen’s mother is incorrectly listed as Pamela. Rahel Polgreen is Lydia’s mother; Pamela Polgreen is the second wife of Lydia’s father, John Polgreen (SF71). The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: rosemary.harty@ sjca.edu. �8 {The Tutors} Philosophy, Justice, and War Tutor James Carey Among the Cadets things like that. So even in the core philosophy course there’s been a lot of liberty. The other class I taught was a semester-long course on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, a seminar that I co-led with a colleague in the department. We had eight cadets and we worked our way through the book, reading about 90 to 95 percent of the whole work. I also taught a class called Great Philosophers— we devoted that class to What authors are you Xenophon and Plato. teaching here right now? We just read some dialogues, and that went Well, right now the quite well. And then finally semester’s just begun, so I taught a class on applied maybe I’ll tell you a little bit logic. We spent some time about what I did last on symbolic logic because semester. All of us in the I’m interested in that, but philosophy department we also read a Platonic teach a class called dialogue, the Euthydemus, rather slowly, and we read Philosophy 310. It’s really a a good chunk of Aristotle’s philosophical ethics course. Organon. It’s a nicely designed course, This semester I’m and it meets for 41 sessions teaching the core course in 42 days. One of the again. I’ve also got a 42 days is devoted to a seminar that I’m again formal lecture. We are co-leading. It’s a large one, required to do four sessions about 20 students, and it’s on issues of military on Nietzsche and Dostoprofessionalism—such things evsky. We’ll read a work of as obedience and civilianNietzsche’s, but the better military relations. And then Air Force Academy cadets are not that different from Johnnies, part of our meetings will six of those 41 meetings are Santa Fe tutor James Carey (class of 1967) has discovered as a visiting be on The Brothers devoted to just-war theory, professor at the academy. Karamazov, which is what the conditions for going to we’ve just launched war, what just grounds there ourselves into. might be for engaging in hostilities to begin with, and then how to conduct oneself What are those classes like? Is there a feeling among the cadets according to a certain standard of justice once hostilities have that they need to get something more pragmatic out of each begun. That’s 10 of the classes. For the remaining classes we meeting? Is there an application they’re looking for when they have a number of required meetings on Plato’s Republic, Arisread these authors? totle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Hobbes’ Leviathan, Kant’s Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals, and Mill’s Utilitarianism. What that means—since this is a core class—is that St. John’s is In the Philosophy 310 class we talk a lot about just war. There is, not the only college in the country you can’t graduate from then, at least a component of the class that has an immediate without having read some of Plato’s Republic. Who would have bearing on their work as officers. So it does have practical consequences. What the cadets take from the class varies from guessed that the Air Force Academy was another one! For the remaining classes the instructor has a lot of discretion. individual to individual. Some people really love reading and discussing great books; other people prefer a Powerpoint We’ve read Thomas Aquinas and Machiavelli in my classes, Eddie Kovsky (SF03) spent two years as a staff writer for the base newspaper at the United States Air Force Academy. The summer he began, Santa Fe tutor James Carey (class of 1967) joined the faculty as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Philosophy. In January 2006, Kovsky met with him to discuss his experience teaching at the academy and the role the classics play in preparing cadets to become officers. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �{Tutors} presentation. I will say that the most conspicuous difference between the cadets and the St. John’s students is not ability or even ultimately interest, at least if I think about the ones I’ve had in the seminars, but it’s reading habits [outside of class] . . . St. John’s students tend to be people who love books, really love them, whereas a lot of cadets are not particularly in love with books. Still, I would say that the cadets that I’ve had in my elective courses have been, in terms of their interests, very similar to St. John’s students. I’ve had cadets in my core class who would have done quite well at St. John’s, but I’ve also had cadets in my core class who would not have been very happy at St. John’s. Some of them seem disconcerted by questions that can’t be answered by crunching numbers. Since you just have them for that short period of time, what philosophy do you think is important to get across to them? What, from your background, are you trying to bring to them? 9 the educational process we can’t gauge everything that we do here by asking, “Does that have an application in a combat situation?” In a sense it probably does, because human beings are in combat situations. But if you’re reading a Platonic dialogue on the nature of knowledge or a Shakespeare comedy, it’s not immediately clear that that’s going have a concrete application in Iraq. But it will make you a broader person. If we’re going to have a military academy then both the educational and the training sides of the enterprise have to be distinguished and they both have to be supported. At least some of education—and this is the classical view of a liberal education— is for its own sake, but it has consequences too: a broader human being is a better human being, maybe a better pilot too, but almost certainly a better human being. Now, it looks as though a lot of what’s on the horizon for the military is peace keeping and nation building. That by itself suggests that the development of breadth of mind in military officers has to be a prime concern. And that’s something that a liberal education can help with. The [USAFA] dean wants the academy to become more learning focused, and that seems to me a very important step in the right direction. I think it’s vital that those of us who teach here think deeply about what learning is. That will help us distinguish between training and education, because a person can be well trained without really learning anything. That’s true of a dog too. Learning requires a kind of initiative and engagement on the part of the learner that does not lend itself to metric assessment but is the very center of the learning experience. Well, it depends on the class. Regarding Philosophy 310, the core class, I’d put it like this: I think a lot of discussions of just war, of just grounds for going to war and just ways of conducting yourself in war, presuppose a certain clarity about what justice itself is. But what justice is is not a clear notion. Reading the Republic, the Nicomachean Ethics, and similar classical texts helps provide us with a foundation, with reflection about what justice is, before we go into the particular theme of just war itself. I regard an encounter with the classics as indispensable for getting clarity about a number of concepts that get bandied around rather loosely today. What do we mean by a moral You had said that you wanted to try to law? And what is justice? What do we mean change the relationship between St. John’s by fundamental rights and basic human James Carey (A67) and the military, because there’s not a equality? The great philosophers thought lot of overlap there. Is there anything seriously about such questions, and reading that you’re trying to do here that you their books forces us to think seriously want to bring back to Santa Fe, or the about them as well. Annapolis campus for that matter? How do you try to remedy that, to teach without compromising the sense of duty to their long-term mission, which comes first for I would like to see cadets have an opportunity to participate at the cadets? least in the Summer Classics in Santa Fe. I’ve been very faithfully impressed with the cadets and I really like them. They’re intelligent, they’re capable of wonder, they can get In a sense, the interesting question is “Why do we have military excited over important things. Moreover, the cadets know that academies?” There are other models. One is officer candidate they may have to make sacrifices, that they’re in the military. school, and there are a lot of good officers that come out of OCS What does it mean for a young person, a high school junior, male and ROTC too. And then there’s the British model, as I underor female, to decide to go for a career in the military? That’s also stand it. People get a college degree in whatever they’re doing, a kind of eccentric decision. I would say that the young people classics, chemistry, what have you, and then those who want a who choose to go to St. John’s and the young people who choose military career go to Sandhurst for an exclusively military to go to the military academies have this much in common: graduate education. they’re not marching to the same drummer most young people The Air Force Academy, like the Naval Academy and the march to. x Military Academy, tries to provide both an undergraduate education and a military experience. So one might wonder, “What do you expect to get out of that?” And that’s a very interesting and complicated question. I’ll revert to my earlier formulation that education is first of all about educating human beings. If we’re going to be involved in “. . .a broader human being is a better human being, maybe a better pilot too. . .” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �10 {Commencement} CELEBRATING COMMUNITY Commencement 2006 udith Seeger, completing her term as assistant dean of the Annapolis campus, and outgoing Santa Fe Dean David Levine (A67), were chosen by the seniors on their campuses to deliver the commencement addresses in May. Seeger and Levine each celebrated the St. John’s College community, both as a tangible collection of rituals and rules that allow a group of individuals to live together and as an abstract circle of the authors who help shape the college’s model of liberal education. At the commencement ceremony in Annapolis on May 15, 100 Annapolis seniors and 34 Graduate Institute students received their degrees. Seeger opened her speech by describing her experiences among indigenous groups in Brazil. To conduct research for her doctoral dissertation, Seeger spent months at a coastal fishing village recording ballads and stories passed orally for generations, experiences that shaped her ideas about community: “In the jungle I learned how to live in peace and companionship with people whose way of life was very different from mine.” In her speech she shared “the four cardinal rules by which we aspire to live together at this joe picard J college: responsibility, civility, honesty, and citizenship.” Seeger concluded by celebrating the graduates’ passage to a new community. “Soon you will make that momentous walk across the platform and with that walk this community in the form it has existed for you during the past few years will disband and you will pass into another community—that of graduates. . .So we should celebrate our last precious moments in this particular community with a song.” She sang a traditional ballad, “The Water is Wide,” chosen to emphasize how one can help another overcome difficulty to reach a goal. On May 21, 83 undergraduates and 33 master’s degree candidates received their diplomas in Santa Fe. Levine considered the question: Who is the class of 2006? “One can’t ever answer that question fully,” Levine said. “We might, however, make a beginning and say something about who you are, or rather who you have become over the past years of growth at the college under the transformative magic of the Program. We say { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } Above: among the 33 GI graduates in Santa Fe last May were (l. to r.) Jacquelyn Poplawski, Samantha Johnson, and Laura Leigh Birdwell. Opposite (clockwise, from top right): David Levine, shown with wife, Jacqueline, told graduates their work is far from over; Santa Fe President Michael Peters in the recessional; Annapolis graduates Cameron Healy (l.) and Aaron Brager look to the future; Judith Seeger serenaded Annapolis graduates. �{Commencement} The commencement speeches are available on the college’s Web site, www.stjohnscollege.edu. joe picard thought that threatened to undermine this very potential. He saw an isolating individualism at work where ‘the bonds that unite generations are relaxed or broken, and that put society at risk of losing its centering customs . . .’ ” Graduates leave the college with two gifts, but their work is far from over, he concluded: “You have seen greatness. You have known community. However, a gift is only as beneficial as our capacity to use it well. Your education is thus not over. And so, in the spirit of commencement, that is beginnings, we ask you today to pledge yourselves anew to the unfinished work that these authors so nobly began.” x joe picard alex lorman alex lorman years of growth, because this college is a place where one grows.” He elegantly traced some of the ways several authors in the Program shape students’ experiences at the college. “Throughout our tradition, from Plato through Nietzsche, it was generally recognized that education—the manner in which one learns and not just the content of what one learns—in shaping your mind, also shapes your person, your character, indeed your community.” Among the authors he cited, Levine described Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on community and the individual: “In America he found people with a wondrous capacity for community and working together and yet an intellectual inheritance of Cartesian egocentricism and abstraction of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } 11 �12 {Capital Campaign} “WITH A CLEAR AND SINGLE PURPOSE” The Campaign for St. John’s College Plans for Student Needs by Rosemary Harty onsider what financial aid means to students, their desire for the Program, and their hopes to do vital and satisfying work after earning their degree. Andrew Hsui (A02), pursuing a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Princeton University, says St. John’s would have been out of his reach without “a very generous financial aid package.” Drawn to the college by the books, the Program, and the community, Hsui was determined to attend St. John’s, even though his parents were anxious about the cost. C Now finished with his graduate coursework and ready to tackle his dissertation (perhaps Dante, perhaps Spencer), Hsui is more grateful than ever to have attended the college. “At St. John’s you gain this sort of intellectual courage to tackle different texts no matter whether it’s Sophocles’ Antigone or Hegel’s Phenomenology,” he says. “The fundamental questions we pursue in graduate school are the same problems that occur in freshman seminar.” As is the case with more than half of the students who attend St. John’s, Hsui received a St. John’s grant for each of the four years he attended. Thanks to a federal work-study award, he earned money working on campus. He entered graduate school with manageable debt. “Could I have attended St. John’s without financial aid? Absolutely not,” Hsui said. Building the college’s $100 million endowment to meet the financial aid needs of future Johnnies is one of the top priorities of “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. Of the $125 million campaign goal, $46.5 million has been earmarked for building the endowment, with $33 million designated to ensure a robust financial aid program. In addition, the college seeks to raise $29 million in Annual Fund contributions through 2012 to help support more immediate financial aid needs. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �13 {Capital Campaign} A few central facts help to frame a discussion on the college’s approach to financial aid: • The college remains committed to a needbased financial aid policy that ensures that qualified students can attend the college regardless of their family’s economic resources. • During the 2005-06 academic year, 63 percent of students on the Santa Fe campus received aid directly from the college; in Annapolis, 53 percent of students were aid recipients. College-wide, St. John’s provided $9.4 million in institutional aid funded by tuition revenue, Annual Fund gifts, grants, and draw from endowment. • Meeting the gap between what families can afford and the cost of tuition will become increasingly more expensive for the college. • The college’s endowment is not sufficient to meet the anticipated need for financial aid in the coming decade. The college’s capital campaign seeks to address priorities that will sustain the Program and strengthen the college. Funding these priorities will require $125 million. FINANCIAL AID: $33 million for need-based aid. FACULTY AND ACADEMIC SUPPORT: $34 million to increase faculty salaries to the median of peer institutions; provide faculty development opportunities; develop program-related student instructional material The college’s strategic plan, which shaped the goals of the campaign, takes into account that the college will be spending more to meet the demand for financial aid in the next few years. “The American economy is not giving back to the poor and those in middle-income families, where the need is growing the fastest,” says Christopher B. Nelson (SF70), president of the Annapolis campus. “So far, we’ve been able to keep pace with our institutional aid. But the situation is not going to improve.” If the college enrolled only those students who could afford to attend, “we’d be a college of 200 students,” he says. The first question that parents, alumni, and supporters of the college want answered in a serious discussion of financial aid, Nelson acknowledges, is why the college is getting more expensive. He points out that the college’s annual tuition increases of about continued on p. 15 (manuals and workbooks); and ensure small class sizes and 1:8 tutor-to-student ratio. STUDENT SERVICES: $3.5 million to improve services to students, fund internship opportunities, and provide grants so that elementary and secondary teachers can attend the Graduate Institute. ST. JOHN’S IMPROVEMENT FUND: $5 million for library collections and laboratory equipment; improving Information Technology infrastructure; { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } staff professional development and compensation. BUILDING PROJECTS ON THE TWO CAMPUSES: $49.5 million for building projects, including a Santa Fe dormitory, a Graduate Institute center in Santa Fe funded, and the addition to and renovation of Evans Science Laboratory. The renovation of Mellon Hall and the addition of two new dormitories in Annapolis are completed and fully funded. �14 {Capital Campaign} GI Educator’s Grant: Bringing the Program to the Classroom teachers can benefit our polarized nation by teaching kids how to Annika McKinney is pursuing a Ph.D. in education at the talk to one another about important issues.” University of Maryland. Her dissertation research explores how Also, because they’re devoted to education, GI teachers make reading original texts and discussing them—similar to the Junior excellent students. “They know how to take responsibility for a Great Books program she encountered as a teacher—could be class as well as their own learning,” Venkatesh says. Many become applied to arts education. good recruiters of prospective students. “I thought I might interview some tutors and research the However, it was evident early on that the GI was losing teachers St. John’s approach a bit,” she says. “I wrote away for some because they often did not have the resources for tuition. information, and the Graduate Institute sent me a DVD and a “Teachers are usually the poorest of our students and always need catalogue. Then I decided that I had to do the program for financial assistance to be able to do this. For them, doing either of myself.” our MA programs is a serious commitment, and this is even more McKinney persuaded her doctoral advisers at the University of Maryland to approve independent credit for her work at St. John’s. true of those teachers who have to relocate families and homes to “I’m loving it,” McKinney says. “I know about Aristotle and Plato, come to distant Santa Fe,” he says. Classroom teachers aren’t the only educators benefiting from but I’ve never been able to read these texts, not in this way.” the grant program: Jennifer Kinkaid, a student in the Santa Fe In a summer course she presented to graduate students and Graduate Institute, is a college counselor at Loomis Chaffee aspiring teachers at the university, McKinney demonstrated a School in Windsor, Conn., who has been devoting her summers to St. John’s approach to reading A Raisin in the Sun with secondary the GI. In addition to the ideas she gains from the books, she has students. Her professor was so impressed with the quality of the also honed a valuable skill. discussion, he asked her to share the lesson plan with a language “I think listening has been one of the most important skills arts class in the fall. “I told my advisers that what takes place at I’ve developed through the GI seminars. Not only are we learning St. John’s is something all teachers should experience. to clarify our own ideas, but we learn to listen carefully, ask The Program can benefit every teacher, no matter what subject questions, and help others clarify their thoughts,” she says. he or she teaches,” McKinney says. Christopher Kaufmann, a public school teacher in Loudon Teachers like McKinney—innovators in the classroom who have County, Va., left his full-time position and signed on as a a strong desire to enrich their own intellectual lives—represent substitute in order to enroll full-time in the Graduate Institute the principle behind the National Educator’s Grants, offered by and complete the program in two years. The the Graduate Institute in Annapolis and grant relieved a bit of the economic hardship Santa Fe. The college offers a grant of oneinvolved in quitting his job. third tuition to teachers and administrators “I can see how much this will help in the interested in pursuing a Master of Arts in classroom,” he says. “I can better formulate Liberal Arts. Providing funding for the good questions for discussion. I can better educators’ grants by establishing an encourage students to develop their own endowment is one of the goals of the campaign. opinions on something they read and feel Teachers were among the first students in comfortable sharing their ideas with others.” the GI when it was established in Santa Fe in Vashti Pearson (AGI06) completed two 1967 (Annapolis followed a decade later), and segments over summer breaks from her job the college still believes that teachers can Annika McKinney in Birmingham, Ala. “I came benefit greatly from a to St. John’s frustrated and program that nurtures exhausted from the classcritical thinking, careful room. I hadn’t read a book reading, and discussion outside my prep for class the skills—on top of all the matewhole year. Coming here was rial covered in the classroom. like summer camp—I went “By educating teachers, we back refreshed and excited,” are trying to affect national she says. x education by supporting the notion of educating the whole human being, instead Annika McKinney (l.), a of just teaching for tests,” current GI student also says Krishnan Venkatesh, working on a doctorate in director of the GI in Santa education, and Vashti Fe. “Moreover, in learning Pearson (AGI06), brought from us how to make real new ideas and approaches conversations about big from their graduate studies back to the classroom. questions happen, our victoria smith “The Program can benefit every teacher, no matter what subject he or she teaches.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �{Capital Campaign} 15 For the Students “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John's College seeks to raise $36.5 million for priorities relating to students and student life on both campuses: And without institutional grants, lowincome students could not consider a 5.5 to 6 percent have been in line with those college such as St. John’s. The federal • $33 million in endowment and Annual of other private, independent colleges in maximum Pell Grant award is $4,050; Fund for need-based financial aid, to the U.S. some students also qualify for a Suppleensure access for all students If tuition rises at rates higher than mental Educational Opportunity Grant admitted to the college. annual inflation, it is largely because a (SEOG), but the college matches 25 college such as St. John’s can’t take advan• $3.5 million in endowment and Annual percent of the SEOG awards. “The buying tage of the standard business cost-cutting Fund to improve services to students, power of a federal grant is much less,” measures, such as automation. “Education fund internship opportunities, and Rodriguez says. is expensive because it requires the sharing provide grants for teachers to attend After 21 years at the college, Rodriguez of the life of one well-educated human the Graduate Institute. is still impressed by the sacrifices made by being with another, a devotion of time that parents who want to see their children cannot be compromised without being attend St. John’s. “They do what they have cheapened,” he says. to because they recognize that this is the school for their child, that Nelson also emphasizes that no student pays the true cost of a this is where he or she will flourish,” he says. St. John’s education. This year, tuition is $34,306; without Paula Abernethy, financial aid director in Annapolis, has the college’s subsidy, it would be $44,555. “Alumni who attended observed that the college’s need-based financial aid is viewed as fair the college during my era may not view it this way, but the educaand equitable by most families, but the college does tion at St. John’s College is a veritable bargain,” he says. “It costs occasionally lose a student to another college because St. John’s substantially more to educate our students than what we’re makes awards based strictly on need, not merit. “Sometimes charging in tuition.” parents will come in with a package from another college, and say, And unless they have college-age children, alumni may not be ‘can you match it?’ All we can do is offer the best package, and then aware of how the changes in federal financial aid programs are students and their families have to make a decision,” she says. affecting lower- and middle-income families who want to send a More than half of St. John’s students receive grant aid, and son or daughter to St. John’s. Programs such as Pell Grants and barring a change in financial circumstances, each student can Supplementary Educational Opportunity Grants, made available to count on that assistance to remain consistent through their four the neediest students, would not come close to meeting the cost of years at St. John’s, Abernethy explains. “We have a strong tuition at any private liberal arts college. Funding for federal grant institutional commitment to aid,” she says. “If you look at that ratio programs has not increased in the past four years, and most student in other schools, we’re actually quite high. We really do care about loan programs now have higher interest rates. the students and we want to give them the best aid package we can.” At St. John’s, financial aid is guided by policies and principles The St. John’s grants are paid for by tuition, draw from endowrevisited often by the collegewide Management Committee and ment, and gifts to the college’s Annual Fund; federal grant aid administered on an individualized basis on each campus. Policy is is only a small part of the overall budget. Of the $19.2 million reviewed annually by financial aid committees composed of the packaged in undergraduate financial aid awards last year, less than president, dean, treasurer, assistant dean, financial aid director, $900,000 in grant aid came from federal programs. In addition, and admissions director. The committees meet before each fall the college gets $287,000 in federal aid for work-study, allowing recruitment season to assess the previous year’s results, anticipate a limited number of students to earn $2,800 a year from ondifficulties in the upcoming year, and adjust policy in light of the campus jobs. budget. Federally subsidized loans, PLUS loans for parents, and increasThe financial aid directors carry out policy and approach each ingly, private loans help students meet tuition and expenses, but prospective application with the goal of putting the best package interest rates are on the rise for these programs, and small private together to meet an individual family’s needs. In Santa Fe, about loans are now turning up in some financial aid packages. “We don’t 65 to 70 percent of students demonstrate some form of need, says have enough of the favorable loan money to cover our needs so we Michael Rodriguez, director of financial aid for the campus. “It’s a have begun to include a private loan in the aid package,” says Aberlarge portion of our population, but the financial aid program nethy. provides the opportunity for us to attract and matriculate students When he first joined the college in 1985, Rodriguez said from a wide economic spectrum. Without that diversity, we’d be a student loans usually topped out at $10,000 over four years. The very different college,” he says. average debt for the Santa Fe class of 2005 is $21,700— continued { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �16 {Capital Campaign} “We really do care about the students and we want to give them the best aid package we can.” Paula Abernethy, Annapolis financial aid director far less than the cost of one year’s tuition, but a burden he’d like to see fewer students saddled with. “It’s worrisome, particularly when so many of our students go on to graduate programs,” he says. At least once a year, Rodriguez has revisited a financial aid award to help a struggling student. “When there are extenuating circumstances, we go back to the financial aid committee to see what can be done,” he says. “But we’re always up front with the students that we’re hampered by limited dollars.” Another concern, along with loan debt, is the knowledge that some students are working at several jobs to help pay their expenses. Abernethy knows that a few students are working a campus job and nights or weekends at retail or restaurant jobs; some work 20 hours a week. “The Program isn’t meant for that, and these students are struggling,” she says. “Sometimes they come in, and we try to help them in some way.” Thanks to the Caritas Society, a group of Annapolis-area residents who raise money to help students with unexpected financial needs, Abernethy has a rainy-day fund to offer students at critical moments: she can give students up to $3,000 a year to help in emergencies. Each year, several students receive Caritas book grants of $400; several endowment funds also generate money to help students purchase books. At the financial aid conferences she attends, Abernethy hears the prevailing concern that middle-income families are those who struggle the most in this new financial aid climate. This year, she worked extensively with several families to make sure their dream of sending a child to St. John’s could happen. “It’s really nice when you go to Convocation, and you see those kids up on the stage,” she says. This May, Rodriguez will have the pleasure of seeing one of his award recipients graduate after an unusually long pursuit of a bachelor’s degree. Nick Cabbiness, in his 40s and an independent student, never found a program that suited him—until he heard of St. John’s. “I tried college a few other times, and I would { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �17 {Capital Campaign} end up triple-majoring, because I always had a desire to know many different things,” he says. While he has worked in several campus jobs his first three years, served as a resident assistant, and contributed what he could from savings, Cabbiness was most grateful for the grant aid he received from the college. After graduation, he plans to pursue a teaching career. From time to time over the years, he’s struggled greatly with the demands of the Program, but he didn’t have to worry about paying tuition. “I’m so thankful to the college in many ways, but I’m most grateful to have the freedom to pursue work that I want to do, and not just for monetary reasons,” he says. x Internships Offer Johnnies Experience and Insight influenced his approach in the classroom. “Inquiry is important in every situation,” he says. When Coker-Dukowitz applied for his internship, he wasn’t certain that education was the field he wanted to pursue. His internship solidified his ambition, honed his talents, and presented him with a specific direction. Catherine Pisha (A06) had a similar experience during her internship at the Women’s Rape Crisis Center in Burlington, Vt., made possible by a grant from The Hodson Trust Internship Program. She entered the summer with vague ideas about what she wanted to do, but not how to do it. “For a long time I have known that I enjoy work involving close interpersonal contact and emotional healing through conversation, but I have not had a clear idea as to how that might translate into a job,” she wrote in her post-internship report. By the end of the summer, she says, her career goals were “strengthened and honed. . .Being an intern at the Womens’ Rape Crisis Center allowed me to see that there is a wider range of jobs that might meet these needs and interests of mine than I had previously thought.” Not only did her experience at the WRCC give her confidence about pursuing this field, it also prepared her for similar employment. She now works for the Winooski Family Center, a nonprofit which provides various services to low-income families. For Pisha, the internship was more than a financial grant. It provided the clarity she needed to pursue a meaningful path after graduation. x teri nolan Somewhere in the midst of junior and senior years, students turn their thoughts to life outside of St. John’s. The transition can be daunting, especially to those students who don’t have a clear grasp on a career path. To assist students as they consider various careers, Annapolis has the Hodson Internship and Santa Fe the Ariel Internship. Funded on a temporary basis, the Ariel program awarded its first internship in 2005. To date $75,600 has been distributed, including six awards for fine arts internships funded by the Thaw Charitable Trust. Last year 38 applications were submitted and 15 stipends (ranging from $1,800 to $3,600) were granted. This summer the campus expects to fund 18 internships, awarded competitively to students who present a clear plan for where they want to work and what they hope to discover through the experience. A campaign goal is to establish an endowment that will provide permanent funding for the Ariel Internships. The Hodson Internship Program was established in 2000, with a generous endowment from The Hodson Trust. Each year, the program funds up to 25 internships with stipends of up to $3600 each. Zacc Coker-Dukowitz (SF05) received an Ariel Internship the summer after his senior year. His experience at an educational organization served as a catalyst for his first professional job, as assistant director of Breakthrough Santa Fe at Santa Fe Prep. Coker-Dukowitz’s Ariel stipend allowed him to work as an intern at the Breakthrough Collaborative, based in San Francisco, and dedicated to helping underprivileged kids gain a better chance at higher education. Coker-Dukowitz taught English classes to seventh- and eighth-graders, and his St. John’s experience { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } An Ariel Internship set Zacc Coker-Dukowitz (SF05) on the path to a job with Breakthrough Santa Fe, an educational organization. �18 {Jane Austen} JANE’S HEROINES Elizabeth’s Comeuppance ometimes they are hampered by pride or foolishness. In other novels, their lack of social status or fortune creates the drama. But the heroines of Jane Austen’s novels are always memorable: for their foibles, their dignity, their intelligence, their quick wit, and their sheer persistence. In these short essays, St. John’s alumni, students, and tutors celebrate the women of Jane Austen’s world. S By Roberta Gable (A78) Tiresome Elizabeth Bennet. How nice for her that she gets the happily-ever-after treatment. To recap the familiar plot of Pride and Prejudice: Mr. Bennet (he used to be disgusted, now he’s just amused) and Mrs. Bennet (more fatuous than which shall not be conceived, if you’re not counting the Collins branch of the family) have five daughters: Jane (the saint), Elizabeth (the smarty-pants), Mary (the book-reading twerp), Lydia (the trollop-in-training) and Kitty (the trollop-in-training’s trollop-in-waiting). Jane and Elizabeth, the two eldest, usurped all virtues available to the five girls, with the exceptions, perhaps, of seriousness (Mary) and malleability (Kitty). Virtuous or no, they all must marry, and in fact there are five offers tendered during the Opposite: Witty Elizabeth Bennett brightens the pages of PRIDE Knightly in the 2006 film.) AND PREJUDICE. (Keira { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �20 {Austen} Love triumphs. Money soothes all concern for the morrow. course of the action, but again, not doled out evenly: Lydia gets one, of the shotgun variety; Jane gets one, from the oh-sodesirable Mr. Bingley; and Elizabeth gets three, one from her ridiculous cousin Mr. Collins, and two from the detestable Mr. Darcy, the second of which she accepts, and we’re made to feel glad for her, because it turns out that Mr. Darcy is not so detestable after all. And most of the time we forget to dislike Elizabeth, too. She’s witty, she’s a fun read, and her behavior is regulated by genuine feeling, not conventional manners. Hurrah for our side, we think—the snooty rich women (Miss Bingley, Mrs. Hurst, and the tyrannical Lady Catherine de Bourgh) get what’s coming to them, at least in some small degree, and our Elizabeth, heroine, not of the working class, but of the genteel aspirers, is rewarded with the hand of a good-looking rich guy. (So is Jane, for that matter, but she’s insufficiently dimensional for us really to care about her.) The main obstacles to the Elizabeth/Darcy match—his horror of marrying beneath himself, her profound disgust for him—are gradually surmounted, and happiness abounds. Love triumphs. Money soothes all concern for the morrow. She who prides herself, however, on her independent mind, her ability to discern character, and her subtlety (especially in comparison with Ma and Pa) must first dine on crow. For the first 200 pages or so she judges, she gossips, she caricatures, she deplores, she assumes, she exults in her superiority, and she trusts Wickham, the one true rascal in the story. Then she must repent having been an ass. She who always has something to say is made to shut up and listen: two letters, the first from Darcy, defending himself, and the second from her aunt, revealing Darcy’s virtually superhuman goodness, effect the necessary comeuppance. “Oh! how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him.” While her self-flagellation is only verbal, words are what drive reality in this comedy of character. Everyone is who people say he is, until they start saying something different, and then he’s that; what happens hasn’t much happened until it is discussed. Finally Elizabeth finds she must re-create not only others but herself in words, no mean feat for a woman rightly accused of sometimes saying things precisely because she doesn’t mean them. Lest we too become twerpy in our book-reading, and moralize like dear sister Mary, let’s be easy on Miss Elizabeth, with her lovely feet of clay. She herself gets over it, and lets the happy ending befall her. Roberta Gable is associate director of Admissions in Annapolis. Fanny Reconsidered by Rhonda Ortiz (A05) To my teenage self on first reading Mansfield Park: My dear Miss F——, Thank you for your last. Yes, I do remember receiving the St. John’s College pamphlet: small, brown, with all those obscure authors listed ceremoniously on the cover. I’m not surprised that you noticed Jane Austen’s name. Pride and Prejudice was the first work of literature that captivated you both as an amusing story and intellectual food for thought. This singular delight in Austen was one of the primary reasons you decided to attend St. John’s College. But right now you say you’re bewildered by Mansfield Park. How, you ask, could Austen, who created the brilliant, charming Elizabeth Bennet, also pen this repressed, uninspiring, prudish Fanny Price, and call her a heroine? Where is her wit? Why is she so timid, so nervous? Why has Austen left the brilliant repartee, the intrigue, even all the action, to the other characters? And what’s all the moral fuss about? I know that you are bound and determined to like everything Austen has written, and, don’t worry, you will. Mansfield Park and Fanny Price will surprise you yet. It will probably take you multiple readings and, perhaps, a large essay to realize that Fanny Price is more than likable. The problem now is your disposition. In life and novels you prefer confident, agreeable, humorous, open characters. But like many 16-year-olds, you are willing but unpracticed in slowing down to notice—really notice—other people. It is easy to appreciate Elizabeth Bennet’s brilliance, but patience and sympathy are required to see through Fanny’s awkwardness to her subtle beauty. At nine, Fanny is sent by her struggling Portsmouth family to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt. Shy, awkward, overlooked, and homesick, Fanny is miserable at Mansfield Park until her cousin, Edmund, notices her unhappiness and befriends her. Edmund discovers Fanny “to be clever, to have a quick apprehension as well as good sense, and a fondness for { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �{Austen} reading.” He attempts to bring Fanny “forward” but is thwarted by the behavior of the rest of the family, who, unwittingly or not, in their turn treat her as a sponger, a personal servant, a child to tease, a dimwit, or simply someone to ignore. Not the kindest family. Furthermore, Fanny is hopelessly eclipsed by her cousins, quintessential small-town beauties, and, later in the narrative, by the cosmopolitan Mary Crawford. Given her life at Mansfield Park, it is easy to understand Fanny’s awkwardness. Her sensitive nature feels suffering acutely, and, habituated to lowliness, she becomes easily flustered by attention or praise. Edmund, sensitive to Fanny’s situation, sees past her awkwardness to her good qualities. You should try to do the same. It will give you a way into her character. As to Fanny’s being so morally fussy, well, this is purposeful. Fanny’s character is meant to push some buttons. The story of Mansfield Park is driven primarily by the tension caused between traditional, Christian morality and skeptical, 21 Patience and sympathy reveal the true heroism of MANSFIELD PARK’s Fanny Price. (Frances O’Connor as Fanny in the 1999 film.) modern, metropolitan mores. Consequently, the story gives rise to the same tension already in the soul of most modern Western readers, including you. Mary Crawford, the story’s antagonist, stands for the pragmatic and cynical modern woman who regards society, marriage, tradition, and the church with an unbelieving eye. Fanny, on the other hand, can see the moral good at stake in both small events (like the gift of a necklace) and large ones (like marriage proposals). Mary is immediately attractive and Fanny is not, yet it is Fanny who Austen wants us to admire. Remember that Edmund observes in Fanny an intuitive, intelligent mind, and a great amount of ‘sense.’ With Edmund’s encouragement, Fanny grows to be not only sensitive and moral but also poetic and philosophic. “If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the continued on p. 23 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �22 {Austen} Anne’s Second Chance by Eva Brann (HA57) Anne Elliot would seem to be the heroine of Persuasion, Jane Austen’s last complete novel. Persuasion is my favorite of the six— that is to say in between the others, since whichever I’m actually reading is my favorite at the time. I love Persuasion best, but I’m not so sure I love its heroine most. There’s a sure-fire test for such preferences: Imagine by whom you’d like to be asked to tea. That would be, for me, Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice or Emma Woodhouse of Emma, the former because of the delightfully sparkling way she crosses wickedness with propriety, the latter, because this young person, in her delicious self-confidence, gets everything so cleverly wrong. Anne of Persuasion, on the other hand, has had her spirits damped by disappointment and her demeanor shaped by too often having “scolded back her senses.” She is kind, competent, and useful—universal usefulness being the spinster’s default position— and her nature has been more molded by self-control than by selfexpression. I think she could not help depressing even a sympathetic guest from a later century by her air of grief bravely and silently borne—at least when we first meet her. “When we first meet her:” The year is the summer of 1814; just about the time Jane Austen must have been writing Persuasion. We are told on the first page that Anne was born on August 9, 1787. So she is 27 when the story begins, the oldest by at least seven years of all the heroines and the only one who lives in real time, alongside Jane Austen. Moreover she has a past fitted into real history. In the summer of 1806, just 200 years before my writing this little piece, a young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, had come into the neighborhood as a result of his promotion after “the action off San Domingo.” Anne had been “an extremely pretty girl,” with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling. “She had hardly anybody to love,” for she is afflicted with a pretty awful father and two very unlovable sisters, and her mother had died in 1800 (or 1801). So she falls “rapidly and deeply in love.” No other heroine does that; they take their time, and it isn’t clear that they “fall in love” at all. I think I can prove, and will one day, that Elizabeth, who surely loves Darcy, is not at all in love with him, though he, the proud and inhibited owner of a fine estate, is the most attractive of that gallery, mostly of young clergymen stiff with propriety and rectitude while waffling as lovers, with whom Jane Austen’s girls elect to make their happiness. “A short period of exquisite happiness follows,” but then Anne sends him away, persuaded by the opposition of the well-intentioned but essentially obtuse Lady Russell who had taken a mother’s place in Anne’s esteem. “Lady Russell had little taste for wit,” while Captain Wentworth was brilliant, headstrong, and—“had no fortune.” Lady Russell’s persuasion “was more than gentle Anne could combat,” for it dwelt on duty. Now he is back in Somersetshire, rich with prize money and rising in his profession. We are sure he’ll be an admiral, as two of Jane Austen’s brothers were to be. This Frederick Wentworth is the only active fighting man, the only suitor in the six novels, who is both spirited and reliably a gentleman; usually the brilliant ones, like Henry Crawford of Mansfield Park, are sadly corruptible. What makes Anne attractive is partly that she can love and be loved by such a man. But there has been a hiatus of eight years, of pique, anger, and successful action for him, of confused, patient, lonely grief for her. Her inconsiderate sister repeats to her that Captain Wentworth, who has himself lost none of his attractiveness, had observed her to be “so altered he should not have known her again.” So begins her second ordeal, in which Wentworth is kept from approaching her, at first by the misconstruals of disappointed pride and eventually by jealousy, as Anne is courted by the heir to the family estate. So too, Anne’s shrinking spirit prevents her from bringing about any mutual clarification until the very end. Of course, were she bolder, she wouldn’t be Anne Elliot, and Persuasion wouldn’t be a fulllength novel, the slow unraveling of the adversities that have kept them apart. But finally all the grief is dissolved and perfect felicity ensues: “It was but a card-party, it was but a mixture of those who had never met before, and those who met too often.” The two having that afternoon declared themselves to each other but not yet to the world, Anne moves through that evening of bliss: “some moments of communication continually occurring, and always the hope of more, and always the knowledge of his being there.” It is, as far as my reading goes, the most perfectly captured moment of the inward bliss of yet unpublished love in literature. There is a coda to this tale which throws light on what Jane Austen meant by it. Her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, reports in A Memoir of Jane Austen that perhaps because of ill-health (she was to die on July 18, 1817, exactly a year from the night he tells of) “she retired to rest in very low spirits.” She thought the chapter of resolution tame and flat. “But such depression was little within her nature,” and the next day, revived in spirits, she canceled the offending chapter and wrote two new ones. If you read both the canceled and the substituted climactic chapters you might at first find them equally lovable in different ways, but then it dawns on you. The new chapter recounts a confidential conversation between Anne and one of Wentworth’s fellow officers which is accidentally overheard by him, and this conversation reveals the deep theme of the novel: women’s and men’s constancy in love, differently constituted, but equally strong in both. For Wentworth, Anne’s gentle insistence on women’s faithfulness is the signal he needs to declare himself. Everyone agrees that Persuasion is somehow deeper and darker than the earlier five. “Darker” doesn’t seem quite right to me— “more feeling-fraught” is better. But this feeling isn’t Anne’s or Frederick’s feeling only; it is—again “somehow”—Jane Austen’s. Not that Persuasion is autobiographical; there is no evidence at all that she nourished an undying love for anyone, and gentleness hardly describes the loving malice of her temper. Nonetheless, she is, somehow, ever-present in Persuasion, her spirit is more palpable in this than in any other of the perfect six, and on second thought, it’s her presence for which I love that book; she’s its heroine. Eva Brann will begin her 50th year at St. John’s next fall. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �{Austen} continued from p. 21 With Edmund’s encouragement, Fanny grows to be not only sensitive and moral but also poetic and philosophic. rest, I do think it is memory,” she exclaims, inspired during a daily walk. “There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any of our intelligences. . . .We are to be sure a miracle every way.” Fanny, among many things, thinks about thinking. She is attentive to the wonders both in nature and in herself. The point is, be sensitive to Fanny. I don’t think Austen intends for us to immediately like her. If she did she wouldn’t have penned as delectable an antagonist as Mary Crawford. Mansfield Park is called her most philosophic novel; perhaps Austen wants to engage us in a philosophic challenge—to learn to see Fanny, and then see what Fanny sees. See what happens if you reconsider Fanny. I remain yours, etc. etc. R.O. Rhonda (Franklin) Ortiz wrote her senior essay on Mansfield Park; she teaches elementary school in Washington, D.C. Emma, Enlightened by Namara Smith (SF07) The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. —Emma Emma Woodhouse’s “disposition to think a little too well of herself” does not manifest itself in the obvious way, through pride in her beauty. Emma’s delighted initiation of her fickle “projects,” both her artistic endeavors and her matchmaking, reveals that her vanity is satisfied by gazing, not at her physical reflection, but at a world that reflects her wishes. Because her actions are unchecked by her father and her governess, she has almost no outside judgment to make her doubt her own perfection; the only criticism she receives is from Mr. Knightley, “one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them.” Mr. Knightley’s moderate rebukes alone are not enough to make Emma see the dangers of her position. Emma’s vanity in her mental image of herself, not her physical image, shows her partially correct self- 23 awareness. Emma is not stubbornly or perversely defying her reason and experience—she is, in fact, uncommonly clever. This half-truth, without the balance of sufficient candor from others is, in part, why she remains unaware of the danger she faces. Perhaps the most disturbing character to Emma is the new bride of Mr. Elton, a woman who is vain, meddlesome, socially manipulative and ridiculous. From the first mention of Augusta Hawkins, some connection between Emma and the future Mrs. Elton is implied. Mr. Elton proposes to Emma, is refused, runs off to Bath, and almost immediately proposes to Miss Hawkins. To Mr. Elton, at least, Emma and Mrs. Elton both possess the qualities that he seeks in a wife: money and social class. Mr. Elton’s airy assumption of their relative equality is Emma’s first worrisome indication that the world does not necessarily share her own rose-colored vision of herself. As a result, Emma feels she must, on some level, criticize his new bride and distinguish herself from her in order to correct his lack of judgment. As readers, we realize that her character and dialogue has been deliberately constructed to echo Emma’s earlier manners. Mrs. Elton’s unblushing assertion that “blessed with so many resources within [herself], the world was not necessary. . .” parodies Emma’s statement: “If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind with a great many independent resources.” Emma’s reaction to Mrs. Elton is the catalyst that forces Emma from her passive self-satisfaction into actively defining her position in the world. When the new Mrs. Elton makes her first appearance in Highbury, Emma almost instantly recognizes in Mrs. Elton the same “evils” that are ascribed to her at the beginning of the novel: “[a] quarter of an hour quite convinced her that Mrs. Elton was a vain woman, extremely well satisfied with herself, and thinking much of her own importance. . .she meant to shine and be very superior . . .Miss Hawkins, it might be fairly supposed, from her easy conceit, had been the best of her own set.” Emma can see the source of Mrs. Elton’s shortcomings although she is blind to the dangers of her own vanity, and she perceives that Mrs. Elton’s “easy conceit” comes from her limited experience of the world. Mrs. Elton uses her social status as the foundation for her extravagant claims to aesthetic taste. The most noticeable { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �24 {Austen} Emma is not stubbornly or perversely defying her reason and experience—she is, in fact, uncommonly clever. example of her role as a self-appointed aesthetic judge is her treatment of Jane Fairfax. When Mrs. Elton thrusts herself into the role of Jane Fairfax’s custodian, she presents herself as the only person with the sensibility to recognize and cultivate Jane’s talents in the aesthetic wasteland of Highbury. Speaking to Emma of her resolution to “bring Jane forward,” Mrs. Elton quotes a poetic couplet: “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air.” In terms of Jane Fairfax, this attitude is patently false. From Jane’s first appearance, everyone acknowledges her artistic accomplishment and skill. Mrs. Elton uses her association with Jane to enhance her own appearance of aesthetic superiority. These incidents seem insignificant, but they foreshadow Mrs. Elton’s most contemptible action towards Jane—her constant pressure to trap her into the inferior position of a governess. Mrs. Elton’s actions toward Jane show no real appreciation or respect of her artistic excellence. She uses Jane to further her own social status, while attempting to limit Jane from having real social power. Mrs. Elton’s treatment of Jane Fairfax highlights the hypocrisy of Emma’s mentoring of Harriet Smith. Emma does not cultivate Harriet as a social lever, however, but more as a kind of game or project, an example of Emma’s playful disposition leading her astray. Although Emma’s intentions are different from Mrs. Elton’s, the effect is the same. They both harm and improperly influence Harriet and Jane. Emma’s social neglect of Jane is just as damning as her careless influence over Harriet. Jane is left with no arena to develop her talents, no peers, no one to really appreciate her socially. In part, this neglect leaves her vulnerable to Frank’s illicit offer of a secret engagement. Mrs. Elton’s actions lead Emma to realize and regret how she has mistreated Harriet and neglected Jane. Emma’s first interactions with Mrs. Elton represent an important turning point in her character. For the first time, her social position and its related aesthetic values are not enough to distinguish her from someone she feels is her inferior. Emma’s new awareness of the deficiency of social forms is revealed in a disturbing incident right after her first interview with Mrs. Elton—Emma’s only argument with her father. Superficially, this disagreement is about whether Mr. Woodhouse needs to visit Mrs. Elton and pay his respects. However, Emma’s frustration with her father’s inability to see beyond Mrs. Elton’s social status as a bride reveals her new dissatisfaction with purely social definitions. Correspondingly, she realizes that the near-universal approval and even praise of her that contributed to her vanity is not a complete reflection of her character. She begins to feel the need to move beyond her home and establish an independent position in the world. Mrs. Elton pushes Emma out of passive immersion in her immediate society by reflecting Emma back to herself in an unsettling manner. Emma must now choose between ironic detachment from the world or fully aware, moral participation in society. Miss Smith wrote about Emma for her junior essay in Santa Fe. Sensible Elinor by Barbara Goyette (A73) What is so striking about Elinor Dashwood, the heroine of Sense and Sensibility, is the way she bears heartsickness. She falls in love with and believes she is loved by an amiable, educated, handsome young man of some prospects, only to discover that he is engaged to another. Upon the death of her father, she and her mother and sisters must leave the small estate of Norland, where they have lived happily for many years. Her beloved sister Marianne falls for the perfidious but charming Willoughby, who not only leaves Marianne without a word of explanation but turns out to have an unsavory past. When Marianne becomes extremely ill, Elinor must nurse her back to health in mind as well as body. Not only does Elinor suffer these misfortunes silently, but she also endures the remonstrances of her mother and sister when they tell her she appears to be unfeeling about everyday trials. The depth of her disappointments and struggles is never revealed. Elinor shows herself to be strong, emotionally sound, capable of excellent judgment, and able to appear to recover her spirits quickly even in the midst of devastating events. She is neither dashing nor exciting, and is pretty in an unremarkable way, except to those who see her true character. Extremely sensitive to the inner lives of those around her, she at times appears to hide from her own goodness. { T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Fall 2006 } �{Austen} Her infatuation with Edward Ferrars can seem baffling—is she imagining his charms? Is she expecting less for herself in love because she thinks this is all she deserves? Her highly developed sense of irony almost leads her down dangerous paths a number of times, as she treats her mother, sister, and acquaintances with less than genuine attention because, we may infer, they lack the seriousness of her own concerns. She knows she is superior— morally and in both sense and sensibility—and yet she lives out her life in the background. The work of the novel is to fill in the picture of Elinor’s true character—to herself and to us as readers—her nature as a human being living with a particular set of people in a particular place, at a particular time. Although it might seem that who she is and who she becomes could be the result of the constraints of her 25 The Dashwood sisters are drawn as opposing personalities. (Emma Thompson as Elinor, Kate Winslet as Marianne in Ang Lee’s 1995 film.) situation (which is drawn in great detail), Austen shows us instead that Elinor determines her own character—outside of, although influenced by, the situations that we are used to thinking of as those that make women like Elinor who they are: birth, rank or status, social connections, education, role in society, income. Early in the novel we are presented with a scene that lays out the various connections between the characters. Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne and their younger sister Margaret are newly arrived at Barton Cottage, having been displaced from their home following the unexpected death of Mr. Dashwood. Sir John { T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Fall 2006 } �26 {Austen} While Elinor is reserved and sensible, Marianne believes the heart must always show the way. Middleton, a cousin of Mrs. Dashwood, has offered them the cottage for a very reasonable rent. The women are reconciled to their reduced circumstances, although it is clear that only Elinor understands the kinds of changes they will have to make in their way of life. The charms of the new countryside, as well as the possibility of new acquaintances, have made them fairly cheerful. The Dashwoods have been invited to Barton Park, the home of Sir John and Lady Middleton. Also in attendance are Mrs. Jennings, mother to Lady Middleton, and Colonel Brandon, a neighbor and friend of Sir John. In the scene when all these characters convene for the first time, Austen shows clearly that character is independent of both nature and nurture. There is a kind of merry chaos in which each person contradicts our expectations of what they will be like based on their situation. Sir John Middleton, a member of the traditional gentry, should be stuffy and proud. Instead, he is warm, kindly, generous, and outgoing. His wife Lady Middleton, through her marriage a social equal of her husband, is reserved, cold, and possesses a “common mind.” Her mother, Mrs. Jennings, is decidedly bourgeois, wealthy enough, effusive, more than slightly vulgar. Where does Sir John’s generous nature come from, and why is his wife so affectedly elegant? Neither their situation nor their background accounts for the differences in their characters. Colonel Brandon, situated similarly to Sir John, offers a further contrast—he is moody, intelligent, and concise, more like a member of the clergy than a military man with property. Elinor and Marianne are drawn as opposing personalities as well. While Elinor is reserved and sensible, Marianne believes the heart must always show the way. Both are in a precarious state socially and financially and we might think the accepted route to their happiness and security would lie in good marriages for both. And yet through Elinor, Austen suggests that character development determines happiness. Elinor forms herself rather than allowing her circumstances to make her. Barbara Goyette is vice president of Advancement in Annapolis. Artless Catherine by Tilar J. Mazzeo (SF93) As Jane Austen warns her readers at the beginning of Northanger Abbey, Catherine Moreland is an unlikely heroine, and, when it comes to tributes to Austen’s women, Catherine can be a bit of a hard sell. She lacks the wit and charm of Elizabeth Bennet. She can’t boast the self-possession of Elinor Dashwood. Even the meddlesome Emma Woodhouse has the advantage of being genuinely clever. Perhaps most fundamentally, Catherine falls in love with a man who is primarily attracted to her intellectual limitations and to her good-natured eagerness to be guided by the superior knowledge of others without developing any of her own. Henry Tilney is an enthusiastic lecturer of young women, and Austen reminds her readers that nothing is more flattering to the vanity than the wide-eyed wonder of one’s interlocutor, writing that “Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.” Ironically, however, the nature of Catherine’s ignorance is what makes her such an interesting and ultimately likeable character— not, I hope, because she flatters my vanity as a reader, but because it seems to me that the exploration of her ignorance over the course of the novel is part and parcel of Austen’s larger themes about artlessness and the art of the novel in Northanger Abbey. Of course, Northanger Abbey is a novel about the status of the genre, part satire on the excesses of the gothic variety so popular in the early 19th century and part defense of the novel as a “work in which the greatest powers of the human mind are displayed.” The satire on the gothic is what most readers remember about Northanger Abbey, and Catherine’s introduction to the genre, coinciding with her introduction into fashionable society, is a comic misadventure in which she learns to over-interpret the incidents of domestic life, imagining melodrama where it does not exist. In fact, it seems that an education in the aesthetics of the gothic novel is simultaneously a process of learning to read for figurative and double meanings. Catherine’s interpretive zeal, however, ends unhappily when she comes to a mistaken conclusion. Embarrassed and conscious of her own error, she ends by rejecting the genre and recognizing the unfortunate “influence of that sort of reading.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �{Austen} If Catherine’s newfound understanding of gothic novels and the dangers of interpretation were simply part of her education as an increasingly sophisticated reader, then we might say that she was a slow study but on her way. Instead, she returns to what appears to be her natural state of ignorance, a state in which she demonstrates an inability to recognize irony or to negotiate the ways in which language creates duplicity. Perhaps the most telling moment occurs late in the novel, when it is precisely Catherine’s inability to understand this duplicity that most endears her to Eleanor and Henry Tilney. Faced with the prospect of his brother’s marriage to the deceitful Isabella Thorpe, Henry sarcastically advises Eleanor, “Prepare for. . .such a sister-in-law as you must delight in!—Open, candid, artless, guileless. . .forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise.” Eleanor immediately grasps the irony, assuring Henry that such a sister-in-law as that she would welcome—for the characterization describes Catherine precisely. Only Catherine fails to understand the wit or to recognize herself as the half-subject of the exchange. Catherine’s interpretive simplicity and literal-mindedness, if those phrases work to describe her ignorance and intellectual limitations more precisely, lend some of the humor to this passage, of course. But what I find most curious is the description of Catherine, here and throughout the novel, as artless. From the earliest moments of the novel, readers are assured of her limited accomplishments: “she could not write sonnets. . .there seemed no chance of her Wit and Wisdom from Jane Austen On Good Company Anne smiled and said, “My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.” “You are mistaken,” said he gently, “that is not good company; that is the best.”—Persuasion On Candor Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.—Emma On One’s Self “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”—Fanny Price, Mansfield Park 27 throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte. . . .she had no notion of drawing”. Her interest in fashion is remarkably lackluster, and her tastes in reading are limited to the gothic novel, with which she shortly becomes disenchanted. At the same time, she remains singularly innocent of irony. Catherine is, in other words, artless in at least two respects—she is both ignorant of aesthetics and inexperienced at manipulating representation. She is incapable of either engaging in or understanding duplicity. Yet, understanding duplicity is essential both to irony and to the sort of fiction that Northanger Abbey—this novel about novels— celebrates. Early in Northanger, in fact, “effusions of wit” are identified as a central to the genre. What we have here is a witless and artless heroine, and the choice is perhaps one of Austen’s most striking experiments in and, ultimately, satires on realism. After all, Catherine is precisely the sort of girl most likely to appeal to a slightly vain and entirely ordinary country clergyman. In the context of a romance, she might just pass as a heroine, for, if she is unlikely, she is not unlikable. But, while not understanding duplicity might be an admirable thing in a 19th-century heroine, the art of the novel and the art of the reader demand something more. Tilar Mazzeo is assistant professor of English at Colby College. On Men and Books “Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove any thing.”—Anne Elliot, Persuasion On Women and Marriage Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.—Pride and Prejudice On Youth “. . .there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.”—Colonel Brandon, Sense and Sensibility { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �28 The past few months have brought a wide variety of alumni books to The College mailbox, on topics from religion to baseball. The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence by Mike Aquilina and Christopher Bailey (A87) Loyola Press The authors trace Holy Grail stories and legends throughout time with the aim of showing how these accounts have radically skewed the Eucharistic meaning of the Grail. “Powerful forces tend to pull the story of the Grail toward heresy,” Aquilina and Bailey write in this study that includes consideration of the King Arthur legends, Marie de France’s stories of love and magic written in the Middle Ages, and even Hollywood’s take on Christian symbolism and the Grail in films such as Indiana Jones. They dismiss many Grail stories, particularly modern ones such as Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, as written by members “of the wacky fringe.” In the authors’ opinions, the search for the Grail becomes a quest for adventure and entertainment in these stories instead of an experience fueled by the purpose of changing the seeker’s life in a deep, spiritual sense. The Truth is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction by Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth (A88) Brazos Press Star Trek fans out there will enjoy seeing how some of their favorite episodes of the 1960s science fiction classic relate to Plato, the Bible, and St. Augustine. Professors Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth look to science fiction as a lens that shows how religion and science can be integrated. They cite Plato’s dialogue Timaeus as possibly the “first science fiction story” that discusses the idea that the world was created by a god who is rational and moral. {Bibliofile} The authors then analyze science fiction television shows such as Star Trek, Dr. Who, The Prisoner, and The Twilight Zone. Star Trek, the authors propose, can be considered a showcase for Christian virtues such as humility and moderation. The trio of Kirk, Spock, and the crotchety McCoy function as a whole being, drawing analogies to Plato’s views of the triumvirate soul. “Star Trek’s consistent vision seems to be about morality,” they write. The authors also show how The Twilight Zone illustrates the impact of original sin. The more recent series, The X Files, is cast in a darker religious light—that of the apocalypse. Cooking with the Bible: Biblical Food, Feasts, and Lore Anthony F. Chiffolo (AGI94) and Rayner W. Hesse, Jr. Greenwood Press Food, history, and religion simmer together in this cookbook by Chiffolo, an editorial director and Hesse, a minister. The authors spent more than three years researching and testing recipes for what they describe as an interfaith cookbook that is as much a study of etymology as it is a collection of recipes. Each recipe is based on a food found in the Bible, but presented in its modern day “translation.” For instance, the apple in the Garden of Eden is probably more like an apricot since the Middle Eastern climate wasn’t conducive to growing apples. Each chapter begins with the menu for a biblical feast. More intellectual than the average cookbook, Cooking with the Bible offers short essays describing the theological, historical, and cultural significance of particular feasts. “The King James Bible says that St. John the Baptist survived on locusts and honey,” Chiffolo recently told The Journal News of New York. “Current scholars say that this is a mistranslation—‘locust’ really refers to karib, which grows on trees in the Middle East. In the Middle East, karib is referred to as St. John’s Bread.” Among the meals Johnnies might recog{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } nize from sophomore seminar: The Wedding Feast at Cana from the Gospel of John, the meal that Abraham feeds the three angel visitors in Genesis, and the meal that Jacob feeds Esau to steal the birthright. Management by Baseball: The Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field Jeff Angus (SF73) HarperCollins Publishers What can the manager of a struggling business learn from Yankees manager Joe Torres? When does a player in a slump (an underachieving employee) need extra coaching, and when should he be sent back to the minors or cut from the team? Jeff Angus describes the complexity of the organization in baseball, using America’s favorite past-time as an analogy for managers in other fields. “It’s a pragmatic, how-to book that aims to teach management practice through examples from the most open, accountable, and documented competitive system in the U.S.: baseball,” says Angus. “Baseball managers are ideal role models for mangers in other professions who are required to handle many different tasks under high-pressure situations,” writes Angus. He quotes the famous Ty Cobb, “A fellow bossing a big league ballclub is busier than a one-armed paperhanger with hives.” Angus, who is a management consultant and baseball writer with a passion for the game, shows how baseball can help managers “explode out of the batter’s box” and learn how “the New York Mets confront the diseconomies of scale.” Angus pitches advice on how to establish a reputation in the style of Dick Williams (former manager of the Oakland A’s) and describes the management style of several other top managers of the game. x �{Homecoming} HOMECOMING 2006 Santa Fe Alumni Remember Nixon, the Draft, and a Growing Campus I t was an interesting but unsettled time in America when members of the St. John’s College Class of 1976 arrived in Santa Fe. Most college campuses were still in an uproar over the Vietnam War. The draft would be in effect for another year. The Paris Peace Accords had just been signed. And in each freshman mailbox was a letter from President Richard Nixon, congratulating the students for matriculating as members of the Class of 1976, America’s bicentennial year. “We thought it was kind of sappy,” recalls Rick Lightburn. “It was the 1970s, a kind of a turbulent time, and I think we thought of ourselves as kind of renegades,” says Chuck Gunter of the class of 1976. “Watergate happened, the Vietnam War ended during our years here, and Nixon resigned.” Clouds and the threat of rain in mostly sunny Santa Fe couldn’t dampen the high spirits of the 15 members of the class of 1976 who returned to campus the last weekend of July. About 100 other alumni, many with children in tow, came back to share memories and news with classmates. At the Friday night coffee shop party, the D.J. It was a turbulent time in America when the Class of 1976 first arrived on the Santa Fe campus. The threat of storms moved the picnic inside, but didn’t dampen spirits at Homecoming 2006. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } 29 �30 played the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” and several Doors songs as a tribute to the 1970s. In 1972, Richard Weigle was president; William Darkey was dean. And tutor Bob Neidorf allowed his hair to grow longer in a personal protest against the state of the country, recalled Gunter. “Santa Fe was a really different city,” added Gunter, who lives in Albuquerque now. “It was much smaller, and it had become this really interesting hippie arts community.” The campus was still new, with buildings going up around them. There was no Meem Library, no Student Activities Center. The main administration building became Weigle Hall and the tower and bell were added. Lightburn recalled that members of his class were impressed by an attempt the year before by upperclassmen to bug the faculty enabling meeting. “We put fake TV cameras in for our enabling, but the faculty found them,” he says. Paula Fulks, Judy Kistler-Robinson, and Miriam Marcus Smith were trying to drum up interest in reviving a favorite pastime during their years at the college: a game of “Murder,” played on Friday and Saturday nights in Evans Science Laboratory. “We’d scatter out through the whole building,” Fulks recalls. “When you ran across a ‘victim,’ you’d have to figure out who killed them and get back to the safe room before the murderer got you. I almost won a couple of times.” During the weekend, alumni were part of a gala opening celebration Friday night for The Campaign for St. John’s College. They were pleased to see the developments on campus, even if it meant skirting {Homecoming} barriers and taking detours while a project to replace the concrete pavement with bricks was underway. “It’s really nice to see all the improvements,” Gunter said. During the All-Alumni Meeting, President Mike Peters gave an update on news at the college. Alumni stood and clapped to acknowledge a gift by Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74), given for construction of a new Graduate Institute Center. And Katharine (Kay) Harper became an honorary member { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } Santa Fe associate director of alumni activities Michael Bales (SF06) gets hints on chair balancing from Rick Lightburn (SF76). “It’s really tough on the Coffee Shop floor,” Lightburn says. of the Class of 2006, by virtue of her dedication to the college’s Community Seminar program. Ms. Harper has spent more than 25 years attending seminars at the college (more on page 46). x �31 {Homecoming} Clockwise from top left: Alumni visit in the coffee shop after the Saturday picnic; Rebekka Shugars (SF) and friends; Bill Malloy (SF77) admires future Johnnie Clare West, with parents Alison Bentley West (SF91) and Ben West. Gina Ironside and Charles Harrison (SF81) catch up on news; Johnnie kids strike a pose on the Meem Library Placita: Alice Acciani, Ben Goldstein, Teodore Davison, John Stukenberg, Caleb Gartner-Colon, and Nicholas Miller. photos by teri thomson randall { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �32 {Alumni Profile} Broad Thinking in the ER Marcus Eubanks (A88) Solves a Medical Mystery by Ruth Johnston (A85) patients with acute mental n average day for illness, both children and adults, Marcus Eubanks as well as dealing with all levels (A88), always of injury and disease. Some intersects with patients come in too readily, unusual days for while others wait too long. other people. “There’s always the guy who In the emergency department at waits till the football game is over Beaver Medical Center, in before coming in. His heart Beaver, Penn., Eubanks sees attack started with the pre-game everything from mosquito bites show, but he had to watch the to acute infections to accident game.” He sees women in labor, trauma. But October 28, 2003, premature babies, and people in was an unusual day even for this the last stages of death from experienced ER doctor. long-term metastatic cancer. A man with very severe flu One thing he loves about symptoms had elevated liver emergency medicine is the need enzymes, and Eubanks realized to think broadly, to avoid that he was dealing with the sixth formulaic thinking. “Medicine in Hepatitis A victim in one week. general requires you to integrate He had treated several in the past a lot of different things. You need days, and a colleague had treated to be okay with people in another. One Hepatitis A case general, you need to understand would not be news, but even two the hard empirical science of or three were odd. Six seemed what’s going on, but you need to beyond coincidence, and this Emergency Room physician Marcus Eubanks identified a deadly be able to think broadly so that hunch was confirmed when the hepatitis outbreak in suburban Pittsburgh. when something out of the wife of one of the patients, a ordinary crops up, you can think nurse, said that they had all eaten “how does this work?” together at the same restaurant. and he has served on several public-health That’s one similarity he sees between his Could it be food poisoning? That might panels to discuss his experience. field and St. John’s. “By going through the mean that the source of the poisoning was Eubanks likes “high-acuity medicine,” St. John’s Program, you see how several still out there, or that more patients were and always knew he wanted to be on the different fields or disciplines of study can be unaware of the danger, and thought they just front lines, where fast action mattered. High brought to bear on a question. But, of had the flu. Eubanks didn’t want to set off a acuity medicine means facing “a dynamic course, a lot of ER medicine is simple, public panic, but this was too urgent to condition where aggressive and intensive empirical stuff. You have a sore throat: how ignore or allow to idle longer. intervention on the part of the clinical team am I going to treat you? What Pascal has to A quick call to public health officials set in is called for, and without which the patient say about it isn’t going to be as important.” motion a sweeping investigation into what will continue to deteriorate and probably Not taking himself too seriously is an turned out to be one of the largest hepatitis either die or suffer some kind of catastrophic important part of Eubanks’ personal outbreaks in recent times. Federal insult from which they can’t recover.” philosophy, as well as medical practice. anti-terrorism officials had to evaluate the As a student at St. John’s, he began taking On a recent day, a woman came in with pain possibility that it might be bioterrorism, summer courses to prepare for medical in her side. She thought she had appenwhile the medical team had to find other school, first at Johns Hopkins, then at Bryn dicitis, but it looked like diverticulitis to possible victims for pre-emptive treatment. Mawr College. When he first began studies him. “I thought, ‘okay, let’s see who’s Three Beaver County patients died, while at Temple University Medical School, he right,’ ” he jokes. “Guess what? I was hundreds were infected and required thought he might like to go into trauma wrong.” In acute medicine, that’s always a treatment. The victims had all eaten at a surgery. Instead, he chose emergency possibility to keep in mind. local Chi-Chi’s, and the search for the exact medicine because it combined the urgency As a medical student, Eubanks used contaminant eventually led investigators to of trauma surgery with the need to be creative writing to deal with his adjustment four Mexican farms to examine their prepared for a wide variety of problems. to a world where personal tragedy and an methods of washing green onions. In an average week in his emergency ordinary work day could routinely intersect. The outbreak put Eubanks in the spotlight, department, Eubanks evaluates several A { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �33 {Alumni Notes} 1940 1944 OSCAR LORD’S eldest son, Gen. Lance Welty Lord, retired from active duty as commander of the Air Force Space Command on March 31, 2006. Happy news from JOHN DAVIS HILL: “I have been married to Dorothy Murdock for 60 years. Recently Dorothy was recognized at the Annual Meeting of the Nebraska Congregational United Church of Christ for 65 years in the ministry. She received her degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Chicago Theological Seminary, where she was ordained in June 1941.” 1943 MILTON PERLMAN writes, “I am delighted that Ms. Patricia Locke is doing a study of Proust and that Swann’s Way is again being studied in language tutorials the senior year.” 1951 College for helping us to discover, and recognize, the worth of liberal education. Although most of us would probably hesitate to call ourselves liberal artists, my guess is that most of us attempted to be something like liberal artisans—in our further education, personal lives, and professional pursuits, tacitly taking the measure of things by standards we learned from our tutors and one another. In a culture in which, all too often, education is conflated with training, philosophy is confused with ideology, and religion is confounded with idolatry, liberal artisanship is surely, indeed, sorely, needed. I am grateful for the libris libraque.” 1952 WALTER SCHATZBERG has retired from his position as Professor of German at Clark continued on p. 34 Enchanted by China A. NADOL (class of 1957) writes that he and Polly just returned from a three-week tour of China and Japan. “It was great to experience the ancient Great Wall, Forbidden City, temples, tombs, palaces, and the modern China with all its free enterprises, business, and construction boom,” he writes. He was also impressed that all high school students and above speak English. x J ACK A love letter of sorts from ERNIE HANKAMER: “To my fellow classmates: On the eve of the 55th return of our graduation in 1951, I think we are all aware of being indebted to St. John’s After the death of a patient in a particularly gruesome accident, he wrote an e-mail to his parents that detailed both the event and his viewpoint as one of the doctors who had to remain business-like and detached. His father encouraged him to publish it, so, on a lark, he submitted it to Jason Snell, editor of InterText, one of the first professionally edited online fiction venues. Snell published Eubanks’ e-mail, now titled “Mr. McKenna is Dying,” and wanted to see more. InterText eventually published five short stories, giving Marcus his fifteen minutes of fame in cyberspace, as well as motivation to create his own site for unpublished writing, www.riotcentral.com. But continuing to use his sharp, witty voice to explore the world of medicine might now clash with his career. As a student, he didn’t feel he had much at stake, but as a responsible doctor in a small community, Eubanks would need to take careful, perhaps even extravagantly careful, steps to remain anonymous. “The really tragic, funny patients aren’t likely to read the stories,” but he would have to try to protect their privacy, as well as his. Although he grew up in the rural outskirts of Pittsburgh, Eubanks prefers to live in the city neighborhood of Oakland. He and his wife, Rochelle, a critical care nurse, bought a “bombed-out frat house” that required extensive reconstruction. It’s close to friends and activities, and it’s not far from Seton Hill University, where daughter Laurin, 19, attends. Thierry, a baby girl born in July, joins Robert, 10, in the family that remains at home. Eubanks’ 40-mile commute takes him right past the well-known teaching hospitals, but he’s not seriously tempted. Beaver Medical Center is a typical small-town hospital, but its emergency department sees fifty thousands patients a year, and Eubanks loves the work environment. He sees some patients frequently enough to get to know them, and finds he has to use all his people skills to view them simultaneously as individuals and as medical cases. A patient with a mysterious problem might need to hear a doctor admit that in spite of all the tests he can run, “I just don’t know what’s wrong with you.” A worried mother who brings a child with an ordinary cold probably just needs reassurance. Eubanks gladly tells her what a great job she’s doing, and to keep up the good work. He sees a lot of children, like a little boy who ran into a pole at the playground and came in with a large cut above his eye. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } Emergency room abuses, such as patients showing up just to get prescription Tylenol that is covered by insurance, rather than buying it over the counter, can leave many doctors with a cynical attitude. “Sure, we get cynical, even sarcastic at times,” says Eubanks. “But in the emergency room, each individual presentation, taken by itself, is actually very interesting. Take the little kid with the eyebrow laceration: I was looking at the exposed bone, nerve, bridging vessels that I had to preserve. I needed some deep sutures to take tension off the wound. . . .I can make it sound very complicated but it’s actually not. I love what I do. Most of the time, it’s a lot of fun.” The new focus on privacy laws hasn’t changed much in the emergency room, and Eubanks comments that recent attention to virulent strains of bacteria isn’t news in his field, either. But there’s another trend he likes. “Increasingly, in emergency medicine, there’s a push toward making people leave happy.” Eubanks’ cheerful personality validates this approach, though some doctors worry that it means catering to patients too much. “Across a large population, leaving happy means quality of care. It probably means better medical practices, too.” x �34 {Alumni Notes} continued University (Worcester, Mass.) after 40 years of service. He earned his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1966. At Clark he chaired the Department of Foreign Languages for 10 years and was director of Clark’s Program in Luxembourg for 12 years. He is the author of several books and articles in the field of German Studies including the relations of literature and science in the German Enlightenment, the Jewish response to German culture, and films in the Weimar Republic. 1953 FRANK ATWELL and TOM HEINEMAN are regulars at Miami’s seminars (Kierkegaard was the latest book; next year, Einstein), and they invite other Class of 1953 veterans in South Florida to join them. 1955 HAROLD BAUER’S Songs of War and Death for tenor, mezzo, and orchestra were performed by the Norfolk University Symphony Orchestra in March. Harold directs the opera program at Norfolk. He conducted a concert during Northwestern University’s Harmonic Convergence festival. And he’s painting like crazy. “Nothing like a calm retirement,” he writes. “Our class had its 50th reunion in September,” writes CAROLYN BANKS LEEUWENBURGH. “It was the nicest reunion I’ve been to in 50 years. Those who lent their talents were really at their best. The food and camaraderie were memorable for the next 50 years. Thanks!” 1956 GEORGE E. SAUER has been elected treasurer of the Republican Central Committee of Montgomery County, Maryland. 1959 JOHN E. MCDEVITT III is a great-grandfather. “My grandson’s wife gave birth to Richard in April. And I continue to fill in at the junior college; taught meteorology when the full-time instructor was ill for six weeks and then astronomy when an adjunct quit with no notice.” MICHAEL K. and BLAKELY L. MECHAU (class of 1958) are looking forward to visits from Pretty Much Retired I am pretty much retired and doing some traveling,” writes JOHN POUNDSTONE, class of 1962. “My oldest daughter is in Beijing, China, working for the World Health Organization as an AIDS epidemiologist. We hope to visit her this fall. My youngest daughter lives in New York City and is an artist/designer, having graduated from the Parsons School of Design. I am remodeling the house I grew up in here in Lexington, Ky., and hope to move in some time this fall. Meanwhile, we’ve got a trip to Lisbon, Athens, and Santorini to participate in a paleopathology conference.” x “ SAM and EMILY KUTLER (class of 1954 and 1955), EVA BRANN (HA89), MIKE (class of 1961) and RENE GOLD, HERMINA LITTLETON, widow of the late MICHAEL LITTLETON (A95), and DAN (A93) and LIZ LITTLETON this summer—“all connected by strong ties to St. John’s.” 1962 DAVID W. BENFIELD is enjoying teaching philosophy at Mountain State University in New Jersey. “To 1962 classmates: I say the 45th reunion in 2007 is a big one! Let’s all try to make it!” 1967 LOVEJOY DURYEA was selected as the honoree for the International Interior Design Association National Leadership Breakfast in New York in April. In May, she served on a panel for NIDA, and she led the New York St. John’s seminar on Rembrandt’s self-portrait with KATARINA WONG (A88). She was also elected as the Gold Medalist for Design from the National Arts Club in 2003. HELEN HOBART has a “new direction, which amplifies the essential habit of curiosity and listening deeply begun at SJC. I’m now an interfaith/Buddhist chaplain resident at a large hospital and acute psychiatric center in Sacramento—every day is a blessing.” 1968 TOM KEENS (SF), a professor of Pediatrics, Physiology, and Biophysics at the Keck School of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } Medicine at the University of Southern California, has been elected chair of the Pediatric Pulmonology Subboard of the American Board of Pediatrics, 2007-08. GEORGE W. PARTLOW (A) is back in Alaska for the summer after wintering in Yuma, Ariz. “I took part in a seminar on Plato’s Apology sponsored by the new Phoenix alumni chapter in early April. Enjoyed seeing MARIAN (CUNNINGHAM) COHEN (A69) again, and meeting tutor Louis Kurs’ daughter Jean. Our oldest daughter Erika, currently a student at Western Oregon University, will be moving back to Alaska with our five grandkids in August. Daughter Hilary has just returned after seven months in South America (including the obligatory trek to Machu Picchu). Michael is a senior at the University of Oregon in Eugene. I am busy doing Tai Chi, reading Don Quixote, and being a householder . . . and glad to be home with my Steinway again!” 1969 MARIELLE HAMMETT KRONBERG (A) writes: “Our son MAX KRONBERG (‘our’ being mine and Ken’s and Ken being KENNETH KRONBERG, SF68) graduated from St. John’s in Annapolis on May 14, 2006— loving the college as much as Ken and I did and do. We had a wonderful time at Commencement, seeing SAM and EMILY KUTLER, ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN (HA95), and EVA BRANN—whom Max had the great good fortune to have as his freshman seminar leader. Best of all was seeing Max in cap and gown and bachelor’s hood!” �35 {Alumni Notes} a new job in the same field with El Paso Corp. He and his family still live near Houston. Taking a Break W ENDY MCDONALD FLORENCE (SF89) is now living in Tucson, Ariz., with her husband, two daughters—Kennedy who is 3 years old and Addison who is 5 months old—and a dog, Marley. “I’ve taken a hiatus from my practice of internal medicine to enjoy the girls in these early years,” she says. “I will return to medicine someday but I appreciate each day now for what they bring through giggles, discovery, and occasional tears. I’d love to hear from other alumni in the area. x BETH KUPER (SF) has just opened an online digital d ownload music store at: www.burnlounge.com/ goodmojomusic and invites Johnnies to take a look for their favorite tunes. Hazel & the Delta Ramblers, the New Orleans band that includes Larry and HAZEL SCHLUETER (A) and grandsons Grey and Kaden performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. It marked Hazel’s 30th time performing at the festival, and Grey’s seventh. Hazel writes: “We stayed in our home in New Orleans during Katrina. At the height of the storm our phone rang constantly. Among all the offers of help was a call from St. John’s College, offering a place to stay. Thank you. Everyone I tell this story to is amazed at our college. Thank you. We are home repairing, repainting, and playing bluegrass around our city and state with Hazel and the Delta Ramblers.” eight books since I graduated from St. John’s, so many, and so few, years ago. This summer I had the opportunity to put in quality research time as a visiting scholar at the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Del., deepening a long-term project on industrial and managerial development in the first half of America’s 20th century. Wherever I go, everything I learned at St. John’s—the environment, the gifted tutors, and fellow students I acquired it from—follows me and nourishes me. Sounds idealistic, I guess, but it’s meant as altogether realistic. As Milton wrote: “But let my due feet never fail, /To walk the studious Cloysters pale, /And love the high embowed Roof, /With antick Pillars massy proof.” STEVE HANFT (SF) writes that his son will be headed to Pomona College in the fall. “Couldn’t interest him in St. John’s,” he writes. “My wife, Ruth, gardens, arranges flowers, paints, volunteers for community service. I’m sitting on the sofa, reading.” 1970 JOHN DEAN (A) sends news and poetry: “Life goes well. Following my years at the University of Strasbourg, I’m now at the University of Versailles—tenured professor in Cultural History. I’ve written 1973 WILLIAM M. BLOUNT (SF) took retirement from ExxonMobil after 21 years of service as a petroleum geologist and started Another alum in the Callahan family: LAURIE FRANKLIN CALLAHAN (SF) writes that her daughter, ERIN CALLAHAN (A06), graduated from St. John’s in Annapolis in May and began law school at The George Washington University in the fall. “I know her Johnnie background will serve her well!” she writes. Chicago film critic JAN LISA HUTTNER (A) recently earned her second consecutive Silver Feather Award from the Illinois Woman’s Press Association, for writing the most award-winning articles in IWPA’s annual Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. Seven of Huttner’s nine awards were for articles dealing with Jewish themes, and her two first-prize winners were both about Israel: “Israeli Films: Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You!” analyzed which Israeli films get picked up by American distributors; and “ ‘Israel Rocks!’ Celebrates Diversity” reviewed a documentary thatwhich explores ethnic and political conflicts in the context of Israel’s music scene. Although the second intifada crushed the fragile hopes nourished by Oslo, Israeli filmmakers were energized,” says Huttner. “They’ve been catapulted to a whole new level of artistic accomplishment.” 1974 MARY GEOGHEGAN JOLLES (SF) is completing her ninth year as principal of Colebrook Elementary School (K-8). Recently she visited her older son Phil (29) in Carbondale, Colo. He and his wife have an eight-month-old, my grandson Owen David Wolf Jolles. “Last fall my husband and I decided to { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } become foster parents to a 15year-old boy, Todd, who was in desperate need of a home,” she writes. “Our other two children, Diana (26) and Karl (24) are busy—Diana is in a doctoral program in biology at Ohio State University, and Karl is a roofer in southern New Hampshire.” ERIC (SF) and LISA (GINSBERG) ROSENBLUM (A80) have professional and family news: In November 2005 Lisa started a job as library director for the City of Hayward, Calif. Eric and Lisa’s daughter, Anna, will graduate in June from Harvard College with a degree in Classical Archaeology, while son Sam will enter the University of California-Santa Barbara as a freshman in the fall. PAUL SZABO (A) has been recognized as one of the top intellectual property lawyers in the country in the 2006 Chambers USA Guide, a legal resource used by general counsel and other purchasers of legal services. A partner in the Cleveland firm of Calfee, Halter & Griswold, Paul counsels publicly and privatelyheld clients regarding issues such as patents and copyrights . 1976 CHRISTIAN BURKS (SF) has been in Toronto for four-and-a-half years. His wife, Janet Moody, is now working at Creative Niche, recruiting creative/design staff. One of their daughters starts a new job teaching sixth graders in San Diego in August, while the other starts law school at the University of Washington in Seattle. “After 20 years of teaching college composition, literature, and related liberal arts classes, I continued on p. 37 �36 {Alumni Profile} Following in Familiar Footsteps Kevin Ross (AGI97), President of Lynn University by Patricia Dempsey K evin Ross (AGI97), who grew up on campus at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., thrived on the lively conversations of his parents, academic leaders, and intellectuals, as well as “more college food than anyone I know.” On July 1, he became the fifth president of Lynn University, and at age 40, one of the youngest college presidents in the country. Ross follows the footsteps of his father Donald Ross, the former president of Lynn. Over his 35-year tenure, the elder Ross piloted the gradual transformation of Lynn University into a four-year liberal arts institution with an accredited master’s and doctoral programs. In 1971 as president of Wilmington College in Delaware, the elder Ross visited Marymount College and convinced Wilmington trustees to aid the struggling junior college; this institution evolved into the College of Boca Raton and finally Lynn University. Kevin Ross (AGI97) hopes to lead Lynn University Before taking the helm at Lynn, to great things. Ross says he wanted to get his “feet wet in education without any help from my family.” After earning his make-it-happen type of leader,” says Ross. bachelor’s degree in English at Colgate “I’m more pragmatic.” Ross uses this University, Ross embarked on a career in approach to build on his father’s accomeducation administration. He gained experience in admissions and development plishments as president. He seeks to foster the strong sense of community at Lynn, as at the Hill School in Pottstown, Penn. He much an asset to the university as its returned to Lynn in 1999 as dean of Lynn’s programs in music, aeronautics, and communications school and later became international studies. “Lynn has this family chief operating officer. Along the way, he enrolled at St. John’s, at the suggestion of a feel, and it is something that was very Hill School colleague who had attended the purposeful from the outset,” says Ross. “This is something that my father strongly GI and knew of Ross’ interest in the liberal valued, and I do too. We want to be one of arts. Later, Ross earned a doctoral degree the most innovative, international, and in education from Peabody College of individualized small universities in Vanderbilt University. America.” Though they are both passionate about Ross is a consensus builder. While Lynn University, Ross and his father share developing the university’s strategic plan, different leadership styles. “He is he sent a draft and a red pen to staff, absolutely a visionary, damn-thefaculty, and students, asking for feedback. torpedoes, kick-the-doors open, let’s { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } “As the president I throw ideas out there, and we have a conversation. In fact, the educational approach of St. John’s has informed much of what I do. Consensus doesn’t mean that we’re all going to agree, but I would prefer to have an argument in the right sense, to see if an idea will stand the test of time. It should be able to be beat up a little bit, and critically picked apart.” Ross says his studies in the GI represent “the most profound educational experience of my life.” He’s even considering how Lynn University’s distance learning programs—seemingly incompatible with a discussion-based approach— could benefit from the St. John’s model. “What led me to my interest in instructional technology were the fundamentals that came from St. John’s—the liberal arts curriculum and the idea of continuing a conversation. In the past, it always struck me that you’d walk into a classroom, flick the lights on, say, ‘Okay, its time to learn,’ then you’d turn the lights off and say, ‘Okay, go read on your own and come back later.’ It made me think about the conversations we had here at St. John’s. I didn’t want seminar to end at 10 p.m. when I was at the Graduate Institute.” Ross hopes to reach the goals of his strategic plan in 10 years, instead of the planned 15. One of his priorities is to travel the country to garner support of alumni to increase the university’s endowment. “None of our challenges are insurmountable,” he says. “Sometimes a large endowment can be an excuse for poor management because you can rest on your laurels. There is a scrappiness about Lynn and this real nimbleness, which is one of our great strengths.” Amidst all the pressures of his new position Ross says he hopes to make time for St. John’s. “If I have a sabbatical the first thing I’ll do is go to Santa Fe and do the master’s in Eastern Classics. I’d go in a heartbeat.” x �37 {Alumni Notes} am working as a psychotherapist in Phoenix,” writes IDELL KESSELMAN (SFGI) “Here, I can keep an eye on my parents—and my 27-year-old daughter. Active in my synagogue, I look forward to nurturing my own continuing love of giving.” start-up company making clip art. So far, the sites include faithclipart.com, christmastimeclipart.com, babytidings.com, and weddingclipart.com. She writes, “In my spare time I’m singing with the Siskiyou Singers, a community chorus of 100+ people. Lots of fun!” 1977 1979 EDWARD F. GRANDI (A) is completing a second year as executive director of the American Sleep Apnea Association. He’s active again with the D.C. Alumni Association chapter after a long hiatus and “generally loves life!” MICHAEL LEVINE ST. JAMES (A) enjoys Santa Fe’s Summer Classics. “Last summer, I took the Don Quixote seminar, led by tutors ERIC SALEM (A77, my sophomore roommate) and CAREY STICKNEY (A75, my Paca-Carroll dorm-mate), and had a fantastic time,” he says. “This summer I return for Aristotle’s Ethics, led by the same tutors. I can’t recommend Summer Classics enough!” “Life in Boise has settled into a routine,” writes MARLENE F. STRONG (A). “I just completed my second year of working at a nonprofit mental health center, where I do therapy with children and adults. I am enjoying four distinct seasons, and I love my 100-year-old house and big garden. I do miss the ocean! Looking forward to seeing my classmates next year for our 30th.” SUSAN HERDER (SF) is living very happily in San Francisco, where she has a thriving practice as a bodyworker. “For fun, I’m into athletics, swimming in the bay often with my friends at the South End Rowing Club, running, biking, and doing triathlons. A big event in my life presently is buying my first home, and it’s in Santa Fe! I’m not moving though, will just spend more time there, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone as our paths cross.” After several years of consulting for reproductive rights organizations, MARJORIE HUTTER (A) has what she describes as her “dream job” as Director of Development for the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts: “My “nonJohnnie” husband and I have been together for 20 years and are enjoying raising our two daughters—Simone “Mo,” 13 years old, and Gracie, 10 years old. I send my best wishes to all of my classmates.” 1980 1982 JOSHUA KATES (A) last fall published Essential History: Jacques Derrida and the Development of Deconstruction. He has left his position at Santa Fe, and he and his wife are currently associate professors of English at Indiana University (Bloomington) and have a six-month-old son, Zeke. KELLY GENOVA (SF) was married June 27 to James Rowley. Her former husband, STEPHEN LEACH (SF), was expected to attend with his fiancée, Sally Buxt. Writes Kelly: “I still practice law; Stephen is an associate professor in the philosophy department at the University of Texas-Pan American, where his mother graduated many years ago. James is a lawyer as well, in Albuquerque, concentrating on personal injury matters and the representation of workers’ compensation claims. I defend such claims. It should make for an interesting marriage.” GERI GLOVER (SF) has joined the Education Department at the College of Santa Fe. 1981 ANNE O’MALLEY CULOTTA (A) encourages friends and classmates to try their best to make the 25th reunion of her class. “I promise you won’t want to miss the fun and the flashbacks,” she writes. “Sometimes the sequel is even better than the original! Let’s get the party started.” THOMAS J. SLAKEY, JR. (SF) is working as a technical writing consultant at companies all over Silicon Valley. He’s married to the lovely Susan Slakey, and his two stepsons are turning 18 and 21 this year. He welcomes contact at tslakey@comcast.net Puppies and Girls RYAN (SF86) reports that his family and business are both growing: “We have added a boxer puppy to our three girls and boxer-mix dog. There is plenty of happiness and chaos to go around. My architecture firm in Albuquerque has grown to 11 people and we are taking on some large projects in four states. I look forward to seeing everyone this summer.” x M ICHAEL 1978 RACHEL BARRETT (SF) has moved to Ashland, Ore., where she works for an Internet { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } LESLIE SMITH ROSEN (A) writes that her eldest daughter, Marielle, is engaged to be married, with the wedding to take place in May 2007, after Marielle completes her master’s degree at Johns Hopkins. “My younger daughter is finishing her first year at the University of Chicago (SJC a little too intense) and my youngest, Sam, is in high school,” she writes. “Time flies and tuitions soar. Best wishes to all, and looking forward to our 25th!” 1983 “I just launched a series of three satellites to study the Earth’s magnetosphere and got a little closer to the eidos of engineering,” writes PETER ROSSONI (SF). “Send me your news! Peter.rossoni@gsfc.nasa.gov. I would love to hear from any classmates.” TED ZENZINGER (A) is a professor of philosophy at Regis University in Denver, Co. He and �38 {Alumni Notes} his wife just celebrated the first birthday of their second daughter, Olivia. Ted writes, “She and her sister, Sophia (2), keep us busy!” 1984 JOHN (SF) and Elizabeth BUSH’s oldest son, Salem, who was born in Santa Fe, graduated from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., this past spring. FATHER ROBERT NICOLETTI, M.J., (SF) is a missionary in Ukraine: “Does anyone want to help a Ukrainian orphanage? I’ll send you more info. Many thanks.” 1985 ANNA LOUISE DAVIS (A) was sorry to have missed her 20th reunion last fall, but she looks forward to catching up with everyone in a few short years at the 25th. In the meantime she is headed back to school for a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. LIZA HYATT (SF) is “happily divorced” and a mother to Maggie, who turned nine in August. “I am self-employed doing a variety of things: I am a mosaic artist and work with communities (such as local schools, Indiana University’s cancer hospital, a women’s shelter) to create mosaic murals for their buildings; I am an art therapist in private practice; I am a storyteller and perform at libraries, schools, and festivals; and I am adjunct faculty for two graduate programs at St. Mary of the Woods College. And, after 40 some years of believing I can’t sing, I joined a choir and am loving it. I would love to hear from other Johnnies! E-mail me at liza@lizahyatt.com.” Art in Ensenada LASKOWSKI (SFGI97) is Mexico bound: “My partner, a painter, and I are invited to Ensenada, Mexico, for a 10day artist residency. The participants will come from around the globe and will create their art at the site, which will then be exhibited at the local museum. Also, Andrei and I had a well-received exhibition at Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, Calif. Look at our work at www.galleryrouteone.org.” x I NYA JOHN SCHILLO (SF) and his partner, David Maltin, recently purchased several apartment buildings in Albuquerque and a home in east Sandias, where they will be relocating toward the end of this year. John looks forward to seeing old friends who still live in New Mexico or will be visiting there, as well as making new acquaintances at alumni events. He can be reached on his home e-mail: jwschillo@comcast.net or at his work e-mail: john.schillo@ ge.com. 1986 SUSAN READ (SFGI) writes that her son, Harry, will be in fifth grade this fall. “I am still teaching high school, still skiing, still talking.” context of severe mental illness, and is based in my first 11 years’ work as an acute care psychiatric chaplain.” GEORGE ALBERT ERHARD (SF) has moved from Northern California to Irving, Texas, where he is now a Network Fault Management Engineer for AT&T. Also, George would like to announce his marriage to Claire Alyce Johnson, who has shared his life for the past 10 years. REGINA LANDOR (A) writes that she and her husband, Bill Woodward, welcomed their second son, Gabriel, in December. Their first son, Ethan, is now 2. 1987 CHARLOTTE GLOVER (SF) joined with some friends in Ketchikan, Alaska, to start a chapter of “First Book,” which helps lowincome children build home libraries. “The national organization has been awesome to work with,” she writes. “See you next summer in Santa Fe!” 1989 “I am nearing the end of my Doctor of Ministry in Pastoral Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary,” writes DAVID DILLARD (A). My research has been focused around finding hope in a 1990 TATIANA N. MASTERS (SF) finished the second year of her doctoral program with her usual aplomb. She is finishing the page proofs for her first paper in Psychology of Women Quarterly. She is still three years from completing her studies just like last year. Her partner Jason Spainhower is proud of her accomplishments. They live in Seattle and have listed numbers and unusual names. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } 1991 DIANNE JANETTE COWAN (A) writes, “2005 was a busy year for me, with three big events. In August, I finally left my miserable job for a better one in educational publishing. In November, I got elected the Alumni Association president of the Boston chapter, and two days later the Red-Haired Boy of my dreams asked me to marry him. Sadly, I won’t be able to make it to the Class of ’91 reunion, since it is, inconveniently, the weekend before my wedding. But I’m consoled by the fact that all Johnnie weddings are minireunions. And with any luck, I’ll be around for the Class of ’92 bash in ’07. Please drop a line to diannecowan@alumni.stjohnscollege.edu. BEN FOLEY (SF) is living in Oakland, Calif., teaching 7thgrade humanities and doing a lot of hiking in the Sierra. TEDDI ANN GALLIGAN and DAVID ALAN DIGGS (both A), announce with great joy the birth of their second daughter, Josephine Lucia Diggs-Galligan on July 20, 2005, in Washington, D.C. Writes Teddi, “Big sister Sophia Emmanuelle is enjoying her new status immensely.” continued on p. 40 �39 {Alumni Notes} Hooked on Classics Richard Field (SFGI98) Nurtures Book Lovers by Rosemary Harty S tudying in the St. John’s Graduate Institute “lit a fire in my mind,” says Richard Field (SFGI98), a senior humanities teacher at Albuquerque Academy, a private college preparatory school. Now he’s trying to do the same thing for his students through his weekend Classics Club, a group he started to give students another place to discuss books and ideas. Field enrolled in the GI in Santa Fe after completing a doctoral program in history and philosophy. He had heard of the undergraduate program, admired it, and started to read Program books on his own. Then he heard about the graduate program in Liberal Arts. “From my very first class with Mr. LeCuyer and Ms. Honeywell, I absolutely loved it,” he says. “St. John’s opened a new way of thinking for me, and I can’t go back. I became this insatiable reader of the classics and I haven’t stopped since.” Even after finishing the GI program, he went back to campus to take the History segment. Field began his teaching career in the school’s physical education department, but he soon talked his way into the humanities program, where he’s been happy ever since, teaching seminar classes The Nietzsche Rap Gonna teach ya Nietzsche caus’ I can’t reach ya’ man must first go under so he doesn’t blunderTry to teach you overman because man is a rope, a dope, between a man and hopeover an abyss. Ubermensch, ubermensch God is dead Antichrist, Will to Power have you readZARATHUSTRA...! based on St. John’s. “I love the material so much that kids have written to me to tell me my excitement and enthusiasm spread to them,” he says. “The people who inspired me were two Johnnies who were working here. They were the catalyst.” Inspired by the movie Dead Poet’s Society, in which a teacher cultivates a love for literature in his students, Field decided to start an extracurricular club for students who want to read ancient and modern classics that regular classes would never have time for. Over the years, the club has read works including The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Communist Manifesto, Beowulf, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the Symposium, and Pride and Prejudice. The group meets once a month, usually in a local coffee shop, and recently, Albuquerque Academy alumni have begun to attend. “It’s very rewarding,” he says. “I start with an opening question, though given the nature and age of the kids, one question is usually not enough to keep them going.” Club members had an assignment over the summer. Read Democracy in America and come back ready to discuss it. Meetings are usually an hour, but the group went almost 90 minutes and decided to schedule an extra meeting to finish their { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } Albuquerque teacher Richard Field knows how to get the attention of his high school students. discussion on the book. “They saw quite a few parallels with what’s going on today and what de Tocqueville talked about,” Field says. “But they think his views about the ‘middling state of American education’ are no longer true.” Next up: The Picture of Dorian Gray. Every year Field works in some Russian literature. “I read The Brothers Karamazov in a tutorial with Victoria Mora, and now I’m a Dostoevsky nut,” he confesses. He rewards club members every semester with a party, during which everyone plays games like Trivial Pursuit’s Book Lover’s edition. He also brings a playful attitude to his regular humanities classes; once a year, when seniors are scheduled to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Field dresses up “gansta” style (complete with St. John’s cap pulled low over his face) to perform his “Nietzsche Rap.” “I originally wrote it in 1996,” he explains. “It’s a way to relate some of Nietzsche’s ideas to students in a modern, fun, and hip way.” x �40 {Alumni Notes} Officially a Doctor ELIZABETH FORREST, A00, received the degree of Doctor of Medicine during graduation ceremonies at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine on May 22, 2006. She was also the recipient of two faculty awards: the Florence L. Marcus, M.D. Prize in Family Medicine and the F. Lorraine Bruni Prize in Geriatric Medicine. On graduating from St. John’s, she received a Howard Hughes Foundation summer research internship at the University of Virginia Medical School. Following the internship she attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., for two semesters of postbaccalaureate studies to satisfy the science prerequisites for medical school. While in Harrisonburg, she was also an emergency medical technician with the Harrisonburg Volunteer Rescue Squad. Paige began a three-year residency in family medicine on June 23 at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center-St. Margaret Hospital, in Pittsburgh. x P AIGE 1992 Rebecca Paige Brandreth was born April 26, 2006, announces CYNTHIA BRANDRETH (AGI). J. ELIZABETH (HUEBERT) SCHOEMAKER (SF) and Jeremy Schoemaker welcomed their first daughter, Juliet J. Schoemaker on June 23, 2006. Juliet weighed 7 lbs. Her mother continues to practice anesthesiology in Lincoln, Neb. 1993 “I’ve been going through the devastating effects of late-stage Lyme disease since February 2004 and am interested in getting in touch with people going through similar experiences from this underrecognized ailment,” writes BARBARA ARNOLD (SF). “I’d appreciate hearing from any Johnnies out there who have friends, family, or who are themselves dealing with the illness: Arnold@ferae.naturae.com.” SALLIE (SFGI) and GEORGE BINGHAM (SF66) celebrated their second wedding anniversary this past July. George has enjoyed rejoining the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. CHRISTOPHER GRAM (A) welcomed the birth of his second daughter, Celeste Penelope Gram, on March 25, 2006. VALERIE DUFF-STRAUTMANN (SF) has poems appearing in Zoland Poetry (Steerforth Press), an annual anthology of contemporary poetry from around the globe. THOMAS E. SCHNEIDER (AGI) has a new book out: Lincoln’s Defense of Politics: The Public Man and His Opponents in the Crisis Over Slavery (University of Missouri Press, 2006), based on his dissertation in political science from Boston College. CHERYL S. HENEVELD (AGI) is still taking part in vigils at 5 p.m. every Saturday against the war in Iraq, as well as writing and working for the end of wars. 1997 1994 NATHAN HUMPHREY (A) is curate at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, K St., in Washington, D.C. “My former junior lab tutor, ANN MARTIN, is a parishioner, and my former Febbie Lab tutor, ROBERT DRUECKER, lives behind the church. Several Johnnies and parents of Johnnies are members or regular visitors.” 1996 ANGELA BILLICK (SF) was promoted to vice president and joined BNP-Paribas, a French bank. She is based in a New York office. She’s been accepted to the Executive MBA program at NYU’s Stern School of Business and is “looking forward to flexing the gray matter once again!” Drop a line at angela_billick@hotmail.com “As of this Easter, I have celebrated my first year as a Roman Catholic,” writes ERIN N. (HEARN) FURBY (A). “I have enjoyed the supportive and intellectually vibrant Catholic community here in Anchorage, Alaska (many of whom are close cousins, being St. Thomas Aquinas College alumni).” MARYBETH GUERRIERI (A) graduated in June from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, from which she received a Professional Skills diploma in Brennan Healing Science. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } KATHLEEN EAMON (SF) writes to report that she has just accepted a teaching position at Evergreen State College, where she was hired in philosophy. “But, as anyone who knows the place knows, I’m slated to teach more broadly than that. LYNARRA (Featherly, SF94) and I have spent the last six years in Nashville, where I am now winding up work on my dissertation at Vanderbilt University. Neither of us made it big on the country scene, but Lynarra has become a widely-sought (if reluctant) interior designer, hounded by friends and real estate agents alike. She has also acquired mad-carpenter skills, after having renovated two historic homes from top to bottom.” DAMON KOVELSKY (A) is back in Brooklyn, with a new job in journalism, a wife, and a cat. “Bloomberg, LLP hired me in their newsroom, Meg married me a couple of years ago, and Max makes three. If there are any Johnnies within the city limits, please shout out an e-mail dkovelsky@yahoo.com.” JESSICA CAMPBELL MCALLEN (SF) shares baby news: “Isaac Orion McAllen was born on April 11, 2006! Lowry and I are so excited to have a little boy around the house. He was 8 pounds, 20 inches. A little blessing!” “Currently, I am teaching English in China with my wife, Emily Kaplan Murbarger, the daughter of BART KAPLAN (A65) and cousin of MEGAN DROLET (A08),” writes JOSHUA �41 {Alumni Notes} “Great Books for $1,000, Alex…” A Johnnie Wins Big on Jeopardy! by Rosemary Harty S endure great embarrassment on that ome contestants of Jeopone, since her dissertation research is ardy! are so nervous on the on Shakespeare and performance set of the popular game theory. “I still get grief from my show that they freeze up, colleagues,” she says. hand clutching the buzzer Several times in her six appearances, in a death grip, face set in a DiNucci didn’t know the Final Jeopardy grimace of anxiety. Jeopardy! watchers who tuned in last July and caught answer and other contestants did. But Celeste DiNucci (A87) on her five-day she had built up a big enough lead and winning streak saw a contestant who wagered wisely to prevail over her laughed vigorously and often, joked competitors—until the last day, when with Alex Trebeck, and clearly enjoyed the category was American women the whole experience, right until the authors. The answer quoted Henry James describing the mystery author as Final Jeopardy question that ended a “the novelist of children. . . the Thackglorious run. eray, the Trollope of the nursery and “I approached the whole thing as, the schoolroom.” DiNucci came up ‘this is just a game,’ ” says DiNucci, a Her Jeopardy winnings allowed Celeste DiNucci to with Beatrix Potter; the answer was doctoral student at the University of take a leave of absence to finish her dissertation. Louisa May Alcott. “I feel like I really Pennsylvania and a grant writer for a should have won that one.” Half the nonprofit organization. “I wasn’t people gave her the TV treatment, and she battle, of course, is being quick. “The real nervous at all.” was wired for sound. test is in the buzzer. There were plenty of DiNucci tried out in June 2005 in “After the game show scandals, they’re questions I knew the answer to and I just Philadelphia, where she lives. She did well really careful about sequestering contestwasn’t fast enough.” on the written test, then took part in a mock ants, so you don’t see Alex much. I had a DiNucci ultimately left Los Angeles game that was videotaped. After the months great time meeting the other contestants.” exhausted, but with $85,000 in winnings. went by, she figured her chances at game She was later to defeat all but one of them. The money has allowed her to take a leave show stardom were slim. “Then in April, At times, DiNucci was surprised by how from her job to finish her dissertation, and they called me at work and suggested some much she knew. Where did she learn, for she’s planning to splurge on a trip to Italy. taping days,” she says. Since taping example, that what is also called heavy water She has no regrets about her performance— conflicted with her job at the American is deuterium? There were also a few uncomexcept maybe one. Philosophical Association, she asked if she fortable moments. A $200 question on “I didn’t get around to talking about St. could pick other dates. “They said these are Shakespeare asked for the play in which John’s” in the meet-the-contestant part of the last two taping days of the season, and Mercutio and Balthasar are characters. the show, she says. But should she be called you come now or you don’t come at all.” “I rang in immediately, but then I thought, back for the Tournament of Champions, she DiNucci went. After just a few hours of ‘hey, there’s no Balthasar in Romeo and promises a nod to the college that helped sleep in her hotel room, she waited, blearyJuliet’ so I said something else. But he has a contribute to all that valuable knowledge. x eyed, in the lobby for the Jeopardy! shuttle little part in the last act.” DiNucci had to to transport her to the set. The make-up MURBARGER (A). “We started in Jinzhou (for six months) in the northeast of China and will soon move to Qingdao. We have a great blog: www.peer-see.com. Follow our adventures and great fun.” This news comes to The College via Bart and Betty Kaplan. 1998 JULIANA (MARTONFFY) LAUMAKIS (A) and her husband, John, are very happy to report the birth of their daughter, Amanda Adeo, this past January. MARJORIE ROUECHE (A) is a freelance science writer and editor in Berkeley, Calif. “I am also doing what I can to help the next groundswell of feminism. If anyone is interested in helping, e-mail me, or visit me at www. insubordinatewomen.com.” 1999 STEVE and KRISTIN DUMONT (both SF) are proud to announce the birth of their daughter, Quinn Alessandra—born healthy and screaming February 14, 2006. She has brought wonders and joy to their lives every day since. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } ANNAMARIA CARDINALLIPADILLA (SFGI), who completed her Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2004, was recently named a laureate for the 2006 Mother Teresa Awards for her work as an American classical musician. For updates on her career since St. John’s, visit www.annamaria.ws and www.elduoduende.com, or www.sonicbids.com/AnnaMaria2 and www.sonicbids.com/ ElDuoDuende. �42 {Alumni Notes} 2000 Catch Up With Friends This fall BUCK COOPER (A) starts a Ph.D. program in education at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. “Can’t seem to shake the allure of the Tarheel State,” he says. ALAN (A) and Heidi RUBENSTEIN celebrated their two-year wedding anniversary in June 2006 and are very happy in their “treehouse” in Takoma Park, outside of D.C. “The same month, I had my first poetry reading, which went well, and began my new job,” writes Alan. “I am now working for the staff of the President’s Council on Bioethics as a researcher and writer. This is a serious challenge—one that I am enjoying very much.” CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN (A) is living in Annapolis and working for Realistic Builders. “Nice to see the college on a regular basis,” he writes. “It is really a beautiful place to watch the seasons change. Having lived in four states in the last 10 years, Annapolis really stands out as the best walking city. My free time is spent walking puppies or riding horses. Hope all my classmates are doing well and find time to reflect on where their life is going. Looking forward to reunion 2010!” After a year as an account executive for a Dallas advertising agency, LARIN MCPEAK (EC) is now teaching Business English and American Culture at the ISL Sprachschule in Koblenz, Germany. She uses her weekends and free time traveling throughout Europe, playing soccer with a local team, and reading some of the Eastern studies books she managed to haul to Germany. You can e-mail her at Dangerousfireball@ yahoo.com It’s not the same as the Coffee Shop, but the online alumni community may be the next best thing—a place to catch up with friends, start a conversation, find a new lead on a job, and keep track of what’s happening on the Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses. Share your news, share your pictures, sign up for a St. John’s e-mail address. More than 4,000 alumni have joined to date. Get back in the conversation! 2001 “Just wanted to announce to all and sundry that I have taken a teaching position in Burma (middle school math) for the next two years!” writes MATTHEW LIPPART (SF). “Come visit! I’ll buy you a beer or five! My new e-mail is: mlippart@mail2world.com. Please e-mail or I’ll be lonely.” KATHERINE J. PETERS (SF) is living in Charlottesville, Va., working as a criminal defense attorney for a private law firm. Her fiancé, Bill Finn, a New York City native and artist, is Another Book Lover MCGINTY JAMES (SF05) and her husband, Mike, welcomed a small but august presence on June 2, 2006. August Michael James arrived early but healthy, weighing 5 lbs and measuring 17 inches. “He has already fallen in love with his first book,” his mother says. x E 2003 employed by SNL Financial. “We are currently in the throes of planning our November 4, 2006, wedding.” We love Charlottesville and would relish the chance to show visitors around, so feel free to look us up if you’re planning a visit,” Katherine writes. SUZANNAH SIMMONS (SF) will be in Washington, D.C., this summer, living near DuPont Circle. “If there are any Johnnies who would like to get together, please e-mail me (guneh@ hotmail.com). I am greatly looking forward to the Santa Fe Class of 2001 five-year reunion in July.” In June 2006, JOSH VAN DONGE (SF) received his Master of Architecture from the University of Washington and is currently living and working in Seattle. RIN { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } 2004 MICHAEL LOOFT (AGI) will be studying at Harvard Divinity School this fall to become a Unitarian minister—“just like Emerson.” 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 Feburary; deadline for the alumni notes section is December 7. 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 �43 {Tribute} Brother Robert Smith, F.S.C. (HA90), a much loved and respected member of the St. John’s College community for nearly half a century, died September 12, 2006, in Napa, California, at the age of 92. He first joined the faculty of St. John’s College as a visiting tutor in 1966 and became a permanent member of the faculty in 1972, seeking and gaining special permission from his order, the De La Salle Christian Brothers, to leave Saint Mary’s College to teach at St. John’s. Brother Robert bonded in a special way with the college; he served as a mentor to tutors and students alike, and inspired all with his deep faith, distinguished intellect, generosity, and friendship. Robert Smith was born in Roundup, Mont., and was raised in Oakland, Calif. He attended a Christian Brothers high school in Berkeley, where he discovered his vocation. As a novice, he picked grapes and helped move the Christian Brothers Winery to Mont La Salle in 1932. After earning his bachelor’s degree at Saint Mary’s College in 1935, Brother Robert taught at the Christian Brothers’ high school in Sacramento. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Laval in Quebec, Canada, and wrote his dissertation on the liberal arts from the point of view of St. Thomas Aquinas. He returned to Saint Mary’s as a professor in 1941, and, being familiar with the St. John’s Program, soon instituted a seminar based on the St. John’s reading list. Those efforts blossomed into a project that is an important part of the California liberal arts college today. In 1956, Brother Robert founded Saint Mary’s Integrated Liberal Arts Program, described as a “college within a college,” and shaped in part by the program at St. John’s. Students in the Saint Mary’s program explore the great works of the liberal arts tradition through seminar discussions, tutorials, and scientific laboratories. In the course of helping to develop the program, Brother Robert made several visits to St. John’s to study the academic gary pierpoint Brother Robert Smith, F.S.C. Tutor A much loved member of the St. John’s community, Brother Robert Smith will be remembered for his intellect, generosity, and friendship. program here. He came to know the faculty very well, particularly Dean Jacob Klein, whom he had first met in the forties. In 1966-67, he spent a year as a visiting tutor at St. John’s. He then returned to Saint Mary’s to continue his work as { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } Director of the Integrated Liberal Arts program. In 1972, he joined the St. John’s faculty and taught full time from 1972 until his retirement in 1985. At St. John’s, other faculty members recognized his skills as a seminar leader. Former Dean Curtis Wilson described him as �{Tribute} 44 “enormously generous and careers of his countless in his willingness to let friends among the students entertain and alumni.” examine the widest When he was made an variety of points of honorary member of the view.” Brother Robert Class of 1990, the citation remained an active noted “his exemplary member of the devotion to the liberal arts, community—teaching, over a long career as a lecturing, taking part in teacher”; “his life of study groups and faculty service in faith”; and Brother Donald Mansir, Chair of the Bishop John S. Cummins Institute meetings—through the especially “the friendship and teacher in the Saint Mary’s Integral Program end of the past that he has bestowed upon academic year. Early numerous colleagues and this summer, poor students.” concerned to preserve and propagate health required him to move from his “Brother Robert was one of the most Klein’s understanding of a liberal arts Historic District home in Annapolis to education, in which the intellect holds the influential of the Brothers in the the community of retired Christian central place,” says Michael Dink, dean of curriculum at Saint Mary’s College,” Brothers at Mont La Salle in Napa, Calisaid Brother Donald Mansir, Chair of the the Annapolis campus. “Nonetheless fornia He kept in close touch with scores (I can hear his protest at this adversative!) Bishop John S. Cummins Institute and of his former students, who considered teacher in the Saint Mary’s Integral Brother Robert was an affectionate and him a valuable friend as well as a tutor. Program. “A true son of Saint La Salle, thoughtful connoisseur of all things In addition to his intellectual pursuits, a friend to hundreds of students, and an human: the earthy humor of Rabelais, the Brother Robert enjoyed gourmet inspiration to many of the greatest minds elegant French of Madame de Sévigné’s French cooking and wines, music, and of the last century, Brother Robert will be gossip, fine wine and gourmet cooking, conversation with his wide circle of terribly missed.” x the meticulously thought through ascetifriends. “A friend of Jacob Klein’s since cism of the desert fathers, world politics, the 1940s, Brother Robert was deeply French and English poetry, and the lives “A true son of Saint La Salle, a friend to hundreds of students, and an inspiration to many of the greatest minds of the last century, Brother Robert will be terribly missed.” {Obituaries} GILBERT CRANDALL Gilbert Crandall, a member of the class of 1932, died August 24, 2006, in Annapolis at the age of 91. He was born and reared just a few blocks from the St. John’s campus. After graduating from the college, Mr. Crandall taught English and history at Glen Burnie High School. In 1941, he joined the staff of the American Red Cross, and during World War II served in Puerto Rico, Italy and Norway while attached to the armed forces. For his work, he was awarded the Italian Red Cross Bronze Star for humanitarian services rendered during wartime. After the war, he worked for the State Department as director of the Paraguayan-American Cultural Center in Asuncion, and later in public affairs with the Foreign Service in Bolivia and Argentina. In 1961, he became the first tourism director of the State of Maryland, and later served as head of the public affairs office at for the state Department of Agriculture. After retiring in 1977, he continued writing, publishing articles in publications including Bon Appetit, Motor Boating and Reader’s Digest. The spring 2006 issue of The College included a charming essay Mr. Crandall wrote about his experiences at St. John’s before the New Program. property he donated to the city of Annapolis, bears his name. He was also a shrewd investor in real estate in Annapolis and developed a shopping center in Parole that he owned until the time of his death. CECIL KNIGHTON Cecil Claggett Knighton, class of 1940, a successful entrepreneur in Annapolis, died July 13, 2006. Over the span of his career, Mr. Knighton owned several successful businesses and many different commercial properties in Annapolis. After leaving St. John’s, Mr. Knighton borrowed money from an aunt to buy a small general store in Davidsonville, Md. He sold the store when joined the Army in World War II, serving as a paratrooper in the European theater. He built the Acme Supermarket at the foot of City Dock in 1951. He also opened an auto supply company and a movie house. During the 1950s, he was a successful automobile dealer, known by many as the “car czar.” A parking garage on West Street, built on ROBERT HAZO { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } Robert G. Hazo, Class of 1953, died Jan. 6, 2006, in Pittsburg, Penn. A dedicated alumnus of St. John’s with a great interest in preserving the college’s Program and history, he rarely missed a fall Homecoming, and he was a passionate recruiter of potential Johnnies. A brilliant political analyst, Mr. Hazo founded the University of Pittsburg’s American Experience program, inspired in part by his experience studying the liberal arts at St. John’s. After graduating from the college, he received a senior fellowship to Princeton, a Fulbright scholarship for study at the Sorbonne, and a Rockefeller fellowship to study at the American University of Beirut. �45 {Obituaries} Robert Hazo, class of 1953, rarely missed a Homecoming in Annapolis. In 2005, he brought a prospective student. was passionately devoted to the task of bringing down the many barriers to pain relief faced by millions of other afflicted Americans. He and his wife founded the Pain Relief Network in 2003 to challenge the U.S. government’s legislation on pain medications. ALSO NOTED ERIC GUNNAR BACK (CLASS OF 1964), DECEMBER 5, 2005 ILEANA BASIL (CLASS OF 1973), AUG. 24, 2006 IRENE DORTCH (CLASS OF 1966), AUG. 12, 2006 WILLIAM HABERLAND (CLASS OF 1933), APRIL 22, 2006 Following graduate studies, Mr. Hazo was named associate director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in San Francisco. He then was appointed senior editor for political, legal, social and economic articles at Encyclopedia Britannica. He joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1970. As director of the American Experience Program, he led a program that offered Pittsburgh’s mid- to high-level managers insight into political and economic thought, with the goal of improving the quality of political discourse. In the toast Mr. Hazo gave in honor of his class at Homecoming 2003, Mr. Hazo described his enduring love for the College. “When a group as complex as this comes together for a purpose, the ideal that unites them is perforce a simple one. I know an ideal that is simple and familiar yet mysterious and profound. It is a love affair.” TORIN B. OWENS Torin Bernard Owens, class of 1985, died August 11, 2006, of complications related to pneumonia. Mr. Owens was reared in Fernandina Beach, Fla., and displayed his academic gifts at an early age. By age 14 he was the champion of nine Florida spelling bees. In high school he was awarded numerous honors and scholarships, including the National Achievement Scholarship, National Merit Commended Scholar, and Society of Distinguished American High School Students. By the time he was 17, Mr. Owens had two life objectives: to be a Florida state senator and to graduate from St. John’s College. On May 28, 1985, he reached the latter goal, having written his senior essay on “The Legitimate Powers of Government.” However, a serious car accident in Annapolis in November 1985 changed Mr. Owens’ life and plans. He sustained a traumatic brain injury and spent many years in rehabilitation. Six years after his accident, he began speaking again. A remembrance prepared by his family emphasized that Mr. Owens’ strong faith persisted even in the face of such a devastating blow: “Torin lived in the complete will of God until his demise. He leaves to his relatives, friends, and acquaintances his unbiased love, his open-mindedness, his perseverance, his love of music and the spoken word, his trust and obedience to God, his parents and authorities, his patience, his willingness to explore un-chartered territories. He accepted his lot in life with unfeigned joy.” SEAN GREENWOOD Sean Edward Greenwood (SF86) died on August 23, 2006, of complications from untreated pain. He was the loving husband of Siobhan Reynolds and father of a 14-year-old son, Ronan. Mr. Greenwood worked as a legal assistant at law firm. He was a victim of chronic and debilitating pain, for which he and his family moved to New York in search of progressive pain care. Mr. Greenwood { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } EDWARD C. HUDSON (CLASS OF 1937), JULY 1, 2006 EUGENE F. MARTIN (CLASS OF 1951), FEB. 24, 2006 WILLIAM C. OWENS (CLASS OF 1938), JUNE 20, 2006 WILLIAM WARFIELD ROSS (CLASS OF 1947), JULY 4, 2006 EDWARD SENSENEY (CLASS OF 1952), SEPTEMBER 9, 2006 �46 46 { A F u m m i t A s s o c i a t To n e r sw s } {l ro n he Bell i ow Ne } From the Alumni Association President Homecoming is always a time of remembering and reflection for me. Back on the campus with friends and colleagues and in conversation inside and outside the classroom, I pause and take stock of my Johnnie experience in the context of my life. I also consider my life in the context of the college—both her community and her program of instruction. This homecoming was particularly moving for two reasons. This was our 30th reunion. Many came for the celebration in Santa Fe, and they brought news of others. We huddled in small groups sharing bits of past and hopes for An Official Johnnie by Emily DeBusk (A06) Sixty years ago, Kay Harper earned her first degree, in fine arts, from Goucher College in Baltimore. At that time, Goucher didn’t offer a degree in physics, her original field of interest, and the dean talked her out of her second choice, philosophy. Looking back today on her educational path, Harper believes her time spent in unofficial selfeducation—including 25 years of attending community seminars at St. John’s College in Santa Fe—has been the most fruitful part of her life. This summer, the Alumni Association recognized Harper’s dedication to St. John’s by making her an Honorary Alumna, honoring her as one who possesses all the qualities of a true Johnnie: insatiable curiosity, a love for reading and discussion, and a fierce dedication to lifelong learning. Though she spent one summer at the Graduate Institute, Harper’s experience with St. John’s has been centered on the college’s noncredit offerings, the weekend or evening Community Seminars that draw future. I remembered why some had been especially dear to me in those long-ago days. I discovered that others might have been, too, if circumstances (or I) had been different. The weekend was planned to give us plenty of time to chat over food and drink, dance to the old tunes, listen to Mariachi, laugh and cry with Singin’ in the Rain, meet families, and soak up Santa Fe sunshine. Thanks to all who came back for the fun! The other reason why this homecoming was significant for me is that it was my last homecoming in Santa Fe as president of the Alumni Association. In late September, I’ll celebrate another “last” homecoming when we meet together in Annapolis, and Jason Walsh (A97) will be elected to take my place. These six years have been wonderful. It has been a pleasure to work with the Alumni Association Board as we helped “more alumni connect more often and more richly” to each other and to the college. Throughout my tenure, an image has inspired me. It came from a lecture delivered by Sally Dunn when she was a tutor in Santa Fe. Her subject was friendship, and her source was Aristotle. She explored the various kinds of friendship that Aristotle describes in the Ethics. When she got to the final one—friendship for the Good—she turned to reflections on the college and its program of instruction. Friendship for the Good, you will remember, is when a friend serves as your mirror. He or she is similar enough to you that you see both your strengths and weaknesses reflected in the other. Each interaction opens opportunities to learn and to improve yourself as you are reflected in your friend. Ms. Dunn further extended the image by proposing that our relationship to the program books is also a friendship for the Good. In their pages we see ourselves reflected and, consequently, open opportunities for increased growth toward the Good. As I reflect on my 30th reunion and the closing days in my role as president of the Alumni Association, I want to express my thanks. Thank you for this opportunity to serve you, our community of alumni, and the college that continues to bring us together. Thank you for sharing these friendships for the Good. residents to the campus. After graduating from Goucher, she worked at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in various positions: librarian, editor, sometime fetcher of coffee for professors. While there, she attended lectures and read scientific and medical papers floating around the department. In one paper, she read that the last place in the country to get telephone access was a place called Hidalgo County, New Mexico. She drove her Studebaker across the country and made New Mexico her permanent home. In 1949, she enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico, from which she graduated in 1951 with a major in anthropology and minor in geology. After that, she was able to return to her first love, physics, when she was hired at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Year after year she returns to the community seminars, “reading everything from the Greeks to the Russians,” because she believes that learning is something that will never be finished. Without hesitation, she says that her favorite seminar, led by Barry Goldfarb, was on Plato’s Republic. She was also deeply impressed by seminars on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky led by Steve Van Luchene. Reflecting on her experience at St. John’s, Mrs. Harper noticed that, “College-age students are at the steepest point of their learning curve. They learn fast and well.” She encourages current students to be confident in their education. And although she laughingly implies that she is beyond the peak of the learning curve, her record of unceasing learning testifies to the contrary, and makes her a confirmed Johnnie, official or not. x Glenda Eoyang SF76 Kay Harper has attended Santa Fe community seminars for 25 years. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �47 { o u ni e B c t T w ws s { F rA lm m t h A s s o e ilal i o no N ee r } } Tar Heel Chapter Thrives Akira Kurosawa’s epic film Seven Samurai, Georgioni’s painting The Tempest, and most recently Emmanuel Levinas’ essay “Is Ontology Fundamental?” were among the eclectic works North Carolina chapter members selected for their seminar discussions. “With films, we arrange for a viewing a few days prior to the seminar when we discuss it; paintings can be viewed online,” says Susan Friedman Eversole (SF79), who has been the North Carolina chapter president for the past 11 years. “The person who suggests the work asks the opening question, but we especially welcome visiting tutors to lead our seminars.” Phil LeCuyer, a beloved tutor from Santa Fe, led the group’s June seminar on Levinas’ essay. Eversole, who has lived in Chapel Hill for the past 22 years, says that in the early days she and a few Johnnies met in a local used bookstore for an informal reading group. Then in 1990, she helped spearhead the process to formally charter the chapter. She helped organize regular monthly seminars and social gatherings, drawing members from nearby towns of Durham, Raleigh, and Greensboro, and as far west as Asheville. “There are a lot of retirees in this area,” says Eversole, “as well as young alums who are starting their careers.” According to Eversole, the younger alums are especially interested in the chapter’s social events—such as a recent dinner at La Residence in Chapel Hill—to network and develop career contacts. In addition to attracting retirees, graduate students and young professionals, the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle region is also a magnet for computer professionals. Two of Eversole’s colleagues, Lucy Adams (A78) and G. Kay Bishop (A75) are, like Eversole, employed on long-term contracts with the Environmental Protection Agency, either as software developers or working on computer systems with environmental data. “Given all the universities in the area, we also have several graduate students, even some in medical school, who make time for the seminars,” she says. Alan Brinkley, Barb Smalley, and Rachel Darrow, Chapter Networking Chair. ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-275-9012 rim2u@comcast.net BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 617-666-4381 dianecowan@rcn.com MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410-951-7359 emartin@crs.org CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 rlightburn@gmail.com NEW YORK CITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 president@ sjcalums.com AUSTIN Joe Reynolds, SF69 jpreynolds@ austinrr.com BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen, A77 410-472-9158 deborahcohen@ comcast.net DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbell.net DENVER/BOULDER Lee Katherine Goldstein, SGI90 720-746-1496 LGoldstein@ Lindquist.com NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 415-333-4452 reynaldo.miranda@ gmail.com 47 ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary – Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair – Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76 Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. About eight to ten Johnnies attend each seminar, previously held in an office in the Research Triangle Park, and lately at Eversole’s home in Chapel Hill. In the future, the seminars will meet at the University of North Carolina’s Chapel of the Cross. Eversole, who is retiring as president, passes the helm of the North Carolina chapter to Richard Ross (A82) and Elizabeth Pyle Ross (A92), but she plans to stay active in the chapter. “All of us want to be tutors in our souls, to retire as tutors, to keep our minds working.” x PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ alcoa.com SANTA FE Richard Cowles, SFGI95 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net TRIANGLE CIRCLE, NORTH CAROLINA Susan Eversole, SF79 919-968-4856 sfevers@yahoo.com PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 jlr43@coho.net SEATTLE James Doherty, AFGI76 206-542-3441 jdoherty@mrsc.org WASHINGTON, DC Deborah Papier, A72 202-387-4520 dpapier@verizon.net SOUTH FLORIDA Jon Sackson, A69 305-682-4634 jonathan.sackson@ ubs.com WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weiss, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 805-684-6793 srico@sandi.net SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, AF03 801-364-1097 SOUTHERN CALIF. PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 erin_hanlon@juno.com Elizabeth Eastman, SFGI84 215-482-5697 562-426-1934 helenstevezartarian@ e.eastman@verizon.net mac.com { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �48 marion warren {St. John’s Forever} An Eye for Beauty F ormer St. John’s College president Richard Weigle was skilled in public relations, and one of the smartest things he did for the college was to hire Annapolis photographer Marion E. Warren. Warren took yearbook photos in 1949, and the following year, began shooting promotional shots of the campus. Weigle also arranged for Warren to photograph the emerging Santa Fe campus. Born in 1920 in Billings, Mont., Warren had a lifelong dream of becoming a photographer. After freelancing and briefly working for the Associated Press, he was drafted into the Navy and became a special photographer to the Secretary of the Navy. After the war, he moved to Annapolis and opened a studio. His photos captured city { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } life, watermen on the Chesapeake Bay, and Maryland’s rural communities. He died September 8, 2006. Warren photographed St. John’s people and events up to 1987 when he retired from commercial photography. The Greenfield Library’s photo archive includes more than 400 of Warren’s prints—distinct and remarkable photographs capturing life at the college. x �{Alumni Events Calendar} The Campaign on the Road Tuesday, December 12, 2006 Alumni, parents, and friends of the college in the greater Houston area are invited to join Presidents Christopher Nelson and Michael Peters at The Coronado Club in celebration of “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College. Wine, beer, and light fare will be served. The reception will begin at 6 p.m., with a program beginning at 7 p.m. Contact Penelope Bielagus in the college’s advancement office at 505-984-6113 or pbielagus@sjcsf.edu. The college is planning several additional events across the country in the coming year that are designed to keep alumni informed about how the college is planning for its future; to invite dialogue between the college and its alumni, parents, and supporters; and to build momentum for the campaign. Details on events will be posted on the college Web site: www.stjohnscollege.edu. April 21, 2007 Croquet Match with the Naval Academy. Rain date: April 22 Homecoming scenes from Santa Fe: Above, visiting in Schep’s Garden; Annapolis tutor Sam Kutler (class of 1954), Liz Jenny (SF80) and Lee Goldstein (SFGI90), at Saturday’s picnic; Allan Hoffman (class of 1949) and Steve Thomas (SF74). Photos by teri thomson randall back cover photo by teri nolan { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2006 } �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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 2006 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 32, Issue 3 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Fall 2006. 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_2006 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/bdfc052da98e9e97ae9ae80e313a568f.pdf 58f0edd59f72f9003d7f369d586479b6 PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Tocqueville and Modern America F a l l 2 0 0 7 �On Tocqueville The College (usps 018-750) “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there an image of democracy itself, of its penchants, its character, its prejudices, its passions; I wanted to become acquainted with it only to know at least what we ought to hope or fear from it.” A lexis de Tocqueville’s detailed observations raise such interesting questions for seminar discussions: Do Americans value equality over freedom? Are laws unstable unless they are rooted in the customs and traditions of a society? Is the tyranny of the majority a threat to democracy? Although Tocqueville began his travels in America 176 years ago, so many of his ideas seem relevant today. They prompt us to consider what has changed, what remains constant, and how we think about the American character. Born into an aristocratic family (his father narrowly escaped execution during the Terror), Tocqueville was serving as a magistrate in Versailles when he and his good friend, Gustave de Beaumont, developed the idea to visit America to investigate its penal system. Not long after he landed on American shores in 1831, Tocqueville knew he had found much more to write about in the vast, wild, and complex young country he explored. His letters home were full of his adventures with Beaumont: getting the celebrity treatment in New York, witnessing Chocktaw Indians being driven off their land in the South, nearly perishing in a riverboat accident, and visiting Andrew Jackson in the White House. Tocqueville wrote about prisons when he returned to France, but it was his great work Democracy in America that endures. Tocqueville was critical of America in many ways. He perceived that the country had no great writers, had “good workers and few inventors,” ambitious men but “so few great ambitions,” and bombastic orators. Critics of modern society might agree the Americans are too concerned with material worth, as Tocqueville noted with great disdain in the early 19th century: “The inhabitant of the United States attaches himself to the goods of this world as if he were assured of not dying, and he rushes so precipitately to grasp those that pass within his reach that one would say he fears at each instant he will cease to live before he has enjoyed them.” After publishing Democracy in America, Tocqueville went on to a political career. He married Mary Mottley, a middle-class Englishwoman. He suffered through long bouts of illness in his later years and succumbed to tuberculosis on April 16, 1859. In this issue of The College, Johnnies in many walks of life consider his ideas in light of their own work. A young foreign service officer on her way to Burma, where recent demonstrations for freedom were brutally squashed, offers her views. It’s also interesting to hear from a county councilman who, like the New England township leaders who Tocqueville observed in action, believes that local government can make a difference in the everyday lives of its citizens. is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty, editor Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Gail Griffith, Jenny Hannifin Santa Fe editors Jennifer Behrens, art director Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Caroline Caldwell (SF08) Barbara Goyette (A73) Deborah Spiegelman Susan Swier (AGI06) Krishnan Venkatesh Kea Wilson (A09) —RH Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �Fa l l 2 0 0 7 Vo l u m e 3 3 , I s s u e 3 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 8 Commencement, East and West d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • Remembering Jeffrey Bishop Ariel and Hodson intern adventures Research at 40,000 feet Probing the mysteries of space A groundbreaking ceremony in Santa Fe Celebrating a year for the record books News and announcements 7 letters 32 bibliofile • • • In Santa Fe, celebrating the oral tradition; in Annapolis, pondering a brave new world. • • • 10 “With a Clear and Single Purpose” from the bell towers page page 10 Like Virgil leading Dante, tutors serve as able guides of the Program. A look at how the college views the needs of its faculty. Travis Price (A71) explores the “ethnosphere” in The Archaeology of Tomorrow: Architecture and the Spirit of Place. 16 Saving New Orleans page It will take more than rebuilding homes to put this damaged city back together, says writer and death penalty lawyer Billy Sothern (A98). 36 P RO F I L E S 36 Dr. James Jarvis (A75) is discovering links page 16 24 Tocqueville Revisited page How does Tocqueville’s account of America hold up in the 21st century? Johnnies ponder his observations through the lens of their careers. 34 Homecoming alumni between the environment and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. 40 Myra Kien (SF88) established a nonprofit program that gets young women dancing, talking about their lives, and thinking about their future. 45 Doctoral student Andy Mead (SF04) took to the road last summer to bring attention to juvenile diabetes. 46 49 page page 24 50 52 They came, they gossiped, they ate crabs, and they brought the kids. on the cover Alexis de Tocqueville Illustration by David Johnson alumni voices return to shanxi alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} A Man Who Made a Difference Jeffrey Bishop (1947-2007) It was an extremely fortunate occurrence for St. John’s College—always greatly admired, always struggling financially—that Jeffrey Bishop (HA87) and the college found each other. As a Philadelphiabased fundraising consultant, Mr. Bishop came to Annapolis to analyze the college’s development efforts. Bill Dyal, then president, was so impressed that he invited him to come to Annapolis to carry out the development plan he proposed. Mr. Bishop served St. John’s for two decades, putting the college on more solid financial footing than ever before. Mr. Bishop lost an 11-year battle with kidney cancer on Saturday, July 7, 2007. At the He savored everything that life had to offer. time of his death, he was vice president for collegewide advancement, a position he held for five years. Before that, he served for 15 years as vice president for advancement in Annapolis. In his collegewide post, he coordinated development for the two campuses and focused his efforts on the most ambitious fundraising project in the college’s history. Mr. Bishop’s first major undertaking was “The Campaign for our Fourth Century,” at the time, the college’s most successful fundraising campaign ever, raising $35 million by 1996. Along with other key goals, it allowed the college to create the Greenfield Library out of the building that once housed Maryland’s Hall of Records. He was the architect of the current $125 million capital campaign which has provided funding for the renovation of Mellon Hall, the construction of Gilliam and Spector halls, and substantial increases in funding for student financial aid, faculty development, and tutor salaries. One of his goals was to get the college endowment to $100 million. The endowment reached that mark in 2006, almost a ten-fold increase from when he started at the college in 1987. Mr. Bishop welcomed challenges—the bigger the better. In 1993, he convinced friends and colleagues including Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70), college athletic director Leo Pickens (A78), and former Santa Fe vice president Jeff Morgan to bike from Santa Fe to Annapolis. At the trip’s end, they were given a hero’s welcome on campus and crowned with laurel leaves. In his 20 years with St. John’s, Jeffrey Bishop never passed up a challenge, including a 2,000-mile bicycle trek from the Santa Fe campus to Annapolis in 1993 with colleagues including Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (left). { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } Two years later, Mr. Bishop completed the grueling ParisBrest-Paris bicycle race. He savored everything that life had to offer, especially spending time with friends. In 2004 he fulfilled a personal dream by purchasing a vineyard in southwestern France. He traveled to the vineyard numerous times to help with the harvest and production of his wine, Sanglier Volant. With a charming smile and a genuine interest in others, Mr. Bishop rallied people behind his causes. He loved the college and its people. His degree was from the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, but he was most proud of being an honorary alumnus of St. John’s. At Homecoming in September, the Alumni Association honored him posthumously with its Alumni Award of Merit. Mr. Bishop is survived by his wife, Susan McDonough Bishop (AGI99); his daughter Lauren (A99) and son-in-law Michael Campuzano; his daughter March; his sister, Cindi Macomber; and three nieces and nephews. x �{From the Bell Towers} Beyond the Program Last summer, Remy Maelen (left) explored the publishing world; Jon Kara Sylvester-Johnson established a life review program at a Virginia hospice. Through Ariel Internships in Santa Fe and Hodson Internships in Annapolis, Johnnies devote a summer to exploring future careers and broadening their experiences. victoria smith Devoting Attention to Detail Each morning last summer, Remy Maelen (SF09) entered the sanctuary of Green Lion Press in Santa Fe and considered how to approach the day: work on diagrams, set type, edit, research. Whatever she decided, she knew the task ahead would require painstaking attention to detail. The press, located in the home of press co-directors Dana Densmore and William Donahue, is especially conducive to quiet, focused work. Green Lion specializes in publishing classic texts in the history of science and mathematics. Johnnies are familiar with their editions of Program works, Euclid’s Elements and Aristotle’s Metaphysics among them. Maelen spent much of her summer working with Donahue on a new edition of his English translation of Kepler’s Astronomia Nova, originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1992 but now out of print. “Kepler was very meticulous,” Maelen says. For example, “when he used italics he was writing as a mathematician,” she explains, whereas non-italicized text signals Kepler the philosopher. She started delving into data files from the first edition in order to convert Cambridge’s typesetting codes into those conforming to Green Lion’s typesetting program. She was involved in nearly every aspect of preparing this second 3 edition, from replicating Kepler’s diagrams using professional computer drawing programs to suggesting improvements in the text. “I didn’t realize what an important job I’d be doing, actually having an impact on the words in the book,” she says. “I’ve come to learn the philosophy of the press, getting the text across as it was intended.” Presentation—the layout of each page of a book—is essential to communicating words and ideas, Maelen says. She predicts that her own creative writing will benefit from this understanding. “I’ve learned so many things about myself that I wouldn’t have had access to,” she says. — Deborah Spiegelman Listening to Life Stories One of the best skills that St. John’s students develop is the ability to truly listen to other points of view. But few students are given the opportunity to apply that skill in so meaningful a way as Jon Kara Sylvester-Johnson (A08), who spent last summer recording the stories of terminally ill patients in the care of Good Samaritan Hospice in Virginia. After observing the care her grandmother received in a hospice program several years ago, Sylvester-Johnson was moved by the alternative model of treatment offered by palliative medicine and challenged by the question of how hospice centers could offer patients comparable spiritual care. “I really came to terms with the idea of not using extreme lifesaving measures and the kind of sensitivity it takes to be in a situation where [one has to make] those kinds of choices,” she says. It was that sensitivity to the spiritual life of hospice patients that drew Sylvester-Johnson to the Pastoral Services department at Good Samaritan Hospice in her hometown of Roanoke, Va. But it was only by chance that the hospice had recently received a donation to create Memory Catchers, a “life review” program that allows patients to reflect on their lives and record their stories. With funding from the Hodson Internship Program, Sylvester-Johnson was hired to develop the project. After researching life review programs around the country and reviewing psychological studies that underlie the practice, Sylvester-Johnson and her mentor, the hospice’s Spiritual Director Marvin Barbre, introduced Memory Catchers. During the next two months, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } she acquired audio equipment, wrote the program’s guidelines, trained volunteers, informed nurses and social workers, and began a comprehensive archive of patient testimonials. But the most challenging part of her internship, she says, was conducting the interviews. Rather than beginning with a list of questions, SylvesterJohnson tailored each visit to the individual’s needs. “Sometimes if a patient has a small child, you can have a message recorded for that child for when they’re older,” she says. “We had one patient we wanted to record singing. Some of them just want to have a conversation with you.” As she returns to the seminar table for her senior year, Sylvester-Johnson is engaging in different types of conversations. But listening to the final testimonials of hospice patients has reminded her that at St. John’s, “there has to be an element of self-exploration about what we do, as opposed to just what we think. If not, she adds, “our education is no more valuable than [that of] any other liberal arts college in the country.” — Kea Wilson (A09) �4 {From the Bell Towers} Flying High Santa Fe Student Conducts Research in the Stratosphere On July 27, Michael Curry (SF09) became the first undergraduate college student to fly on the National Science Foundation’s HIAPER Gulfstream-V research aircraft. HIAPER, which stands for Highperformance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research, is a new “flying laboratory.” Curry’s task was to help test a new laser-based moisture instrument during a nine-hour flight from Colorado to the central Gulf of Mexico and back. Scientists sampled conditions ranging from the marine atmosphere over the Gulf of Mexico to stratospheric conditions near 47,000 feet. In contrast, most commercial aircraft fly around 35,000 feet, on rare occasions climbing to 40,000 feet. The purpose of the research is to develop better moisture measurements for weather and climate prediction. Curry was part of a team of about a dozen scientists testing new instruments for the aircraft. The opportunity to join the expedition came about because Curry was working as a National Science Foundation REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) intern under the supervision of Mark Zondlo, a senior research scientist at Southwest Sciences, Inc. Curry was the second Johnnie to spend a fruitful summer at Tracking Gamma-Rays Annapolis Tutor Part of NASA Project Sometime next spring, when NASA launches a powerful new space telescope, Annapolis tutor Jim Beall can claim a piece of this effort to illuminate some of the most persistent mysteries of the universe. An astrophysicist, Beall spends part of his time away from St. John’s at the E.O. Hulburt Center for Space Research at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., where his own curiosity about space is directed toward long-running research projects. The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is quite different from the telescopes at the college observatory. This instrument will measure gamma-rays, the highest energy form of electromagnetic radiation, in an effort to understand more about pheonomena such as quasars, pulsars, and black holes. As part of a team of scientists working at universities and research centers all over the country, Beall has been helping to develop computers that can determine the direction of gamma-rays and convert data into a map in gamma-ray light. In the 1990s, Beall worked on ARGOS, a satellite data collection system with computers that were the forerunners to those on GLAST. The challenge of this project, Beall says, is developing fast computers that can operate in the radiation of space. Scientists can then convert data collected from the computers into an image of gamma-rays in the night sky. Active galaxies and quasars emit other frequencies as well, such as radio and optical light. Southwest Sciences, which is based in Santa Fe. Last year, Kate Brubaker (SF07) conducted similar studies with Zondlo.x Michael Curry’s summer internship included a research project aboard a flying laboratory for atmospheric science. Scientists can determine the physical parameters of the sources by combining radio and optical light with the detected gamma-rays in order to “see” the energy distribution over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. “The actual sources of the gamma-rays can change in brightness,” he says. “This means that the image changes as a function of time, so we have to construct a time history as well as a complete spectrum from the data. This is then used to determine the source parameters, and ultimately to tell what causes the emission from black holes and quasars.” As part of the GLAST project, Beall has also been conducting research on jets— columns of material sent out from the cores of active galaxies or quasars, much like a jet of water from a fire hose. Over the past 25 years, astrophysicists have learned that much of the radiation detected from quasars comes from bi-directional jets emitted from black holes. For much of those 25 years, Beall has been conducting research to understand the nature of these jets and how they affect the region near the quasars. “If we understand how these jets affect the regions near the cores of quasars, we can perhaps tell what the jets are made of,” says Beall. “This can ultimately allow us to speculate on how these jets are produced, a problem (among many others) that we have not solved to anyone’s satisfaction.” At St. John’s, Beall mentors students interested in astronomy and astrophysics, and has helped them to secure internships and apply to graduate schools. Erin Bonning (A97), who worked at the Naval Research Laboratory for two years before going off to earn a doctorate in general relativity, is now an astronomer at the Observatory of Paris at Meudon. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{From the Bell Towers} jane phillips Last July, Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74), a physician in Sacramento, Calif., gave the college a $5 million gift, announced during the Santa Fe kickoff of the college’s $125 million capital campaign. Exactly a year later, Dr. Levan joined members of the college community in a ceremonial groundbreaking for the center for the Graduate Institute that will bear his name. The Norman and Betty Levan Hall will house classrooms, offices and common rooms for the institute. Dr. Levan is a professor emeritus and former chief of dermatology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. He took time off to spend a summer at the institute, just to investigate the program, and found it so gratifying that he kept coming back.“The Graduate Institute changed my life,” he said in announcing his gift. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on the building site, located between Weigle Hall and the Fine Arts Building. More than a hundred people attended the ceremony. “We are honored by Dr. Levan’s affiliation with us and our unique brand of education,” said Michael Peters, president of the Santa Fe campus. Campaign Chairman Ron Fielding (A70) spoke to how Dr. Levan’s gift will serve the campus and future generations jane phillips Breaking Ground in Santa Fe A Remarkable Year Perhaps two great myths about St. John’s College and fundraising can be put to rest forever: St. John’s doesn’t like to ask alumni for money, and alumni don’t like to be asked for money. The evidence suggests otherwise: • In 2006-07, the college recorded its most successful fundraising year ever, raising $19,404,889 in gifts to the college’s $125 million capital campaign by the close of the fiscal year on June 30, 2007. 5 Fifty-four percent of the gifts came from alumni. • As part of the campaign, alumni gave more to the Annual Fund than ever before, exceeding the $2.89 million goal by about two percent. • The total number of alumni gifts to the college has climbed significantly over the past seven years. In the last fiscal year, alumni made 3,004 gifts to the college, compared to about 2,000 gifts in the year 2000. of Graduate Institute students. “One of the major priorities of the capital campaign is to fund building projects, and in that regard, the new Norman and Betty Levan Hall is a jewel in the campaign crown.” Dr. Levan joined Board of Visitors and Governors Chairman Sharon Bishop (Class of 1965), Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70), Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Fielding in the ground-breaking ceremony. Under tents on Meem Placita, accompanied by a monsoon • In the summer of 2008, the college expects to announce a successful conclusion to the capital campaign, with a total of $119.2 million in gifts and pledges raised as of October 1, 2007. • Not only do the college’s 8,300 alumni believe in supporting the college financially, but alumni themselves are also doing more to support the college’s advancement efforts. Philanthropia, the alumni development council, has spearheaded a number of successful peerto-peer efforts to inform { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } Dr. Norman Levan (third from right and below) helped break ground for the new Graduate Institute center in Santa Fe. rain, speeches and toasts were offered to Dr. Levan. His own words were brief, as he explained that at the Graduate Institute he found a place to nurture his desire to be a lifelong learner. —Jenny Hannifin alumni about the college’s financial needs and to boost support for the Annual Fund. With Philanthropia’s help, the college hopes to reach a new set of goals for the 2007-08 fiscal year, guaranteeing a successful end to the campaign. This year the mark is set at 40 percent giving and at least 3,400 gifts made. For more information about Philanthropia and how you can help, visit the college Web site: www.stjohnscollege.edu.x �6 {From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements Connecting Fine Arts and Liberal Arts Jut a few days after commencement in May, Luke Kirkland (SF07) and Chelsea Batten (A07) found themselves transported from the halls of St. John’s to the studio of sculptor Greg Wyatt in the former crypt of St. John the Divine in New York City. It was only their first stop on the National Endowment for the Arts’ inaugural Visual Arts/Liberal Arts workshop, which would take the two graduates from New York to Europe for a month-long program. Santa Fe tutor Grant Franks (A77) and Annapolis tutor Patricia Locke were among the scholars and artists who designed the workshop, created to deepen the connections between the liberal arts and the fine arts. The experience centered on in-depth study of European writers and artists, with a special focus on the works of Shakespeare and Rembrandt. Participants were flown to Europe to sculpt alongside the works of Monet in the gardens of Giverny, study Rembrandt in Amsterdam, and discuss King Lear in the theaters of Stratford-on-Avon. Six liberal arts students were selected to participate in the program, as well as six students studying visual arts or theatre. Regardless of their artistic inclinations, all students were required to pick up a paintbrush and attempt to replicate Rembrandt’s colors. Similarly, the young artists were required to sit at a seminar table to discuss Macbeth with liberal arts students. For Kirkland, the workshop was much more than a jaunt to Europe. “Exposure to and engagement with the tangible, with the explicit and physical reality of Rembrandt’s work was a great exercise after the intellectual work of St. John’s,” he says. Franks observed that the fine arts students also benefited by discussing texts in seminars. Through modeling “hands-on, interdisciplinary, discussionbased and self-motivated learning in the presence of classics, St. John’s certainly made its mark,” he said. Brooklyn College Honors Eva Brann At commencement ceremonies last May, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York honored tutor Eva Brann (HA86) with its Distinguished Alumna Service Medal. In accepting her award, Miss Brann noted a memorable teacher at Brooklyn College, Alice Kober, her professor for Classics 101. The course had a bad beginning when Miss Brann flunked her first exam, on Homer. “It took me down some and then sat me down to my assigned reading,” she said. “And so I discovered Homer and began to attend to the unflamboyant fire of her classroom talk. I had no idea that she was a world-famous pioneer in the decipherment of the writing of Homer’s heroes. But I became a classics major, eventually an archeologist.” New Tutors, Annapolis The Annapolis campus welcomed two new tutors this fall: Amanda Printz has a BA from Guilford College and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Southern California. She was a teaching assistant at USC from 20002005. Gregory Recco has a BA from SUNY at Stony Brook and a PhD in Philosophy from Pennsylvania State University. He was a graduate instructor at Penn State from 1996-2003 and an assistant professor of Philosophy at Skidmore College from 2003-07. New Staff Maggie Melson has joined the Annapolis staff as special assistant to President Christopher Nelson (SF70). She joins the college from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., where she was director of external relations. Melson will act as a liaison to staff, faculty, students, and the wider community. Luke Kirkland (SF07) presents his work during an NEAsponsored workshop last summer. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } Faculty News Tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson of the Annapolis campus took part in an August workshop marking the 300th anniversary of the work of Leonhard Euler, the l8th-century, Swiss-born mathematician. Held at the Mathematical Research Institute at Oberwolfach in Germany’s Black Forest, the five-day gathering brought scholars from around the world. Wilson spoke on Euler’s influence in the development of celestial mechanics. Wilson also contributed to a collection of essays titled Leonhard Euler: Life, Work, and Legacy, written by Euler scholars from seven countries and published earlier this year by the Elsevier Press. Wilson’s chapter is entitled “Euler and the Application of Analytical Mathematics in Astronomy.” Class Gift Update The Santa Fe Class of 2004 has made progress in its ambitious plan to present the Santa Fe campus with an operational replica of 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe’s armillary sphere. The class began with $6,000 at the end of May 2004, and the collegemanaged account now totals $26,800. The class needs to raise at least $100,000. The committee plans to work with artist David Harber to design and construct the 1.5-meter equatorial armillary sphere. As both a scientific instrument and a sculpture, the sphere will serve as a symbol and as a reminder of the unity of the sciences and the humanities. To find out more about the project, please visit the SF04 Armillary Sphere Project homepage on SJC Alumni website (http://alumni.stjohnscollege. edu) or contact the committee at armillarysphere@alumni. stjohnscollege.edu. x �7 {Letters} Music in the 1940s This is a slight quibble over your article “Sing Goddess” on music and the Program (Spring 2007). It leaves the impression that prior to 1949, thanks to their indifference to music, the founders of the Program had created a barren, music-less wasteland. While it is certainly true that music did not become “a formal part” of the Program in those early years, it was present in a number of ways. First, because music is one of the quadrivium, in several of the most quixotic of the early laboratory classes there was a study of sound, music and their relationship to astronomy. Second, tutor Nicholas Nabokov recruited, conducted, and gave concerts with a student chorus throughout the war. He had been recruited by Buchanan especially for his musical abilities. Finally, Buchanan scheduled several concerts as formal lectures during the year. As students during the forties, we were privileged to hear several topnotch chamber groups. . . . I don’t want to detract an iota from the magnificent contributions of Victor Zuckerkandl and Douglas Allanbrook in making music an integral part of the program. It is just that the forties were not quite a musical wasteland, and our esteemed founders did, indeed, have an appreciation for music. George M. Van Sant (Class of 1947) Musical Dimensions I read with interest The College articles on the music curriculum [Spring 2007], mulling over the tutors’ struggles with that part of the Program, and reflecting on my student experience and on my subsequent work as a scholar librarian of music. I have three observations. One is that many tutors who are passionate about music are also inarticulate according the conventions of Program study and discussion. The result often is they make the subject of music seem mystifying to their colleagues and students. . . . Peter Pesic’s contribution, “A Dialogue Between Ancients and Moderns,” is beautiful, but I doubt it is understandable to half of the college faculty. A second observation is that there seems to be an assumption, shared by many faculty, that one has to sing or perform music well in order to discuss music. According to that logic, one has to draw well in order to discuss geometry and its visual figures. To be sure, good drawing skills and singing practice may increase a student’s disposition for learning geometry and music. But in math tutorial practice, plane lines are rarely drawn straight on the chalkboard; nonetheless, the demonstrations are executed well enough to proceed from one proof to the next. Everyone should have the same confidence for learning in the music tutorial, even if their performing abilities are as bad as their drawing skills. The third is the trepidation that many of the quoted faculty feel, using words like “worry,” “scary,” the need to feel “more comfortable” . . . leading tutorials on music. All faculty should feel the same trepidation for every seminar and tutorial they supervise, not just for music. This is the very trepidation for the immeasurable task of education that Jacob Klein expressed before delivering several of his Friday night lectures. In my thoughts, I begin with music as a perceptible if intangible entity. Then the first question that I ask is, “What are the dimensions of music?” From my research, I have to come to think there are three: melody (including time, rhythm, and words [that may be likened in notation to linear length]); harmony (that may be likened in notation to spatial width); and tone (including timbre and volume [that may be likened to depth, which is very difficult to render in notation]). There may be another dynamic, perhaps unnamed dimension of music suggested by the phenomenon of harmonic overtones. As an audio-time art, music is too imperfect to demonstrate its properties through demonstrative propositions in the manner of Euclid. But . . . the identification of dimensions may enable some elements, postulates, axioms, and quantitative measures that could serve towards a foundation of reasoned, indeed “musical” study and discussion, as tools with which to examine examples of music of varying kinds and origins, and as bases of assessment of the various writings of music theory and performance practice, including the kind of dialogue between Grand View and Practical View that Elliot Zuckerman well describes in his article. Perhaps one may use the conventions acquired in freshman math of discussing planes and solids in order to discuss music according to its dimensional characteristics and properties. I conclude from last issue’s articles that sober, reasoned work has yet to be done on the music tutorial. . . . Edward Komara (A88) Remembering Music Your article “ ‘Sing, Goddess’: Music and the Program” suggests further research is needed in the teaching of music at St. John’s College before 1949. Certainly there were experts in music then. The composer Elliott Carter was a tutor, 1939-41, and Nicolas Nabokov 1941-44. Carter, whom I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting, told me--or maybe it was Victor Zuckerkandl—that music was studied somehow by looking at scores. Meanwhile, it’s good to learn that Zuckerkandl’s writing is now part of the prescribed canon. Carter’s exciting and distinguished music should also be. Eyvind Ronquist (Class of 1961) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } Preparing Tutors The Spring 2007 article on the music program managed to convey much of its richness and complexity, as well as the challenge it poses to our commitment to teach and to learn across the full range of the liberal arts. I would like to offer one small clarification. Since the most recent revision of the Annapolis music tutorial by Elizabeth Blettner, with help from Michael Littleton, Peter Kalkavage, Bill Pastille, Tom May and others, more tutors have taught the tutorial for the first time than during any previous comparable period. Nonetheless, many tutors still find the challenge formidable and feel the need of assistance and encouragement to undertake it. Michael Dink (A75) Dean, Annapolis Not the First Lady I enjoyed your coverage of the 25th St. John’s-Navy croquet match, but I did want to correct a couple of details. First of all, I do not go (nor have I ever gone) by the title of “First Lady Wicket.” And while John Ertle was the Imperial Wicket in the first intercollegiate match, he was not the first Imperial Wicket for St. John’s. He inherited the title from Johnny Schiavo (A81), and there were others before him. John prefers the title of Imperial Wicket Emeritus, bestowed upon him by the Delegate Council in 1984. Finally, the unidentified “young boy” in your picture is our younger son David. Kathy Oggins Ertle (A84) Correction: In the article “Pop Johnnies,” (Spring 2007) a quote by Ayn Rand on art as a “selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value judgments” was mistakenly attributed to Marcel Proust. Send letters to The College at reharty.sjca.edu, or mail to 60 College Ave., Annapolis, MD 21401. �{Commencement} 8 COMMENCEMENT “When Dogs Could Talk” photos by teri thomson randall N. Scott Momaday, author, poet, playwright, painter, and storyteller, gave the commencement address in Santa Fe on May 19. One hundred six undergraduates and 25 Graduate Institute students received their degrees. A member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969 for his first novel, House Made of Dawn. In his 1976 book, The Way to Rainy Mountain, Momaday combines stories of Kiowa Indian myth and history with his own personal reminiscences. Momaday’s address, “When Dogs Could Talk: Among Words in a State of Grace,” described the history and characteristics of words in the oral tradition. Drawing his title from an expression used by Kiowa elders to refer to an event that happened long ago, Momaday explored the mystery inherent in one of mankind’s oldest art forms, the oral tradition. Although modern literature has come to comfortably inhabit the world of the written word, Momaday argued that the oral tradition has not died, suggesting instead that “to the extent that the deepest belief in the efficacy of language survives, it survives in the oral tradition.” In contemporary Western civilization, however, it is a dimension of language that is frequently neglected. He reminded the audience that “more than half the population of the world does without writing at this moment in time.” The oral tradition is present even within written works themselves, or wherever else language is invoked in all its power, creativity, and magic, he said. He cited Hamlet and the Gettysburg Address as two significant and timeless written works whose vitality stems from their power in speech. “In Beowulf, or in the Book of Job, or in the Navajo Prayer from the Night Chant, the language of story is the Above, M. Scott Momaday speaks to Santa Fe graduates about the beauty of the oral tradition. Above right, Santa Fe President Michael Peters congratulates Elise Hanrahan, while at left, Camilo Alba Navarro and Renee Albrecht-Mallinger await their degrees. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } language of poetry, plain, exalted, and oral,” he said. “It is the language of surfaces rather than symbols, faceted like the bright prisms of the dragon’s hoard.” Exploring the language of surfaces rather than the language of symbols, Momaday found an enchanting dimension of words, which he suggests are as old as language itself. He feels that the oral tradition returns him to a time when language is just being born, “a time when dogs could talk,” and he likens himself to dwelling “among words in a state of grace.” —Caroline Caldwell (SF08) �9 {Commencement} “How Brave a New World?” Above, Joshua Saks and Karen Tobin-Ippolito, newly minted GI graduates; below left, Leon Kass gave the commencement speech; below right, Blair Thompson, left, and Chelsea Stiegman (both A07) await their degrees. becomes our spur to love and transcendence.” In our time, Kass said, “honest reflection” on the human experience isn’t enough to counter the dehumanizing effects of technology; Johnnies, however, have a foundation for reflection. “The great books education offered by this College is second to none in furnishing minds and hearts with the wherewithal for living . . . a thoughtful and richly human life, in defiance of the temptation to settle photos by gary pierpoint In his commencement address in Annapolis on May 13, bioethicist, scholar, and former St. John’s tutor Leon Kass drew from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to explore how scientific progress bears upon the question of what it means to be human. He suggested to the 103 undergraduates and 40 Graduate Institute students that their education prepared them to think carefully about what may be sacrificed in the name of scientific progress. Kass is now Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and Hertog Fellow in Social Thought at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2005 and still serves on the council. For more than 30 years, he has been engaged with ethical and philosophical issues raised by biomedical advances, and, more recently, with broader moral and cultural issues. Huxley’s novel remains an important cautionary tale, said Kass. The author depicts a world in which man has become so dehumanized by technological achievements that while seemingly content, “he does not even realize what he has lost.” The similarities “between Huxley’s fictional world and ours are increasingly disquieting, especially since our technologies of bio-psychoengineering are still in their infancy, yet vividly reveal what they might look like in their full maturity,” Kass said. “Moreover, the cultural changes technology has already wrought among us should make us worry even more than Huxley would have had us do.” In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Kass pointed out, Prospero’s magic is no match for his innocent daughter’s view of humanity. “Not her father’s magical control of nature, but limited humankind’s reaching for understanding and association, precisely in response to our natural limitations, is—for Miranda and for us—the truly wondrous human achievement,” he said. “Recognition of our finitude becomes the source of aspiration, and mindfulness of mortality { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } for the degrading satisfactions of biotechnological happiness,” Kass said. “Only at this college do students and faculty still talk wholeheartedly and without embarrassment about the human soul.” —Emily DeBusk (A07) Editor’s note: The complete commencement addresses are available on the college Web site: www.stjohnscollege.edu. �10 {Capital Campaign} “WITH A CLEAR AND SINGLE PURPOSE” The Tutors and the Program by Barbara Goyette (A73) and Rosemary Harty W ith the vision of Virgil, the persistence of Socrates, the rigor of Euclid, and the insight of Shakespeare, St. John’s tutors bring the program of instruction to life. Every era at St. John’s since the 1937 inception of the New Program has had its memorable tutors, whom alumni remember long after they have graduated. Today, experienced and new tutors from many fields of studies lead students through the Program. It is hard to describe the essence of what a tutor does in the classroom. Indeed, their “methods” in seminars, laboratories, and tutorials vary from intense engagement in class discussions to provocative silence on the issues at hand. Tutors guide, direct, nudge, inspire, and otherwise enable students to become full participants in the dialogue. Tutor Eva Brann, after five decades at St. John’s, describes the life of a tutor as “an alternation of exhilaration and despair, as classes go well or ill, as we ourselves feel a sense of having gotten something or being confounded. That teacher’s wave train is amplified by our . . . sense of responsibility without the power to compel by grades, or by lectures,” she wrote in her essay “Unique and Universal.” Preparing for classes each week is only one of a tutor’s tasks. Tutors participate in constant evaluation of the Program through weekly archon meetings and the Instruction Committee; they meet with students for paper conferences, advising, and guidance about graduate school or other opportunities; they participate in informal study groups, both with { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{Capital Campaign} their colleagues and with students. They spend Saturday mornings of Homecoming leading seminars for reunion classes and travel to other cities to lead Executive Seminars for business leaders seeking to learn from the great books. In short, he tutors at St. John’s College devote themselves to the Program. A Spirit of Inquiry anthony russo During his tenure as dean in Annapolis (1986-90), tutor emeritus Thomas Slakey (HA86) read hundreds of letters from applicants for the handful of tutor openings each year at St. John’s. More than two decades later, he still remembers a letter from a scholar who had written her dissertation on Portuguese literature and had been living among indigenous tribes in Brazil. “In terms of her background, she really didn’t have any of the preparation you might expect, but she seemed like an interesting person,” Slakey recalls. “We appointed her, and she was an immediate success.” Hiring Judy Seeger to join the faculty in 1990 is something Slakey is still proud of years later. Why was she so perfect for St. John’s? “She has an inquiring mind,” he says. Slakey joined the college in 1959 and in 1964 went out to Santa Fe to become one of the founding faculty members there. He took a few “breaks” from the college over the years, becoming chief academic officer at St. Mary’s College from 1971-76. He later spent three years in the early 1980s starting a program modeled on St. John’s at a Kentucky university, then returned to Annapolis. “I was in and out of the college quite a bit, and I was always glad to get back,” he says. “The thing that St. John’s really does, and does well, is help people learn to read well, to pay attention to what a text says, one book at a time. That’s the thing that makes teaching there so pleasant, reading and learning from the students.” However, colleagues at other institutions and other academics Slakey met over the years were puzzled by how tutors at St. John’s teach across the curriculum. “Most academics think it’s crazy,” he says. “I was involved in a discus- 11 sion with a very great scholar on Dante, and when he discovered I was teaching Dante, and I couldn’t read Italian, he thought I was a disgrace. Specialists don’t understand someone like me teaching math and biology when I knew nothing about it when I came to St. John’s.” Supporting tutors as they branch out beyond their discipline and keeping tutors’ minds ripe for inquiry should be important goals for the college, Slakey says. “For me, a major difficulty was the variety of material and the difficulty of getting as much mastery as I would have liked. I know that I worked very hard and I struggled at times,” he says. To continue to attract the best tutors, the college must work harder to offer competitive salaries. “We have to keep salaries competitive with similar institutions,” he says. “No one is going to come to St. John’s to try to get rich, but particularly when tutors are raising families in expensive cities, salaries have to be a priority.” Aiming for the Median For the sake of the students and the continued integrity of the Program, St. John’s must be able to recruit and retain excellent tutors. Compensation is a major factor in drawing good teachers and keeping them at the college. The college has always lagged behind its peer institutions in the salary it has been able to pay tutors, primarily because endowment has been insufficient to meet this need. At the time Annapolis President Christopher Nelson joined the college in 1991, St. John’s occupied last place in the salaries it paid among a group of about 45 national liberal arts schools including Pomona, Amherst, Colby, Davidson, and Bucknell. Ten years ago, Santa Fe and Annapolis together averaged 26 percent below the median level of compensation. Through gradual and steady increases, by 2007 the college had reached six percent below the median of 44 peer colleges. “We never quite reached the median, but we’ve been climbing up the ranks,” Nelson says. “When and if we hit that target { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �12 {Capital Campaign} demetrios fotos will depend on the growth of the endowment relative to these other colleges.” Each one percent increase in tutor com-pensation (including salary and benefits) costs the college $130,000 for the entire teaching faculty on both campuses. To close the six percent gap, the college would have to find another $780,000 each year or a $15.6 million increase in endowment, which can be spent at the rate of five percent annually in perpetuity. The college’s service-based salary system sets a minimum of $52,500 for new tutors. It’s a concern for Nelson that tutors on both campuses are struggling to meet housing costs and raise families in the expensive communities of Santa Fe and Annapolis. “We want our tutors to be able to live decent lives without taking second jobs, to buy a home in our communities, to be able to afford a babysitter so they can come to Friday lecture or enjoy a dinner out occasionally,” he says. Until he became president of the Annapolis campus, Nelson says, he hadn’t realized how much the college asks of its tutors. “As a student, I had no idea how deep, how well read, how interesting the tutors are at St. John’s,” Nelson said. “I sat in on Instruction Committee interviews of prospective tutors, and I came to realize how engaged they are in learning both within and outside the Program.” At St. John’s, tutors spend more time in the classroom than their peers at liberal arts colleges, and although freed from publishing and research requirements, “they spend a lot of time outside the classroom working to help the students and improve the college,” he says. Annapolis Tutor Tom May shares his views on the ODYSSEY with Nicole Miller (AGI08) Since its beginnings, the Program was structured to make tutors available to students as part of a learning community—much different from the relationship between faculty and students at most institutions, he says. “There’s no substitute for conversation with young people who are eager to learn, and that’s what our tutors do so well,” he says. “They listen, they question, and they guide.” Faculty Development Approaching 2,000-year-old texts afresh each semester is a challenge tutors meet with enthusiasm and energy. And yet, for their own development as learners in the Program and as scholars dedicated to venturing beyond the bounds of a single department of academic endeavor, they must continually renew their minds. One way the college supports this effort is through faculty development, mainly in the form of study groups for which the leaders and participants receive compensation or release-time from a portion of their teaching. By meeting together with colleagues and working through an unfamiliar text, tutors expand their ability to address questions and to see connections between various parts of the program. Study groups can prepare tutors to teach in areas where they have little or no experience, such as a 2005 summer study group led by tutor Howard Fisher in Santa Fe. For eight weeks the tutors worked through most of the experiments conducted { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �13 in the first semester of senior laboratory, a part of the Program that can be daunting for faculty who lack scientific backgrounds. “It’s sometimes the case that tutors who feel confident participating in a study of the papers read in senior year don’t feel very comfortable with the practical aspects,” explains Fisher. “The only way really to participate in the laboratory activity is practice; it’s the same for tutors as for students.” As they conducted experiments such as the photoelectric effect, tutors could see the connections their students would be making in the classroom as they worked through modern atomic theories. “From a theoretical point of view, it’s quite wonderful that we find ourselves returning to questions that were central in the freshman year, the whole idea of the constitution of the atom, and what kind of explanation physical science should strive for. The very questions we began with, bill denison {Capital Campaign} Gifts to the capital campaign support faculty development, such as this study group on senior laboratory in Santa Fe. From left to right are: tutors Janet Dougherty. Stephen Van Luchene, Howard Fisher, and Lynda Myers. we return to in a very different context. It’s an ongoing demonstration that questioning doesn’t stop,” says Mr. Fisher. The college is equally committed to providing these opportunities for formal study groups by granting tutors release time to plan and lead the groups, or compensating tutors for the additional time they spend in formal study during the summer. Through the capital campaign, the college hopes to raise $8 million in endowment and Annual Fund gifts to support faculty development in the future. “We don’t appoint tutors because they have a specialty in a certain area,” Mr. Fisher notes. “We appoint tutors because they are interested in the kind of broad study that our students want. They want to study things and read books for the sake of wisdom. They need the opportunity to become fruitful students and fruitful leaders of classes.” Campaign Update As of September 30, 2007, the Campaign for St. John’s College has raised $119.2 million in gifts and pledges toward the $125 million goal. The campaign seeks to raise funds for three major priorities: to support students with need-based financial aid and improved services; to increase faculty salaries to the median of peer institutions and provide more faculty development opportunities; and to fund building projects, including renovations and additions, on the two campuses. Money raised through the campaign has already made a significant difference to the college, through growth in the Annual Fund (which provides operating expenses for instruction and financial aid), growth in the endowment, and new buildings. These leadership gifts have contributed to the campaign’s success: • Ronald Fielding (A70) made a $10 million gift to fund scholarships. He has also pledged to give another $2.5 million to the campaign if St. John’s alumni match that amount through first-time or increased gifts as well as pledges to the college. • Warren Spector (A81) provided funding for a new dormitory in Annapolis. • A single anonymous donor contributed $12 million, earmarked for the college’s annual spending needs and for endowment. • The Hodson Trust has given $11 million for the construction of Gilliam Hall and for Mellon Hall renovations, for student internships, for IT development, and for teacher fellowships to the Graduate Institute. • Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) made a gift of $5 million for the construction of a Graduate Institute center in Santa Fe. • Alumni, friends of the college, and foundations have pledged $26.5 million to help support faculty salaries and development, through the Eva Brann Tutorship and various grants for faculty study groups. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �14 {Tutor Profile} In the Presence of Great Things Eric Salem (A77), Annapolis bill denison He was much more eager to teach across the curriculum than to The best thing about being a tutor at St. John’s, says Eric Salem be “the political theory guy” in a political science department, (A77), “is that you’re always in the presence of things that are Salem says. But on the other hand, he gave up the ability to devote really great.” The worst thing about being a tutor? Exactly the focused and prolonged attention to a book or idea. “That’s what’s same thing, he says. so nice about these summer study groups,” he says. “This is a way “You’re in the presence of things that are great, but there’s to do really concentrated work with your colleagues so that you always a strain,” Salem says, “You never feel as if you can stop can develop your own understanding of some of the books and and say, ‘Ah, I’m ready for this class.’ There’s always more to texts that are central to the program. They really do help your think about.” thinking.” If alumni remember how overwhelmed they sometimes felt Over the years, Salem has taken part in groups on Chekhov, on trying to prepare for class, they understand the challenges tutors face. “You always have to try not just to get hold of what’s going on Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, on Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, and on Leibniz’s mathein the book, but also to be open to what everyone else is saying, to matical papers. Salem earned a stipend to take part in some of the respond to the best things in what people are saying—it’s hard opportunities, but the group with whom he studied Aristotle for work,” he says. 10 years engaged in their endeavor just for the joy of it. After graduating from St. John’s, Salem went to the University Most of Salem’s outside of Dallas for doctoral studies in pursuits center on reading. politics and literature. SpecialHe also plays jazz and classical izing in political theory was an guitar, and runs regularly in his “accident,” Salem says. “What I Annapolis neighborhood. He really wanted to do was study a unwinds by reading novels in subset of the books I had been other languages and reads Plato, reading at St. John’s, slow down Aristotle, and Heidegger for and read carefully,” he says. At enjoyment. “Right now, Peter the college, he developed a Kalkavage, Eva Brann, and I are special interest in ideas raised by translating (and discussing books including the Nicoendlessly) Plato’s Statesman, an machean Ethics (the relationship activity that combines pure fun between thinking and acting) and and seriousness in just the right War and Peace (families as part proportions,” he says. of a political community). Asked to reflect on a single “Reading that novel made me quality that makes a tutor right think that political questions for St. John’s, Salem proposes were something I really needed to that it’s the “willingness to start think hard about,” he says. all over again, again and again.” Former St. John’s tutor “I’m eager to do it,” Salem Thomas Slakey (HA94) recruited says. “But I rely on the students Salem to join him at Whitney to help me remember that I don’t Young College at Kentucky State really know much. I prize above University, where he was leading all those moments—and they efforts to create a program come in almost every class or similar to the St. John’s program. study group meeting or conversaSlakey stayed just a few years, tion—when the bottom falls out of but Salem spent seven years my understanding and when my there before he became too students and colleagues force me frustrated by standard university to look at books and the world as bureaucracy. if I were seeing them for the first “Then I had the opportunity to time.” x come to St. John’s,” Salem says. At St. John’s tutors such as Eric Salem (A77) enjoy learning “I wanted to come back to this —rosemary Harty together with students such as Emmanuel Thomas (A09). way of teaching and learning.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{Tutor Profile} 15 Exploring the Unknown Jessica Jerome, Santa Fe christopher quinn MacLean Center for Bioethics. Her interest in international L ast summer, under the auspices of a National Science health care matched the MacLean Center’s endeavors, and there Foundation grant, St. John’s tutor Jessica Jerome spent nine she trained as a medical ethics consultant to hospital staff and weeks in the poorest neighborhoods of Fortaleza, Brazil, patients at the University of Chicago. conducting fieldwork among HIV-positive mothers. The work “Working at MacLean was different from my previous was intellectually challenging and physically exhausting, made training,” she explains. “Most of the other people in the fellowmore so because Jerome was in the second trimester of her own ship program were medical doctors, and I was thrown into the first pregnancy. material with them. I think that prepared me for the experience The summer of 2007 was the first of two that Jerome will of St. John’s in terms of working closely with people of very devote to the Brazil project, exploring the psychological, social, different backgrounds and disciplines, and working with material and economic motivations for reproductive and medical decision that I wasn’t already familiar with.” making among mothers with HIV. She conducted extensive St. John’s offered similar challenges for Jerome as a first-year interviews of women who have borne one or more children after tutor, when she taught freshman math, freshman seminar, and learning of a positive HIV diagnosis. By providing qualitative freshman laboratory. “I just assumed that I wouldn’t be put data about these women’s motivations to bear children and directly in the math and science classes,” she said. “When David receive medical treatment in Fortaleza, the study will contribute Levine [then the dean] told me that St. John’s threw tutors into greatly to the growing body of literature on reproductive and the Program, that they wanted us to be learning with the medical decision-making in the context of HIV. students, I didn’t realize how seriously they took that!” Jerome is excited about the opportunity to connect what she’s The college takes seriously its learned from the program at mission to educate students in all St. John’s to her research. fields, including math and “I believe that we should really science, for four years, observes think about our experience and Jerome. “There’s something our activity in the world, to be really generous, and something reflective about it,” she says. to be respected, in this belief that “Lectures are more about what we teach here is knowledge transmitting facts, or a kind of that anyone can learn,” she says. knowledge that has already been “Anybody who puts her mind to produced. The interesting thing it, and works with herself and about the pedagogy at St. John’s others, should be able to get is that it assumes that the knowlthrough this program. That is edge is not preexisting, and that really encouraging.” you are creating it as you’re Opportunities to acquire a talking. When that works, it’s a broad liberal arts education in beautiful thing.” this country are narrowing, says Jerome plans to involve Jerome. That’s one of the things Johnnies in her research. She that drew her to the college. hopes to support students who “St. John’s offers students a are interested in careers in social valuable opportunity to take four science and public health policy years not just to learn about ideas, and to widen opportunities for but also to gain confidence that summer internships, such as they can learn, and to prepare those available under Santa Fe’s themselves to face the world and Ariel Program. She currently move forward, no matter what serves on the committee that they do,” she says. x reviews applications for the program, which provides —Jenny Hannifin stipends for internships. Between her graduate work on medical decision making and Santa Fe tutor Jessica Jerome enjoys the opportunity to tutoring at St. John’s, Jerome learn along with her students. did a postdoctoral stint at the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �16 {After the Storm} AFTER THE STORM Rebuilding Alone Can’t Fix the City Billy Sothern (A98) Loves by Rosemary Harty long with Plantation Tours, Voodoo Tours and Ghost Tours, the Katrina bus tour remains a popular sightseeing option for visitors to New Orleans these days. Buses take tourists from the fine hotels in the French Quarter and the Garden District to the sites of one of America’s most incomprehensible catastrophes, showing the devastation and the rebuilding underway in the worst-hit neighborhoods. But take a tour with Billy Sothern (A98) in his Subaru station wagon, Zydeco music on the radio, and although you’ll see many of the same places—the FEMA trailer parks, the Lower Ninth Ward, the places where the levees failed— you’ll hear very different views. Commercial tour guides are unlikely to tell you that people are rebuilding in subdivisions that never should have been developed in the first place. They probably won’t suggest that bringing residents home to devastated suburbs weakens a central city reeling from the loss of 40 percent of its population and a good chunk of its tax base. As much as Sothern loves the city that he and his wife made their home six years ago, he is sharply critical of the way the federal, state, and local governments are handling the recovery. “I think there’s a way we can redevelop the city so that everyone who wants to can return,” Sothern says. A “My argument is that New Orleans should go back to its historic footprint, where people can live safely without massive and largely unsuccessful efforts to build bigger levies. The idea that we can beat back nature is flawed and hubristic. We’ve had people who tried that for a long time, and that dynamic always seems to end the same way—as it will again in New Orleans.” Since graduating from New York University Law School, Sothern has worked in New Orleans as a staff attorney at the Capital Appeals Project, a nonprofit organization that provides legal services to individuals facing capital punishment. Since Katrina slammed into the city on August 29, 2005, he’s been sharing his views on New Orleans in The Nation and The New York Times, and on the online journal Salon.com. This summer, the University of California Press published his first book, Down in New Orleans: Reflections From a Drowned City. He begins with an account of his evacuation from New Orleans with his wife, Nikki Page (A98), describing how their lives changed after Katrina, and analyzes long-standing social problems that pose a more serious threat to the city than any force of nature. In the book, Sothern celebrates all that he loves about the city, but he’s cynical about why Louisiana has captured the nation’s attention. “Part of the interest of the rest of the country in what happened is that New Orleans is this place with this interesting culture, music, food, Mardi Gras,” he says. “But is New Orleans worthy of the country’s attention because we make good food? We merit the assistance of the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{After the Storm} “The idea that we can beat back nature is flawed and hubristic.” nikki page Billy Sothern (A98) Billy Sothern (A98), in front of a shuttered New Orleans housing project, says the city can’t recover until poverty and inequality are remedied. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } 17 �18 {After the Storm} rest of the country not merely by virtue of the fact that we’re Americans, but merely because we’re interesting? To me that would seem like a fairly poor reflection on American culture.” “Welcome to the Twilight Zone” nikki page On a steamy day in early June, with thunderstorms threatening and gray skies adding to the bleakness, Sothern drives into the Mid-City District, just a few miles from his downtown office. When the levees designed to protect the city failed, 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded, including this middle-class neighborhood. Watermarks, once brown from roiling muddy water, faded now to a sickly yellow, mark the facades at various levels. “Look how high the water got on that ranch house,” he says, “right to the top of the window. It’s almost to the roofline on that white house.” Many homes here are still boarded up, and “for sale” signs are plentiful, as are the spray-painted marks left on the houses by search teams who swept through flooded neighborhoods after the disaster. They marked how many people were found, dead and alive, and sometimes added other information—“dog on roof,” for example. From Mid-City, Sothern drives over ruined roads to Lakeview and the site of the 17th Street Canal, where the first levee breach took place. Unlike other levees, which were overtopped, the 17th Street Canal failed at its foundation. A U.S. Senate committee cited design flaws and a lack of regular inspections as contributory factors. For the most part, the neighborhoods here were underwater, and residents who tried to ride out the storm in their homes had to be rescued from their rooftops, Sothern says. “This was a high-density suburban community,” Sothern says. “All these empty lots are the sites of cleared homes.” Most of the street signs in Lakeview are gone, though some residents have posted handmade signs for people to find them. The abandoned homes, bad roads and absent street signs are remnants of the storm, but even before Katrina, Sothern says, New Orleans lacked many of the services other well-governed cities take for granted. The schools were in disrepair, the parks were neglected, and weeds overran the highway medians—all thanks to “laissez-faire government,” says Sothern. “Down here, there’s a different relationship between the government and the citizenry and a different bent of what people are entitled to in their daily lives,” he says. “People get all excited about libertarianism, but is this guy supposed to come out and fix this road?” he asks, pointing to a man working on his home. “Are these people supposed to pool their resources and rebuild the levies themselves? It’s an absurdity.” Next, Sothern turns into a more affluent neighborhood along Lake Ponchartrain, where the hurricane damaged homes but no flooding occurred because the subdivision was built on high ground. In this pleasant cul-de-sac, all the front yards are landscaped and carefully groomed, and cars are in every driveway. The normalcy is in sharp contrast to neighboring Gentilly, where many homes still sit empty. Flooding was extensive here, and along with the Ninth Ward, Gentilly saw the highest number of deaths. A sign on one lawn proclaims “The Road Home is a Dead End,” reflecting a common opinion of the federally funded homeowner’s compensation plan. “This neighborhood is really struggling,” Sothern observes. “You may have one or two families back on each block. It has to be scary here at night, scary to not get government services, scary to invest so much of your life and your future in a place where the prospects are genuinely unclear.” The ruts in the road get deeper near the London Avenue Canal, where two { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } Hurricane Katrina destroyed this warehouse for Mardi Gras floats. �19 {After the Storm} “Huge portions of the city are no safer from catastrophic flooding than they were before.” Billy Sothern (A98) nikki page A survivor attends a ceremony marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Aug. 29, 2006. breaches of the levee allowed water from the industrial canal to flood the neighborhoods here. “Welcome to the Twilight Zone” is scrawled in spray paint across the front of one abandoned house. A resident watches warily as Sothern drives slowly down his street, perhaps tired of curiosityseekers and tourists. It’s natural for Americans to admire the resiliency of those determined to rebuild, Sothern says. “The gut reaction any person would have would be to root for these people and see them return to their homes but those choices have to be tempered with reason, and I think they haven’t been,” he says. “People are investing their entire futures and the safety of their families, and it’s all predicated on very poor information. Huge portions of the city are no safer from catastrophic flooding than they were before the storm.” That includes New Orleans East, a sprawling development built on cypress wetlands that were drained by the Army Corps of Engineers. In the 1970s, the developer of this area attracted buyers from deteriorating and dangerous inner city neighborhoods with the promise of offering a safe place to raise families. “This was supposed to be the American dream,” Sothern says. The land was virtually worthless until the federal government spent millions draining the wetlands. Within a few years, the folly of building in a swamp was evident in sinking driveways and cracked foundations. Flooding after Katrina was extensive here, and now more government resources are reviving an area that in Sothern’s view never should have been built. If a struggling city wants to grow stronger, its policies should bring residents back to the urban core of New Orleans, to viable neighborhoods built on high ground. Yet nothing is being done at any level of government to encourage that, he says. That’s what frustrates him the most—government and citizens together clinging to a cycle of disaster. “When these people go back to their homes, they need water, they need garbage pick-up, they need police out here, and it’s all going to put a strain on New Orleans,” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{After the Storm} nikki page 20 Sothern says. “Yet there’s nothing vaguely resembling a tax base that would support this, and it’s hard to imagine that after two years, any more people are going to come back.” From Gentilly, Sothern heads outside the city limits to St. Bernard Parish. With a staggering loss of population (76 percent, according to census data) and diminished revenues, the government here is struggling to provide basic services. “I read that 95 percent of the homes here flooded,” Sothern says. The government complex has not been rebuilt, so the parish council meets in a trailer, and each of the council members lost his or her home. Sothern crosses the parish line back into the city, into the famous Lower Ninth Ward. Here, entire blocks are reverting to nature, with only remnants of driveways, concrete steps, and the pilings of foundations poking through the weeds. “No neighborhood bears the scars of Katrina as vividly,” says Sothern. “The force of the water was pretty strong here, that’s why there’s nothing. When Nikki and I first came down A scene typical of the destruction in the Lower Ninth Ward. “No neighborhood bears the scars of Katrina more vividly,” Sothern says. here, houses were on top of cars, cars were on top of houses— it was outrageous. It looks better now, empty.” Through the national media, the Lower Ninth became emblematic of the misery that followed Katrina, but Sothern believes Americans should focus more on the problems this neighborhood struggled with before, poverty in particular. Because this land was prone to flooding, it was one of the few places where the city’s poorest residents, many of them elderly, could afford to live. According to 2000 U.S. census data, half of the neighborhood’s residents lived on incomes of less than $20,000 a year. After Katrina, residents feared a land grab in the Ninth Ward. Rumors circulated that developers would buy up the land for casinos. “That didn’t happen,” Sothern says. “No one wants this land.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{After the Storm} Providing Context 21 coming down here I could see I wanted to do death penalty work,” he explains. “Looking back, it’s something I would Whether he’s writing about the Ninth Ward for The Nation, be attracted to fighting against—it’s the most severe, the or preparing a brief in a death penalty case for the Louisiana most heinous type of punishment.” Supreme Court, Sothern seeks to look deeply at issues to try In Louisiana in 2007, 88 inmates were on Death Row, to get at the basic truths behind events and opinions. including Sothern’s client Shon Miller. In March 1999, after “I view this as the core value of my St. John’s education,” he shooting his mother-in-law at her home, Miller walked into says. “The harder you look at things, the more complicated a church in Gonzales, La., and shot his two-year-old son, his they become. Everything I write is always about providing estranged wife, and a church deacon. After he was found context. It’s a consequence of reading books with other guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, Miller was people, for days and weeks and months, where we never sentenced to death by lethal injection. arrived at something that was unambiguously true.” During his apprehension, Miller was shot in the back, and In the seven years he’s worked with Death Row inmates his injuries left him a paraplegic. Held in an isolation cell of and defendants in capital cases, Sothern has come to know the hospital wing at Angola, he developed osteomyelitis, a their families and their communities. He has seen how painful condition attacking his bones. Sothern met Miller crime, poverty, and substandard schools factor in their when he was assigned to try to work with the prison to get stories, and it’s made him reflect on his own path in life. better health care and living conditions for Miller. “When I As a teenager, Sothern was caught selling drugs. Instead of went to meet him, I was outraged by the conditions he was going to jail, he ended up reading the great books at St. living in, and that they were only because he was disabled,” John’s. he said. “He’s in very bad After his legal issues were physical and psychological resolved, Sothern was living shape.” in New York’s Little Italy, a After Sothern filed suit high school dropout trying In August 2005, Mathieu de Schutter (SF94) was a resiunder the American Disabilto educate himself by dent at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, while his wife, ities Act, the prison made reading everything he could Sara Roahen (SF94), worked as a food and restaurant some concessions, including find, books like Augustine’s writer for the weekly Gambit, an alternative newspaper. allowing Miller some Confessions. A friend who They had moved to New Orleans so that he could attend time outdoors. Now life is had attended the college medical school at Tulane. They evacuated during the “marginally better” for his steered him to St. John’s, storm and plans to have Mathieu do his residency in New client, Sothern says. A year where Sothern thrived. Orleans changed when the program there was disconago Sothern filed a brief with tinued. Now they are living in Philadelphia, where he is in “Attending St. John’s was the Louisiana Supreme his second year of an anesthesia residency at the University the single best decision I Court, seeking a new trial of Pennsylvania. “He has two to three years of training ever made,” he says. “I went for Miller. He argued that left, depending on whether he chooses to do a fellowship,” from being a street kid to the Miller was denied a fair reports Roahen. “We still own our house in New Orleans person I am today.” and miss it every day. We hope to live there again, but trial for two reasons: he After graduation, Sothern after what Katrina did to our long-terms plans, we are a was not permitted to enter earned his law degree at little gun shy about making other plans at the moment.” a plea of not guilty by NYU, where one summer he Roahen visits Louisiana often and still writes about reason of insanity, in spite of interned with the Capital food and culture. Currently, she is at work on an oral a long history of mental Appeals Project. In 2001, he history initiative with gumbo and boudain makers there. illness, and the court refused joined the project as a staff Her book, Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New to allow a nationally known attorney, a job he loves Orleans Table, will be published at Mardi Gras time in criminal defense attorney to despite the long hours and February 2008. “You may pre-order it on Amazon represent Miller. low pay. “I knew I wanted to “We Miss It Every Day” already!” she says. x do criminal work, and after { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �22 {After the Storm} nikki page “It was an objectively horrifying crime,” Sothern acknowledges, “but it’s in situations like this when the Constitution and rights afforded to the defendant become most important because there’s the greatest chance of passion and prejudice.” In working for his clients, Sothern draws on “the complexities of their lives” and the context in which their acts should be considered. Both of Miller’s parents were dead by the time Miller was three. He was raised by a foster family, spent time in mental institutions, and never received good mental health care. Last May, Sothern argued his case before the Louisiana Supreme Court. “I started the story with how police found Shon in a shed, talking and hearing voices that weren’t there, because the issues that were were important most related to his mental illness on the night of the crime,” he says. “The state comes into court and says, ‘This is a cold-blooded killer, he deserves to die.’ It’s my job to reframe that issue so that we view this event, this crime, in context.” On June 29, the Supreme Court reversed Miller’s conviction, ruling that the trial court judge’s refusal to allow Miller to plead not guilty by reason of insanity led to a “constitutionally flawed jury trial.” The state plans to retry Miller later this year. If the case does get to court, Sothern hopes his client will escape the death penalty this time, but Nikki Page and Billy Sothern, in the lush garden of their Irish Channel home. the reality is that Miller is more likely to die from his illness in prison. Sothern often gives books to his clients—Shakespeare or Thucydides, for example. Miller isn’t a reader, but Sothern gave him a recording of The Chronicles of Narnia, believing that its Christian themes would resonate with his client. “I love talking about books with prisoners, about the Bible, about anything. Death Row is a lonely place, and it’s amazing to see such remarkable thoughts and ideas coming from such a dark place. I find it consistently impressive—not just about my clients, but about humanity—how people are able to transcend their circumstances.” Trying to Move On Like many who love New Orleans, Billy Sothern and Nikki Page are staying in the city, looking ahead, and making plans for the future. Their house on Carondelet Street, a few blocks from the Superdome, was damaged by Katrina’s winds, but their neighborhood stayed dry. They were able to come back to the city within a few weeks after the storm, though some of their good friends have left the city for good. Page spotted their new home in the historic Irish Channel neighborhood while she was driving through the city, looking at houses for a friend. The building needed a lot of work, but she could see the former glory in the 1850s Ital- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{After the Storm} ianate “double-gallery” with high ceilings, elegant parlors, and a second-story porch that looks out on a Hazel (A69) and Larry Schlueter (A67) stayed in their lively street. The backyard is Uptown home during Katrina with Hazel’s mother, who a gardener’s paradise, with was 91 at the time. Hazel is a musician; Larry is retired from the U.S. Customs Service, and they lead a bluegrass banana trees, bearded band called “Hazel and the Delta Ramblers.” The hurripalms, Japanese magnolia, cane damaged their roof, windows blew out, and Larry and swamp lilies, spray roses, Hazel patched up and mopped up as water poured in. and bird of paradise plants. Two days after the storm, with water cut off and power The barbed wire around the still out, they left the city. Hazel recalls driving across the backyard fence, Sothern Greater New Orleans Bridge, watching people trying to says, will soon come down. walk out of the flooded city. “It was heartbreaking,” she They rent out their other says. “There were people on crutches. A woman was draghome because the market is ging her babies across in a cardboard box. It didn’t feel like too bad to try to sell it right this was America.” now. They settled temporarily in Dallas with their son, If Sothern coped with his Charles (A90), and his family. They moved back to the city anger over the storm and its almost as soon as they were allowed back in. Their small aftermath by writing, Page, insurance settlement wasn’t even enough to pay for the an artist, tried to make sense new roof, so Larry has done most of the work himself. of the disaster through her “Where we live, the area is in comparatively good shape, camera lens. When the but right on my square there are five houses where the couple drove back to the city roofs have not been repaired and the houses are just sitting at nighttime in mid-October, there, empty,” says Hazel. “There was a fire in our neighshe was shocked by what borhood and the water pressure was low. There’s hardly greeted her. “The first thing anybody employed by the city. Much of the work and I noticed was the smell, and progress is by personal citizens spending their own then the lack of light, the money.” trash piles,” she says. “The Because many families have left the city for good, she has city was really eerie, preglost all her music students and her income from private lessons. But Hazel and the Delta Ramblers are still in nant with that sense of demand, playing at clubs, festivals, and farmer’s markets death.” around town. For a while, a musician’s fund subsidized their Originally from Maine, gigs. “I think we’ll stay, but it’s almost like every day there’s Page attended a state universomething different to consider,” Hazel says, a little wearily. sity before finding her way to “You’d think there’d be more progress by now. It just wears St. John’s, where she spotted you down.” x her future husband from across the room at a party in Annapolis. She taught in New York and New Orleans, but now devotes herself full time to an art career. She takes classes at the New Orleans Academy of Art and gives private lessons in the studio she created in their new home. “That was the first room we finished,” she says. Hoping for Progress { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } 23 When Down in New Orleans came out, Sothern gave interviews on NPR and other radio stations, and signed his book at local bookstores. While he spent the first anniversary of Katrina attending a commemoration, he spent the second anniversary painting his dining room. “It’s been such an awful couple of years,” he says, that he decided to mark the anniversary “by trying to move on.” Things have to change in New Orleans, and in spite of it all, Sothern believes they can. In his book, he points to the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company as an example of a tragedy that shook people into action— though it took 20 years for the New Deal to seriously address poverty and improve working conditions in America. Sothern hopes it won’t take that long for New Orleans. “I continue to have this hope that the city could be a focal point, where it could change our country for the better,” he says. “Because if it doesn’t, then all this suffering will have been in vain.” x �24 {Tocqueville} CONSIDERING TOCQUEVILLE by Patricia Dempsey H ow many of Alexis de Tocqueville’s keen observations of America’s spirited, burgeoning democracy hold true today? These six Johnnies—who work in human rights law, government, public service, the ministry, and the military—reflect on passages from Democracy in America. The Manner in which American Democracy Conducts Foreign Affairs “Foreign policy demands the use of scarcely any of the qualities and characteristics of a democracy. . . .” Raised by a Korean mother and an American father (Santa Fe tutor Michael Bybee), Foreign Service Officer Chelsia Wheeler (SF03) observed cultural misunderstandings in her household “on a daily basis,” she says. Today she seeks to build understanding among different cultures. Before joining the Foreign Service, Wheeler interned with the U.S. Embassy in Singapore and taught English in Korea. In September, Wheeler went on assignment to Burma where she will travel the country “to engage the locals in conversations about democracy.” (The views expressed in this article do not reflect the official policy of the U.S. government.) Tocqueville is talking about the aristocracy when he describes a continuity of power. The aristocracy has continuity of memory—an institutional memory. You don’t have a change every four years; you don’t have ever-changing leadership. In this regard the Foreign Service is like an aristocracy because there is a continuity of institutional memory; we’re not political appointees, so we provide that continuity that in Tocqueville’s day the aristocracy would provide. In the U.S., there is some continuity in government institutions—what Tocqueville describes as aristocratic institutions—I hate to use the word “aristocratic” and I certainly don’t feel like one, but I do think that in some sense that’s what our Foreign Service jobs are. We provide the continuity. When I worked in Singapore, there was an amazing institutional memory. You don’t always see this in a country that is not a pure democracy. The institutional continuity of the government has been good for Singapore. In our country our government policies swing back and forth as public perceptions change. When Tocqueville talks about the need for secrecy and patience in foreign affairs, I think he is right. It’s hard for { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{Tocqueville} 25 gary pierpoint Chelsia Wheeler (SF03) will see how her views on foreign policy play out in her current assignment, in Burma. me to accept on some levels, but it is true that if you put everything out there for people to vote on, including very sensitive issues of foreign policy, you would not get anything done. Even policies in Congress go through so slowly. So foreign policy needs to be streamlined. In the case of the Iraq War, for instance, there are many non-sexy topics that do not go through Congress quickly. Iraq waits around for Congress to vote on the budget to increase our aid. There are many, many countries who must wait on budget decisions, and they’re waiting on the U.S. timetable to find out if they are getting any aid. These countries are often not in the press. Tocqueville was very much a product of his time. Tocqueville is not always completely accurate, but what he has gotten right is very important. It’s interesting what he takes out of foreign policy. It was largely true at the time he was writing that Americans were isolationists. It was for our own survival. And I think that it is in some ways true today. Yes, we do get involved and we give help and we have alliances, but we do value our independence. It wasn’t until after World War II, when we were economically dominant and secure, that our isolationism changed. Tocqueville talks about isolation as a way for the United States not to bend to other countries. We are still trying to keep ourselves independent in many ways. However, [to be neutral] is not possible for a country such as the United States because we are politically and economically important. Other countries look to us for leadership. In the early 1800s Americans sent huge numbers of missionaries abroad, and that’s the first time that we appeared to be less isolated. Another example, besides the missionaries, is relief to other countries. In World War I, the Red Cross went abroad. Private Americans citizens are always at the forefront of giving aid and relief. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �26 {Tocqueville} “We still may not be able, even as a majority, to stop certain things from happening. The majority, for instance, may want to stop the war in Iraq, but yet they can’t.” Peter Weiss (Class of 1946) Tyranny of the Ma jority “I place the origin of all powers in the will of the majority. . . .One universal law has been made . . . that is the law of justice.” [Tocqueville] says that the tyranny of the majority is absolute, and that if it were checked somehow we could have a working democracy that is just. What I find missing in this discussion is the fact that in the United States this check is supposed to come from the Constitution. The Constitution enshrines with the force of law a set of values that were created during enlightened times in the history of this country. While history proceeds in one direction, the norms and values may christopher huston Peter Weiss (class of 1946), a retired intellectual property attorney, now devotes himself to human rights and nuclear disarmament issues from his New York City home. When Weiss was 21, tutor James Martin, who had worked with the Bureau of Economic Warfare during World War II and later headed the office created to break up the cartels that financed Hitler, brought Weiss to Berlin to work as a translator. “This brought me face-toface with what had happened in Nazi Germany,” says Weiss. “I lost part of my family to the Holocaust, and of course there was the later era, the McCarthy period, here in the United States, and my reaction to it—all these shaped my work as a human rights activist.” move in another direction; so we still may not be able, even as a majority, to stop certain things from happening. The majority, for instance, may want to stop the war in Iraq, but yet they can’t. And this is because today there is too much power in the executive office. Tocqueville was writing about 30 years after Marbury v. Madison, which establishes that the Constitution overrides the will of the majority and of the executive. There are not many countries where this is the case and it may not even be the case in this country at this particular time. This is the great thing about the American system. Yet the majority is guided by an aggressive executive. I’m talking about the state of things in the United States today. Arthur Schlesinger called it “the imperial presidency.” The American Constitution was written with checks and balances, yet it fails so often, particularly in the case of a strong executive. Tocqueville is correct when he describes a general, universal law, the law of justice. Antigone is an example of this when she says to Creon that she does not have to obey his law because there is a law from the gods that trumps that. In the case of human rights, I don’t care where this more just law comes from; whether from the gods, the Constitution, or a treaty. It needs to be respected. Since the Nuremberg trials, there’s been progress, there’s In retirement, lawyer Peter Weiss (class of 1946) devotes even more time to human rights advocacy. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �27 gary pierpoint {Tocqueville} been the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So now there are certain things that are universally accepted as human rights violations: for example torture, slavery or rape, just like piracy 200 years ago. Tocqueville is right in this regard. There is a universal law of mankind. The watchwords of tyranny are “by any means necessary.” This implies extreme actions, such as those going on in Guantanamo Bay. Yet I have not given up hope. So many attorneys have come forward to help defend these [detained] individuals, and that is when I can’t help but be proud of the American system, the American legal establishment. And I hope that the next 10 years will be a period of enlightenment. How Religion in the United States Makes Full Use of Democratic Tendencies “The first object . . . of religions is to provide for each of these essential questions a tidy solution.” The Rev. Adrien Dawson (A96), who is rector of St. Mark’s on the Hill in Pikesville, Md., was surprised at her career The Rev. Adrien Dawson (A96) encourages theological questioning as a way of deepening one’s relationship with God. choice. “Being an Episcopal priest is the last thing I would have expected I’d be. Both of my parents were hippie refugees from religion, and by the time they got married they had sworn off church,” she says. At St. John’s, Dawson was converted by the Old Testament. “The human condition pieces in the Old Testament are powerful—the way in which God keeps saying, ‘I’m still with you, I’m not going to abandon you.’ A central question for me has always been: Why is it that some people have faith and some don’t?” When I read about how the first object of religion is to furnish a solution, I laughed out loud. I thought, “Wow. If only.” Tocqueville’s premise is that religion’s job is to have tidy answers for these existential, philosophical, firstmover kind of questions. Where I differ from Tocqueville is that I see religion much more as a framework in which all of your doubts and uncertainties can exist and be chal- { T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Fall 2007 } �28 {Tocqueville} “For Tocqueville religion is the schoolmarm of people’s passions.” The Rev. Adrien Dawson (A96) lenged; it gives you a safe place to wrestle with all of that. There are religions of practice and religions of answers. I say, “We don’t have all the answers. Come join us in this practice.” Tocqueville is looking at all religions as religions that have answers. The world view that Tocqueville describes is one in which religious and social/political spheres don’t meet. The priests stay in their realm and don’t ever venture into the political; they don’t leave the steps of the church. While the Koran gets political, the Gospels [do not]. [Yet] so much of what gets described in the Gospels is Jesus challenging the social and political norms of the day. He’s killed as a rebel against Rome, not because he has some sort of faith practice—it’s his political power that gets him crucified. In restricting the realm of religion, Tocqueville makes a safe religion that keeps everybody in check. You don’t get too extreme in your love of worldly possessions because we have religion here that’s going to reign you in, teach you about charity. For Tocqueville religion is the schoolmarm of people’s passions. And then, get out of the way—because the rest of the political sphere belongs to a purely secular world. I don’t agree with Tocqueville’s read on what the Gospel offers. There are plenty of times when people of faith have stood up and said, “I can do no other, because my faith, the Scripture, tells me this is wrong. I have to challenge what’s going on.” So there are all different ways in which the Gospel has come out to challenge the authority of the social/political context. In our own context today of watching democracy unfold, religion gets bandied about a lot. Today the politicians choose hot-button issues such as abortion, gay marriage, the death penalty—and cite religious reasons for their political positions. What Makes Democratic Armies Weaker Than Other Armies at the Outset of a Campaign and more Dangerous in Prolonged Warfare “Equality allows all to be ambitious while death makes sure that there are continuing opportunities to satisfy that ambition.” Lieutenant Colonel (Hon.) Frank Giuseffi (SFGI96), keeps issues of The College on a coffee table in his office at the Missouri Military Academy, where he is academic dean. “I want visitors to know how important the liberal arts are to the intellectual formation of our students,” he says. Giuseffi, whose father is a retired Marine, chose a slightly different path— military education. Along with his duties as dean, Giuseffi teaches history and uses readings such as Democracy in America to help the cadets grapple with fundamental questions. “These cadets are facing life-and-death issues,” he says. “They sense that the age of heroism may be waning, yet they want their service in the military, and their lives, to have meaning.” Lt. Col. (Hon.) Frank Giuseffi (SFGI96), left, shares Tocqueville’s ideas with cadets at the Missouri Military Academy. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{Tocqueville} 29 “I find this point particularly ironic: Equality can open the door to greatness. It is this very equality that fosters some to lead and some to follow. That’s part of the military culture in a democracy.” Lt. Col. (Hon.) Frank Giuseffi (SFGI96) It is true that during war soldiers and officers have an opportunity to prove their military greatness more. There are certain accolades that one receives during war depending on how well one performs. So there may be some ambition there. I would say Tocqueville in some ways is correct. But I cannot be inside the mind of a general or a colonel. I would say it depends a lot on the individual. It depends a lot on how the public sees this war. In many ways, soldiers are affected by the level of cynicism towards a war. Perhaps then ambition becomes more important than honor. By the same token, there were many who were known [in Vietnam] to be great military heroes no matter what the public feeling was about the war. I have to question if ambition is really what is behind what motivates someone to serve. I have seen this with many cadets; I think they want to test themselves. They want to test their mettle and courage. A student here a couple years ago was incredibly eager to go to war. He’s done two tours in Iraq and he’s back and he said he has had enough. He doesn’t necessarily articulate why that is and why it was that he went to begin with. But he and many of his fellow cadets are willing to face the fact that they are going to be putting their lives on the line. This is not about ambition and this is not about the debates in the media or among politicians. It’s about fighting and finding out for yourself that you are going to be able to do this. Tocqueville makes a point about the principle of equality of conditions in a democracy in the military. What’s interesting is that in an aristocracy, your rank in the military is based on birth. In a democracy, your career is built out of a base of equality. You are part of a group that started on equal footing, [which] opens the door of ambition to all. I find this point particularly ironic: Equality can open the door to greatness. It is this very equality that fosters some to lead and some to follow. That’s part of the military culture in a democracy. You see the extraordinary leaders come forth. They have to take their orders as a subordinate, but they become heroes and do extraordinary things and break out of the ranks, so to speak, in ways they deem necessary. So the military gives one the opportunity to become courageous, to be a leader, to be altruistic, to save lives, to heal the wounded, to help someone out. It gives one an opportunity to wrestle with the things that make us all more human. Public Spirit in the United States “There is nothing more irksome . . . than the irritable patriotism Americans have.” Noah Kroloff (SF95), deputy chief of staff for Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona, found his way into public service through teaching. His first job after St. John’s was with Teach for America in the South Bronx. “I got eaten alive by the kids, but it was rewarding,” he says. Kroloff then worked for the speaker of the New York State Assembly on public policy issues and campaigns. In 2000 Kroloff, who has a law degree from Arizona State University College of Law, joined Governor Napolitano’s staff. Tocqueville suggests it is in one’s self-interest to work for one’s government. I don’t understand what Tocqueville means in that regard. Is there anything anyone does that is not in some way in one’s self-interest? Everything comes through the governor’s office: issues of public education, natural resources, transportation, health care, economic development. It helps my family, my children, our community, and the wider community if for instance we work to create more education. It is in everyone’s self-interest to contribute to the success of government—this is the backbone of a free society. Tocqueville has amazing observations on society, but they are hard to apply at a practical level. The theoretical is just that. It offers a framework for values, a moral compass. But it is not a good manual on how to get done the day-to-day business of the people. In some ways Tocqueville places the patriotism of citizens in opposition with those who govern. Yet so often, the alignment between public zeal and the elected official—such as the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �30 {Tocqueville} governor of Arizona—must exist The Use Americans since that official was elected by Make of Public the public. In this case, Associations in governing and enforcing laws is Civil Life not difficult because of the “Americans of all ages, condipublic’s zeal and patriotism. tions, and all dispositions conIf the public is for education, stantly unite together.” then is the governor going to decimate it? A thoughtful public As a freshman in Santa Fe, Josh official will have a dialogue. Cohen (SF94) campaigned for the I am very patriotic, but patristudent government by going otism is not one’s duty. It is not from table to table in the cafeteria one’s responsibility to be saying, “I’m running for governinvolved with government. ment to get government off our Patriotism takes many forms; backs.” It worked. Back in this is the great thing about our Annapolis, after serving on a country. One has a right to be or neighborhood board, Cohen was not to be involved if one wishes. Noah Kroloff (SF95) puts his patriotism into action in hooked on grassroots politics. We should encourage patri- Arizona’s state government. “It was a revelation,” he says. otism, but there are different “I thought, ‘Wow, people actually spend their lives devoted notions of what patriotism is. Sometimes it means to take to the issues that affect communities and jobs.’” Cohen, action. Yet what one thinks is a patriotic act might infringe who grew up in Annapolis (his father, Joseph, is a tutor), on the rights of others. Sometimes it means a great or served two terms on the Annapolis City Council and in heroic act. But the great thing is the way our laws and judi2006 was elected to the Anne Arundel County Council. cial systems work to balance actions that may or may not infringe on the liberties of others. Unlike our American democracy 200 years ago, other I have never felt in any way constrained to speak countries had aristocracies where a small number of very out on any issue. Social constraints exist but there influential people were able to issue edicts to direct money are no legal constraints on voting on every issue, which I and resources toward causes. But in America, with the think Tocqueville celebrated. However since Tocqueville’s absence of this nobility, the only way people could get day, the boundaries of our post-9/11 world are more things done in the same way was to form groups. America defined; now there are instances where free speech in the needs these associations because we lack the administraUnited States is limited. Yet we still live in a society whose tive structure that an aristocracy has to get things done. government allows people to say and speak and think what This has a lot to do with the big-government, smallthey choose. government debate that is around today, maybe in a different form. But it’s the debate of “Should government be doing this or should we let the private sector handle this?” This issue that Tocqueville points out is still an issue today. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{Tocqueville} 31 “Special interests really are just collections of people advocating for a specific cause or issue; people are more effective that way. I couldn’t imagine our local government without associations.” Josh Cohen (SF94) As an Anne Arundel County Council member, Josh Cohen (SF94) seeks to make local government work for its citizens. interest in civic life because they’re just starting to own their own homes and they’re just starting to have kids who go to public schools. Those are the two biggest selfinterest motivators: your child’s education and your home. So I don’t really see that people are apathetic. There are always going to be people who say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” but to me that says that by and large our system works really well. Even though we have problems to address, in time we come to address them. It’s really at the local level that people see their actions having the most direct impact. As Tocqueville says they form a common goal. x dimitri fotos In our society, we talk a lot about special interests and how politics need to be separate from special interests. But special interests really are just collections of people advocating for a specific cause or issue; people are more effective that way. I couldn’t imagine our local government without associations. It’s the whole notion of having a representative democracy where elected officials are representatives. But within the constituency that these elected officials represent, there are all these different stakeholder groups that sometimes overlap and offer ways that issues can be debated. People can work to find common ground. [Yet] I think sometimes individual acts are necessary, like Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat. You need individual actions sometimes to spur movements, and groups need leaders who can negotiate and compromise on behalf of the group. Tocqueville talks mainly about commercial and business enterprises, which 200 years ago were the main reasons why people got together to advocate. In today’s culture, people form groups to advocate for a wide variety of issues. The traditional definition of civic groups are those like the Kiwanis and Lions [clubs], these are benevolent groups, just like the Elks, where they form for goodwill purposes. But I think the commercial and industrial associations have more widespread appeal. In every homeowners’ meeting that you attend the subject of property values is going to come up, so in a lot of ways it is an economic association. I think a lot of people my age—I’m 33— are only just now starting to take an { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �32 {Bibliofile} The Archaeology of Tomorrow: Architecture and the Spirit of Place kenneth m. wyner When you step inside architect Travis Price’s home in Washington, D.C., you can’t see the tree forts Price built and played in as a kid growing up in Georgia, but you can feel their presence. As he puts it, “the building tells a story.” Walls of smooth plywood and glass stretch to a leafy canopy of oak trees along Rock Creek Park. The dappled light and elegantly simple amalgam of sustainable materials—there is no sheetrock or paint—makes one feel “wrapped in a tree,” Price writes in his new book, The Archaeology of Tomorrow: Architecture and the Spirit of Place. His four-story, copper-clad residence is almost suspended in the air, tethered by weighted steel cables to a steep slope. “It is floating silence,” says Price. “The design means I can fly, both in the Western sense and in a more Asian, spiritual sense.” A pioneering green architect who designed one of the world’s largest solar buildings, the office complex for the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, Tenn., Price is also a cultural steward. He is adjunct professor and kenneth m. wyner by Travis Price (SF71) Earth Aware Editions (2006) director of the Cultural Studies/Sacred Spaces program at Catholic University’s School of Architecture and Planning. Price treks with his students to sacred sites around the globe to create designs that speak to indigenous cultural stories. In The Archaeology of Tomorrow, Price describes the delicate balance it takes to create a space that is environmentally and culturally sustainable, that radiates mystery, emotion, a spirit of place. “You move through it like a dance. It triggers all kinds of perceptions.” The book features stunning architectural photographs interspersed with phrases that describe each space’s poetry. There is of course Price’s residence (“Floating steel soul”); the light-filled atrium of the Greenfield Library on the Annapolis campus (“Guardian of the light of Plato’s cave”); National Geographic Explorers Hall in Washington, D.C. (“Earth’s flagship of stewardAbove, Travis Price’s Washington, D.C., residence. Left, the Mackenzie House, an explorer’s retreat on Vargas Island, British Columbia. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } ship”); and private residences, including one with a traditional street-side facade that opens to a modern glass-walled addition in the back (“Unseen trees made visible”). But Price’s book is more than a coffee-table compendium of poetry, photography, and design. It is a passionate argument for a future that includes the “mythic modern,” a design that interprets sacred stories and myths in a way that is meaningful, vibrant, and relevant. “I have spent the last 30 years on the ecosphere. The next 30 I want to dedicate to the ‘ethnosphere,’” he says. By “ethnosphere,” a word coined by Price, Wade Davis and tutor Eva Brann, he means all the beliefs, myths, archetypes, and stories spawned since the dawn of civilization. “It’s the geography of human imagination,” says Price. “Great architecture always has stories behind it. Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat—they are all replete with sacred but still metaphysical and metaphorical tales. The job of an architect is to grab the cultural voice of his time and try to make it architecture, spatially carve that experience from big, bold ideas about shapes, right down to textures and materials. You have to search every culture, every locale. Even in cities such as Rome and Washington, you have to look at the layers and crusts of the stories. You will find things that describe that culture if you question enough.” In a chapter titled “Assault on the Spirit: Sprawl, Mall and Tall,” Price traces the development of architecture that is devoid of story and meaning, characterized by ubiquitous shopping malls decorated with faux Greco columns and other remnants of “old stories” that in Price’s view are disconnected from our culture’s heart and soul. “During the Industrial Revolution, the metaphor was the machine,” he says. “I’m not criticizing technology; like nuclear power it was a glorious moment, but there was a down side: the machine as metaphor is sterile and empty. There was no poetry left in architecture.” Price presents a new vision that honors an authentic sense of place. “Let’s revisit the myths, the sacred,” he says. “How do I get day-to-day architecture to have this kind of storytelling?” To find the answer, Price looks at architecture through three lenses: the Stillness of Metaphor and Myth (universal truths); the Time-fullness of Movement (technology); and the �33 chris ranier {Bibliofile} kenneth m. wyner Timelessness of Nature (the physical world). “Time-fullness is about pushing the limits of technology,” he explains. “In my residence, for example, you’re hanging on a bare thread of steel. That alone is dynamic change. The Stillness of Metaphor and Myth is apparent because there is a tranquility that overcomes you. The technology feeds the metaphor but is not overdone.” The design of his home embraces the third lens, Nature, through its use of sustainable insulating techniques and also in more subtle, lyrical ways. Windows are placed so that one can observe the moon in all its phases. Steel scuppers shaped like leaves catch rainwater from the roof and send it tumbling like a waterfall savored from the warm, dry interior. As Price describes it, “You are in the waterfall.” To illustrate architectural design that uses these three lenses, Price takes the reader to places that are familiar, even iconic, such as the Vatican, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, and the Church of the Light in Osaka, Japan. Price devotes much of his book to sacred places that “permeate mind, heart, and matter.” Among them are the Naga Shrine in Nepal, Lake Ealue in British Columbia, and the mystical “thin places” in Ireland. The early Celts believed in sacred “thin places” where past, present, and future are one. Today on Ireland’s west coast, the locals still revere the “thin places” and visitors like Price are compelled to wander the rain-soaked land near the smashing sea to find them. In The Archaeology of Tomorrow, Price describes several { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } On a “Spirit of Place” expedition in Nepal, Price and his students designed this meditation platform, cantilevered over a 100-foot drop. Below left, Price’s living room features a soaring glass wall. expeditions he has led to these mystical sites to look for cultural metaphors in the landscapes. Price and his students, in concert with the local owners, design and build sculptural structures that are in essence shrines. One, in Doonamoe, is a stone path that leads above a blowhole in the ground, where the sea spews forth 110 feet from the coast. Another landscape sculpture, completed this summer, is called “Temples of the Tides of Time.” Like the “thin places” themselves, it connects one with past, present, and future time. “When you actually walk through it you feel a certain reverence,” says Price. “I want to spend the rest of my life doing this—opening the door to the sacred.” —Patricia Dempsey �34 {Homecoming} COMING HOME Fall Fiesta in Santa Fe, Crab Feast in Annapolis F teri thomson randall amy raab photography or Lee Perlman (A73), the logic is irrefutable: He has been attending Homecoming every year since 2003. He is still alive. Therefore, Homecoming keeps him alive. He’s unwilling to test what he calls the “Perlman Principle” by staying home one year, but he’s also had such a good time that he doesn’t mind being bound by superstition. Perlman drives down to Annapolis every year from Boston, where he teaches philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, picking up his friend, Peter Squitieri (A73), in Connecticut along the way. “It’s a little like Groundhog Day,” Perlman said. “I come back every year, so every year a few more people know me.” The college works hard to plan a Homecoming that will appeal to all alumni as well as those who come back during a reunion year to see their classmates. This year, the event in Santa Fe sprang forward into fall, to September 14-16, so that alumni and students could again share the campus. Not without some controversy, the move from July didn’t seem to deter attendance: about 150 participants (alumni and families) came back to enjoy offerings such as the Fiesta Left, Annapolis alumni connect at the Saturday crab feast; below, Kimberly Herb (SF98) and Bob Nash (Schroeder, SF97) at the Fiesta Picnic in Santa Fe. Picnic on the soccer field, the All-Alumni Art Show (the Fibonacci Sequence was the theme this year), children’s activities, and a Homecoming Dinner Dance. On Saturday, photographer Craig Varjabedian and writer Robin Jones (SF84) shared photographs of Southwest landscapes and the stories behind them. Santa Fe artist Eli Levin (SFGI91) reminisced in his Speaking Volumes Lecture, titled “A Townie Interacts with the College on the Hill.” In Annapolis September 28-30, the college hosted 400 alumni and guests. Alumni devoured hundreds of Chesapeake Bay crabs after their morning seminars. Children roamed from face-painting and games to pony rides and a petting zoo. And in the Great Hall, tutors, alumni, and current students marked tutor Eva Brann’s 50th year at the college during the presentation of a Festschrift in her honor. Brann seemed both pleased and abashed by the tribute: “I have spent fifty/seventy-eighth of my life here, roughly 18,250 days,” she said. “To tell the truth, they seem as one day, the earthly counterpart of the nunc stans of eternity, the ‘standing now’ of heaven. People ask me when some event took place. I’ve taken to saying “about 25 years ago,” figuring that the mean can stand for any year. But ask me “who” and “where” and usually a bright image will arise—students, alumni, seminar partners are all in place, my year with them coalesced in one fixed image.” Both campuses welcomed returning Graduate Institute alumni with special celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of the G.I. in Santa Fe and the 30th anniversary in Annapolis. On both campuses, former alumni, current students and faculty toasted the longevity and vitality of the college’s graduate program. Patricia Sollars attended both Homecomings and greatly prefers seeing students and alumni enjoy the weekend together. Alumni enjoy talking with current students about their tutors, their classes, and their future careers, she said. “An enormous benefit of returning to St. John’s is to see that the Program is alive and well, and still thriving in ever-renewing populations of youthful minds and spirits,” she said. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �35 {Homecoming} AT A GLANCE: HOMECOMING 2007 Santa Fe In-Demand Seminars Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” led by Eva Brann (HA89) Exodus 24-40 and Euripides’ Bacchae, led by Robert Sacks (A84) The Lecture “Knowledge, Ignorance and Imitation in Book Ten of Plato’s Republic,” David McNeill (A89) “Jihad: the Muslim Concept of Holy War,” tutor Ken Wolfe (SF94) The Schwag Snappy orange lunch tote Snappy orange lunch tote Honorary Alumni Robert Hunt and Alton (“Red”) Waldron, who have attended the college’s community seminars for more than five decades Tutor emerita Georgia “Susu” Knight, who devoted 33 years to the college Substitute for a Football Game Alumni vs. students soccer game Family nature hike up Monte Sol amy raab photography Annapolis { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } teri thomson randall amy raab photography teri thomson randall amy raab photography Above, top: tutor emerita Georgia S. Knight became an honorary alumna. Bottom, Susan Bishop (AGI99) received the Award of Merit on behalf of her late husband, Jeffrey Bishop, who died in July; Award of Merit winner Lovejoy Duryea (A67) also received an Award of Merit. Left: a storyteller delights children in Annapolis; Bottom, left to right, Lee Munson (SF97) greets a friend in Santa Fe; Annapolis crabs; Peggy Jones (SFGI94) and Consuelo Sañudo (SFGI00) toast the Graduate Institute. �36 {Alumni Profile} Questioning Established Beliefs Jim Jarvis (A75) Researches Juvenile Diseases by Patricia Dempsey mong Dr. Jim Jarvis’ prized possessions is a postcard from Paris sent to him by a former patient. “The first time I met her she was 16, sitting on a hospital bed crying; she had systemic lupus and was worried she would not be able to go on a class trip to France the following year. We made a partnership and set a goal— her trip,” says Jarvis. As a consulting pediatric rheumatologist at the W.W. Hastings Indian Hospital in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and the Children’s Hospital of Oklahoma, Jarvis builds close relationships with children who have chronic diseases and has insight into the challenges they face and treatments they need. As a professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Jarvis mentors medical students and conducts groundbreaking research to advance the understanding of juvenile chronic diseases. Jarvis, who became a pediatric rheumatologist in the early 1980s when there were fewer than a dozen such practitioners in the country, is proud of the fact that he’s seen as an iconoclast, especially for his work with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. “This is a good place to be in science, questioning established beliefs,” says Jarvis. “My career has come full circle. I began at St. John’s with bigpicture questions like, ‘What is the meaning of health?’ Then as a medical student I asked, ‘What is the meaning of wellness?’ ” Today, Jarvis has zeroed in on an urgent A question: Why is the rate of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis higher in certain American Indian tribes? His interest stems in part from his own heritage, as his greatgreat-grandmother, a Mohawk Indian, was born on the Akwesasne Reservation in upstate New York. To discover the answers, Jarvis has introduced a systemic, generational perspective to the treatment of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis through research that uses systems biology. “I observe how things are connected. Aristotle suggests in Book I, Chapter 1 of the Parts of Animals that biology is connectedness, a study of form and function,” he says. Jarvis believes that one of the reasons Native American populations have such a high rate of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis has to do with generational trauma. “Rheumatoid arthritis runs in families and groups, but it is not genetic, and not contagious,” he explains. “Data has emerged that shows that when a people has been marginalized, abused, and humiliated as some Native American populations have, this may set up a reaction in utero. The infant in utero responds to the stress, which jazzes up the fetal immune system and hits triggers that can increase the risk for rheumatoid arthritis.” While Jarvis’ generational approach is significant to the prevention of rheumatoid arthritis, he is also working to help children already afflicted with the disease by targeting individual treatments. This research is funded in part by a grant from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology. By using systems biology tools—computer models show every gene that a cell is expressing— Jarvis hopes to predict which drugs will be most effective on certain patients. “Right now it is a trial-and-error process. It’s expensive, and several months go by before it becomes clear whether a drug is working. I would like to develop an assay to optimize therapy and treatment from the moment of diagnosis,” says Jarvis. With juvenile patients, the need to conserve time is crucial. “Several months, even several weeks have a much larger impact on an adolescent’s life than on an adult’s. This is time from school and important developmental milestones are missed, even special class trips.” x James Jarvis (A75), second from right, shown here in his lab with students and research colleagues, explores links between the environment and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �37 {Alumni Notes} 1935 RICHARD S. WOODMAN enjoys keeping in touch with the college, particularly with the St. John’s/Naval Academy croquet rivalry. “I’m still active practicing law in this small, beautiful village [Waterville, N.Y.] and traveling to foreign countries with one or more of my two children,” he writes. “They’re both Middlebury College graduates, and one has two grandchildren, which makes me a great-grandfather.” 1942 “My classmates will not believe first place—at the age of 86,” ERNEST J. HEINMULLER writes of his first-place showing in the adult category of a poetry-writing contest last spring. “See what St. John’s does for you!” The contest was sponsored by the Friends of the St. Michael’s Library in partnership with the county historical society. new college task force that is to collaborate with the University of Denver’s Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System on a program to recommend changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to reduce the burdens and expense of pretrial discovery.” 1946 JAMES W. SHARP writes: “During almost five decades of employment in the human resources departments of three businesses, 53 years of marriage, and helping to raise two daughters and four grandchildren, I was a ‘prodigal’ Johnnie. Eight years ago I again became interested in theology and philosophy. Since December 2005 I have been working my way through Bertrand Russell’s A History of Philosophy. For those who have lost touch with their St. John’s College heritage, it provides a delightful ‘Remembrance of Things Past.’” 1945 1947 Writes EDWARD W. MULLINIX: “Although I retired as an active partner in Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP of Philadelphia on January 1, 1993, I continue being active professionally as senior counsel to the firm, doing some things for the firm, participating in case-management programs in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County and the federal district court for Eastern Pennsylvania (where I serve as a member of its Civil Justice Advisory Group), and taking an occasional engagement to mediate complex commercial disputes. Most recently, the president of the American College of Trial Lawyers has appointed me to a “My wife, Elizabeth, and I took a two-week trip to France in April and drove through Burgundy and Normandy,” writes H. GERALD HOXBY. “We visited our son Bair and his wife, Caroline, in Vezelay where they had rented a house for a year while on sabbatical from Harvard. They are each writing a book while there. We all had a lot of fun and had some great meals besides seeing more than enough chateaus and churches.” 1948 PETER J. DAVIES and his wife, Phyllis, took a trip in May to Mozambique via Lisbon to attend the high school graduation of The Art of Saying No C lass of 1955 alumnus HAROLD BAUER’s “next life” as a painter has landed him as president of the Board of Trustees at the prestigious Evanston Art Center. “St. John’s did not sufficiently instruct in the art of saying no,” he writes. This fall, he will conduct Princess Ida by Gilbert and Sullivan for the Evanston Savoyaires and will stage Amahl and the Night Visitors for Chicago’s Ars Viva. x their second-eldest grandson and to celebrate Peter’s 80th birthday with his son, daughter-in-law, and five grandchildren. Also in May, he attended the funeral of PETER WEISS’ mother, Paula, who died at age 104. 1954 DAVID KAPLAN is still in business management investments. 1955 1950 JOHN R. GARLAND borrowed some lines from G.K. Chesterton for his note to the College: “. . . for there’s good news yet to be heard and fine things to be seen,/ Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.” 1953 Two years ago, CHARLES POWLESKE officially “retired” from the Business Council for International Understanding, where he has worked since 1960. “A few years passed, mostly in Mexico, before I found myself once again active in those familiar offices as ‘senior advisory and past president.’ I then teamed up with a longtime business friend, who also continues to be very involved in BCIU, and we incorporated InterPlan Consulting, Inc. At any given time, we find ourselves working on various interesting projects including a major solar energy enterprise that is about to contract for its first commercial installation.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } CAROLYN E. BANKS-LEEUWENBURGH writes: “Over these many years, I’ve known many St. Johnnies, from my class, from the tours we take together, from many summers in Santa Fe and social events. I often think of those people with good feelings. I want to say hello to all and wish them all the best of everything.” 1956 Last year, GEORGE SAUER was elected to his sixth term on the Republican Central Committee of Montgomery County, Maryland. 1957 It was a busy May and June for CORNELIA HOFFMAN REESE: One grandchild graduated from college, one is entering her senior year at Miami, one grandson graduated from high school and has been accepted at college, one granddaughter is entering her sophomore year of college, and another granddaughter is serving in the Peace Corps in Senegal. “Since I’m from a large family, �38 {Alumni Notes} we also had graduations of nieces and nephews—busy, busy time, but very rewarding and a delight to see education carried on,” she writes. “Looking forward to the 50th reunion at St. John’s and seeing Mary Sullivan Blomberg and her husband, Peter, again.” 1960 “I recently completed the fouryear basic program at the University of Chicago,” says PETER RUEL. “Discussing the great books brings back fond memories of nearly 50 years ago. The St. John’s imprint never leaves us. This year we are completing all of Plato’s dialogues with our instructor emeritus, George Anastaplo, who is known by some of the St. John’s tutors. Our 50th reunion will be in 2010. See you all then.” 1961 CYNTHIA BLEDSOE DALEY has retired to a small working horse farm in Greer, S.C., where she races Arabian horses. “I happily invite any Johnnies in the area to visit,” she writes. 1962 MICHAEL ELIAS writes, “My play The Catskill Sonata—about a Catskill hotel during the blacklisting period in the 1950s—had a successful run in L.A. It was directed by Paul Mazursky and will open in New York next spring. “ JOHN POUNDSTONE is back from a trip: “We have just returned from a visit to China to visit our daughter, who works in Beijing for the World Health Organization as an AIDs epidemiologist. It was an amazing visit.” He wonders if China is “ready for the Great Books.” alumni. Why does it not? Is it ashamed of the tutors’ credentials?” 1964 1966 CHRISTINE KUBACKI GRIECO is deputy director at Philadelphia’s history museum, the Atwater Kent Museum, following a long career in educational advocacy. She was happily remarried six years ago. IAN HARRIS has retired from being a professor of Educational Policy and Community Studies at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee after 32 years. In January he taught a class in Peace Education at the University of Jaume Primero in Castelló de la Plana, Spain. He plans to remain in Milwaukee with his wife, Sara, in spite of having grandchildren on both coasts. He will continue to be president of the International Peace Research Association Foundation. His latest publication is Global Directory of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution Programs (with Amy Shuster), San Francisco: Peace and Justice Studies Association, 2006. JUDITH WOOD writes: “I’m still working for Tulane County Library in the San Joaquin Valley of California. I am a reference librarian. I am just putting the finishing touches on a three-year project, getting over 100 oral histories about life in this county from 1941 to 1946. This will probably be the highlight of my entire career, first as an accountant, then as a librarian!” DAVID RANDOLPH JORDAN writes: “A few years ago, I was the guest organizer of a conference held at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, its works published in The World of Ancient Magic (Borger 1999). From March through August of 2006, I was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of a group thinking about “Occult Power in Near Eastern Culture.” I am a little disappointed that St. John’s no longer sends the annual college catalogue to 1968 MARILYNNE (MAURIE WILLS SCHELL) SCOTT (SF) writes that her younger daughter, Emily Scott, graduated from Yale Divinity School in May 2006 with a Master of Divinity degree. “She now works as a liturgical coordinator for Yale Divinity School and Yale University, planning worship services. For the past two summers she has worked on the “New Music Project” under the direction of the REV. DONALD Breathing Deeply hanges for ANNETTE TULLIER STAUBS (A75): “After seven years of managing my husband’s solo family practice office, I am leaving the stress of the medical business to breathe deeply and have fun. Charles has joined Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, where he will continue to practice family medicine and teach. I will be free to pursue my avocations among the rolling hills and dairy farms of central Wisconsin. I also plan to do volunteer work.” x C { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } SCHELL (SF68), rector of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. My husband, David, and I are planning a trip to Alaska this summer where (if all goes well), we’ll meet RICK WICKS (SF68) and his family in Anchorage—a prereunion reunion.” CHARLES B. WATSON (A) writes: “#1 son, Ivan, continues to report on world affairs for NPR from Istanbul and places like Bulgaria, Northern Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, etc. #2 son, Misha, recently rebuilt a house and re-roofed, floored, shingled, windowed, etc., our second home on Martha’s Vineyard. Our daughter, Anya, starts graduate work in marine biology at Avery Point on Long Island Sound, with the University of Connecticut. She has spent a year in Boston, as MIT junior faculty, diving instructor, etc. Now living in Mystic, medical practice, teaching hospital, affairs are almost all-absorbing. We long for a sabbatical. Look us up and propose one?” 1969 JOSEPH P. BARATTA (A) gave an address, “World Government or Global Governance? The United Nations Project in Historical Perspective,” at a conference on U.N. reform in June in Turin, Italy. In 2006, he spent the month of July in Siena studying Italian: “Estata un ezperienze molto utilo,” he writes. MEREDITH (ARTIS) ANTHONY (A) has published a thriller, Ladykiller (Oceanview Publishing, 2007), co-authored with her husband, Lawrence Light. “It is a dark tale of a serial killer investigation set in New York City in 1991,” she writes. For more information, you can visit her Web site at www.meredithanthony.com. �39 {Alumni Notes} 1970 1973 SHEILA BOBBS ARMSTRONG (SF, EC95) is now on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. “My oldest son, Ian, just graduated from the Santa Fe campus,” she writes, and the two were headed on a trip to Bhutan and West Bengal late last spring. “Still living in Bobbsville with my Aussie husband, Mike, still traveling, still forgetting what I just read. Younger two sons doing fine—all’s well,” she writes. MARY L. BATTEEN (A) has been professor and chair of the Oceanography Department at the Naval Postgraduate School since 2001. She joined the department in 1984 and has enjoyed advising many Naval Academy graduates. She publishes papers on ocean currents off west coasts including North America, South America, Australia, and Europe. This year, Alfred Knopf published NORA GALLAGHER’s (SF) first novel, Changing Light, which is set in Santa Fe and Los Alamos during the making of the bomb. SUSHEILA HORWITZ (SF) is still a member of the Madonna House, a Catholic lay apostolate. “I was seven years in the far east of Russia in a small city created to serve the needs of the Gulag. The people there were wonderful. I’m moving now to our house in Edmonton, Alberta.” 1971 GEORGE ELIAS (A) reports on the family: “My 26-year-old daughter is working as an apprentice farmer in Northern California. My 15-year-old daughter attends a Jesuit high school in San Francisco, where her 12-year-old sister hopes to join her next year.” 1972 “Hope to make it to Homecoming this year. Number 35—wow!” writes CLAUDE MARTIN (A). 1974 ROGER BURK (A) is a visiting professor this year at the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education at Princeton University, where he is developing a course on space flight for nonengineering students. ROBIN KOWALCHUK BURK (A72) has started work on her dissertation on robotic information processing at SUNY-Albany. JEFF VICTOROFF (A) writes with news of children. “Maia is just finishing kindergarten and very excited about pony camp. Ivan tore a memorable swath through preschool and is very excited about Hot Wheels demolition.” 1977 LAURIE ALEXANDER (A) earned her PhD in entomology from the University of Maryland, College Park. LORIN CUOCO (SFGI) produced her first audiobook, The Tunnel, as read by the author, William Gass: “Dalkey Archive Press brought it out in 2006. Forty-five hours long, on three MP3 CDs. Historical, man,” she writes. “My work with the American Sleep Apnea Association is going well,” writes EDWARD GRANDI (A). “More active with the D.C. alumni seminar—great books, great people, good times.” JIMMIE COLSON JACKSON (SFGI) was inducted into the District of Columbia Teachers Hall of Fame in May 2007. 1978 “I completed my first triathlon, the Lake Placid Ironman, in July 2006, and my second, the Arizona Ironman, in April 2007,” writes ROBERT PERRY (A). 1982 1975 CYNTHIA SWISS (A) is making a career change: “After 30 years of teaching music, I decided it was time for a change. I am taking courses to become a dietician. I have always loved cooking and I want to help people make healthy food choices. On June 16 I will start my new job at Northwest Hospital in Reisterstown, Md. I will continue my freelance work as a violinist and give private lessons at home.” PETER B. GRIGGS (A) has published his first novel, No Pink Concept, available at xlibris.com. “James Rowley and I married on June 27, 2006,” writes KELLY GENOVA (SF). “We are very happy. STEPHEN LOACH (SF) and his fiancée, Sally Blixt, joined us to celebrate. I still practice law in Albuquerque, as does James. Stephen teaches at UT-Pan Am.” 1984 FATHER ROBERT NICOLETTI (SF) writes, “Many thanks for your correspondence. Alumni have been very generous with my mission in Ukraine and I would like to thank them. If anyone can still help these orphanages, please consider it.” DAVID WALWORTH (A) writes that he and his wife, Michelle, are still living in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. She recently received “tenure-in-waiting” as there are not any tenure slots open at the university. “My naval architecture business is going well. The most recent project will be launched in July this year in Bristol, R.I. It is a two-foot ownerdesigned yawl. The owner designed the lines and look of the boat; I did the structural engineering. We are in the early stages of designing a house to build farther up the hill from where we currently live. It will be totally off the grid. The land faces dead into the trade winds for wind power and at 17 degrees 44 min N, there is plenty of sun for solar panels. Basically a West Indies Danish cottage is the design inspiration.” 1985 ANNA L. DAVIS (A) writes: “2007 was a great year! My son, Aaron Gordon, celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in May, and I graduated from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a Master of Public Health.” MAGGIE KINSER (A), writing as Maggie Kinser Hohle (www.maggietext.com), moved to California in July. Her husband, Brad, took a position in digital cinema at the headquarters of Dolby Laboratories in San continued on p. 41 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �40 {Alumni Profile} A Metaphor for Life Myra Krien (SF88) Helps Young Women Gain Confidence by Deborah Spiegelman T o be in the presence of Myra Krien (SF88) is to step into a warm, confident embrace, a rare gift in this frantic world. It is a gift that she shares with every person who steps through the doors of Pomegranate Studios in Santa Fe, founded by Krien in 1996. Here, women of all ages learn the art of belly dancing. “Dance is a metaphor for living life,” says Krien, who began belly dancing at the age of three. In the style of dance she teaches, the emphasis is not on one’s physical form, but rather on the creation of line and beauty achieved by focusing and disciplining the body. Krien is an acclaimed international performer, a sought-after dance instructor and choreographer, and founder of four dance companies. However, she is most proud of the nonprofit youth development organization that she established in 2001. SEEDS (Self-esteem, Empowerment and Education through Dance) demonstrates the power of dance to bring about positive change. Each academic year, up to 25 young women between the ages of 15 and 18 participate in Krien’s three-times-a-week afterschool program. Teaching these women American Tribal Style dance, which embraces the musical, cultural, and artistic influences of India, the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain, is simply Krien’s starting point. In designing her program, Krien shaped it to the needs of the teenage girls who gravitated to her studio, many of whom couldn’t afford classes. Recognizing a need beyond dance instruction, Krien launched the program to help young women develop selfconfidence, be ready to manage their personal finances, and work toward their goals. Students credit Krien’s program with changing their lives. “The studio is their sanctuary,” she says. Similarly, Krien’s four years at St. John’s were “totally life changing.” Born in San Francisco into a bohemian family (her maternal grandfather was the philosopher and writer Alan Watts), Krien saw her life change after her parents divorced. To help her family, she worked a variety of jobs, including pecan picking and performing. She graduated early from high school and found herself out on her own at the age of 15, supporting herself by acting and singing. She grew curious about the college that many of her high school friends were attending. “I didn’t realize a school like St. John’s existed,” she says. With the college’s emphasis on education through dialogue, “this was my family all over.” On the day she received her acceptance letter, she also received an offer to pursue a singing career in California. Two doors opened to her, and she chose the one leading to St. John’s. Krien sold her exquisite belly-dancing costumes to help finance { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } Dance is a gateway to self-exploration for the young women who participate in Myra Krien’s SEEDS program. her freshman year; scholarships and several part-time jobs saw her through the college. Upon graduation, she rededicated herself to her professional goals with an “absolute focus and discipline” that she attributes to her college experience. St. John’s helped her discover she could tackle difficult things, such as running a business. She also found that the college teaches tolerance and helps each student discover his or her “authentic voice.” Krien continued on p. 41 �41 {Alumni Notes} continued from p. 39 Francisco, after 16 years in film sound in the company’s New York office, so the whole family (six in all) is moving to Petaluma, in Sonoma County. Maggie is happy to finally be leaving the winters of the Northeast behind, and to be moving closer to most of her extended family, originally Californians, though she’ll miss “the city” (NYC), an environment she really loves. Maggie will continue to write nonfiction pieces for magazines on design and architecture, as well as books, and may well finally be able to put into words her 15-year adventure in Japan, too. Any Johnnies in the Bay Area would be thanked immensely for contacting Maggie with any pointers on living and writing there. Keep in touch with her: 973-668-9446; or maggietext@comcast.net. 1986 KRISTEN CAVEN (SF) is “still passionately in love with books,” though she is now writing more than reading. “I expect two books and a musical to reach the world in 2008,” she writes. “I even lectured this year on antique cookbooks! Johnnies are welcome to visit my Web site at www.kristencaven.com.” GWENDOLYN J. CHEATHAM (SFGI) has written a book titled Give Your Teacher This Note: Parents Say the Funniest Things, which can be found on Amazon.com. She recently completed a seminar on Greek and Latin lyric at Harvard University. BARBARA ROBERTS (SFGI) writes: “In the summers of 2005 and 2006, I completed pilgrimages to the tomb-shrine, pilgrim center and disciples of Avatar Meher Baba, located in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra State, India. I continue to live in Denver, Colo., where I work as an elementary special education teacher.” 1988 THOMAS JEFFERSON BARLOW (SF) is living in downtown Detroit, working as creative director for Ford. This summer, William Heinemann is publishing Sharp Teeth, Barlow’s epic poem about lycanthropes living in Los Angeles (it will be released in the U.S. by HarperCollins in early 2008). “But the most exciting news,” he writes, “is that Nora Barlow is enrolling at the Annapolis campus this fall.” “Montana is beautiful! Hope to complete dissertation this year. Looking at use of ‘Math Dialogues’ with high school students,” writes SUSANN BRADFORD (SF). ELAINE PINKERTON COLEMAN (SFGI) has been writing and speaking. Along with other local women writers, Elaine was part of a reading titled “Dear Diary” in September at the Santa Fe Film Center. She later gave a Missing Classmates presentation of “A Journey on the Royal Road into Mexico” at the Travel Bug in Santa Fe. “My wife, Klara, and I celebrated the birth of our son, Dimitry, on April 29, 2007,” says SPYROS RITSINIAS (A). 1990 VIRGINIA BEHRENDS (AGI) d id some traveling to take in two grandsons’ high school graduations last spring, one in Seoul, South Korea, and another in San Diego, Calif. “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.” KEN TURNBULL (A) is living in Washington, D.C., and now has a second daughter, Zoe Turnbull, born on March 29, 2007, in addition to older sister Fiona. “My wife, Leslie, and I are doing well,” he writes. ABINE (SCHWEIDT) CRANMER (SF80) sends an update: S “I am still living in Pennsylvania near Philadelphia with my husband, Charlie, and now 11-year-old daughter, Lucy. Lucy will begin middle school at a nearby Quaker school in the fall. We’ve been working on landscaping projects, restoring a meadow and trying to grow vegetables. I work with a community-based open-space organization and tutor an Adult Basic Education student in reading, which I find very interesting. I finally gave in to my daughter’s pleas for a dog, and we are now raising a puppy for the Seeing Eye. In June we are hosting a picnic seminar for the Philadelphia Chapter of the Alumni Association. I wonder if I’ll see many people from other periods of my connection to SJC? I miss my former classmates and wish you all well, wherever you are.” x continued from p. 40 adopted these benefits of the Program as key elements of SEEDS. “I want these girls to learn to take care of themselves, to esteem themselves, to make good decisions,” Krien says. Krien sees young girls dealing with exploding emotional energy as well as personal crises. Not only does dance help channel this energy, but it also helps one learn to respond thoughtfully, rather than simply react to the apparent lack of control in one’s life, she believes. Based on group effort, American Tribal Style dance is noncompetitive. Girls alternately lead a particular series of movements, thereby creating a dance based on their contributions meshing together. “Everyone shines,” Krien says, and in this way, the dancers solidify their sense of self and community. This sense of community is reinforced through the supporting elements of the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } 1991 DEIRDRE ROUTT (A) represented the Omaha Public Library on the Precision Book Cart Drill Team in the Cinco de Mayo Parade on May 5, 2007, in Omaha, Neb. ANNE SCHUCHMAN (A) and JAMES BERRETTINI (AGI93) are delighted to announce the birth SEEDS program. After dance instruction the girls take part in talking circles, very much like the seminars at St. John’s, Krien says. Issues—whether personal or practical— are brought up in this setting as well as in one-on-one discussions with Krien. Over time, the girls become comfortable revealing their hopes and fears. “We talk about what dignity means, what integrity means, what community means,” Krien says. x �42 {Alumni Notes} their literature classes. I find that my education at St. John’s was a valuable experience for the work I now do at the academy. My e-mail is fgiu@mma.mexico.mo.us.” of Veronica Mary on February 21, 2007. She joins Sam (8), Stella (4) and Gus (2). 1992 CHERYL HENEVELD (AGI) welcomes visitors to Vermont. “We have tons of books,” she writes. “Would love to have a great books discussion group nearby.” “I have recently moved from the Paris area to Bucharest, Romania, where my husband has taken a job in his brother’s business,” writes ELYETTE (BLOCK) KIRBY (SF). “My children are now ages six, four, and two, and for once they have cousins in the same city. We love living here and traveling in the local area. If any Johnnies live nearby, we’d love to meet you.” TAEKO ONISHI (SF) is setting up shop in New York: “I’m working with a team of educators and opening a new school in September. Lyons Community School will be a 6-12 school in East Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Check out our Web site at www.brooklynhistory.org/ education/lyonscs. Come visit!” 1993 KWAKU ACHEAMPONG (A) spent three weeks back home in Ghana last June. “I am very astonished by my observations,” he writes. “While many things and ways remain the same, some developments have been haphazard. Private housing and commercial structures are being erected anyhow and anywhere. Land can be found without proper planning. Affordability has allowed the operation of substantially more motor vehicles on the existing, inadequate number of roads. Unemployment and housing shortages destroy people’s dreams of the increasing accessibility to modern technology and lifestyles. Peace and stability, though, is assured.” KATIE (THORN) HIGSON (A) and Ted Higson welcomed a baby daughter, Ruby Thorn Higson, last year: “At 1, Ruby loves reading and talking. Eating dirt also ranks. To get in touch, e-mail Khigson@highland-hcg.com.” Santa Fe classmates trekked to Ugdanda to join friends and family for the wedding of Marie Craig (SF05, shown enjoying a traditional dance) and Christian Acemeh (SF05) this past July. J. CLAIRE DARLING (SF) writes, “Life is good. No big news. I love being self-employed as a massage therapist. Preparing to take 4th kyu test at my Aikido Dojo. Finally learning to play guitar.” KEVIN JOHNSON (A) reports from Massachusetts: “After a long search, I’ve finally found a career direction that is both personally meaningful and practically sustainable. I begin a certificate of advanced graduate study in organizational development this fall. The past year has been very good to me, bringing a better job and a new girlfriend. We’ll be shacking up shortly; who knows, maybe eventually she’ll make an honest man out of me.” 1994 JEFFREY LANE EDWARDS (AGI), now working in international relations, married Jennifer Dudley Keech on June 10, 2007, in Norfolk, Neb. They live in Annapolis. COLIN RAY (A) and Emiko Ray write from Tokyo: “Our son, Thomas Michael Ray, was born on January 8, 2007. Our daughter, Marina (24 months old), loves taking care of him. She is mastering her English and Japanese language skills.” 1996 “I am in my second year as the Director of Studies at the Missouri Military Academy,” writes FRANCESCO GIUSEFFI (SFGI). “I recently earned a master’s in education and continue to find enjoyment in teaching an honors American history class. I keep the speeches of Lincoln and Alexis de Tocqueville on the minds of my students. Our cadets now study the Latin language and can expect a heavy dose of Shakespeare in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } MARTY AND LUCILLE WALKER (AGI) are living in Upper Marlboro, Md., with their sons Ian and Reese, ages 7 and 4. Marty is teaching at the Summit School in Edgewater, Md., and Lucille is an independent consultant currently assisting local farmers. 1997 KATE (GLASSMAN) BENNETT (A) lives in Las Vegas, where she is a freelance writer, specializing in popular culture, fashion, entertainment, and celebrity for a number of magazines. She is also editor-in-chief of the new City Center Magazine, a luxury magazine devoted to MGM Mirages’ massive $7 billion urban resort complex, currently the largest privately funded construction project in the world. She’s still not sure how she feels about actually living in Las Vegas, but after eight years, it’s now become home. She and her husband, Cub, have a very inquisitive 2-year-old daughter, Tess. Visitors welcome! Kate8vegas@aol.com. STEPHEN CONN (SF) is happy to announce that his Sgt.Pepper/ Great Books Authors shirt, as �43 {Alumni Notes} A New Direction BARKER (A98) writes, “A few months ago I was relaxing at my father’s farm and realized I wanted my life to go in a new direction. So from New York—where I’ve been working in theatre for the past three years— I’m moving to Washington, D.C., where I hope to use my strengths and abilities to promote a more peaceful world. Just recently, I accepted a position as the Communications & Development Coordinator at the Women’s Foreign Policy Group in Washington. WFPG (www.wfpg.org) is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, educational membership organization that promotes global engagement and the leadership, visibility and participation of women in international affairs. I’d love to hear from other Johnnies working in or interested in foreign policy: mail@sarabarker.com.” x S ARA well as Rolling Stones’ Great Books shirt “Some Books,” are now both available for sale online, on his Web site www.radioactiverabbi.com. “My wife, Evie, and I had our second child, a girl, born on April 22, named Caroline Elizabeth,” writes BRENTON HINRICHS (AGI). “We reside in San Jose, Calif., where I am head of an independent school in Los Gatos, called Hillbrook School. My wife is a second-grade teacher at Hillbrook. I would love to hear from other AGIs from ’97. Patrick Wager? Pat Knight? Bill Buysse?” 1998 GLENNSCOTT COOPER (AGI) retired from teaching with Milwaukee Public Schools in June. He is working full time writing a novel and finished a short screenplay for Avant Guardian films. TIM WINSLOW (A) and Celia Messing married in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 6, 2007. Celia is a graduate of The Catholic University of America and the cousin of BEATRICE ROBBINS (A98). Tim is a millionaire and owns 15 helicopters but still welcomes your wedding gifts. You may congratulate him via tim@winslowdc.info. 1999 LORI KURTYKA (AGI) and her husband, Mauricio Rojas, welcomed their baby boy, Matteo Nicholas, into the world on February 20. PATRICK REED (AGI) and his family are living in Germany where his wife is stationed with the Air Force. They are expecting a second daughter this summer and welcome visitors. 2000 ANDRÉ RODRIGUEZ (SFGI) is currently the staff attorney at YMCA International Services and teaches Introduction to Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston’s main campus. 2001 PHILIP BOLDUC (SF) is serving his second tour of duty in Iraq in the U.S. Army. He is stationed in Baghdad. “After briefly working for Fannie Mae in Washington, D.C., after graduation, I moved to my hometown of Chicago,” writes DANIEL BRAITHWAITE (A). “I’ve had a flexible part-time job with a dot-com for several years which has allowed me to travel and try out different things, including keeping up with aikido, farming, tutoring kids, and managing a small commercial kitchen. I’d be glad to know who’s near me in the Chicago area. I also visit Annapolis regularly.” JESSICA K. REITZ (A) is delighted to announce her marriage to Christopher R. Wallace on July 21, 2007. Jessica and Chris live in Centreville, Va., with their son, William, now walking everywhere, and their two dogs, Bruce and Molly. Jessica was named Teacher of the Year for 2006-7 at James Madison High School in Vienna, Va., and this fall, she will continue teaching mathematics and coaching crew for her third consecutive year. 2002 CHELSIA WHEELER (SF) joined the United States Foreign Service and spent the summer in training for her first post, in Rangoon, Burma. She was studying Burmese and planned a departure in late August or early September. 2004 TATIANA HARRISON (A) was published in Newsweek’s “My Turn” online column in January. “I’m happily legally disabled because it gives me all the time to write. I’m getting hand surgery done over the summer, which hopefully will result in less pain and increased function. I’m also proud to be a member of Third Haven Monthly Meeting, a Quaker Meetinghouse in Easton, Md. My grandfather, Dr. David Yesair, passed away on April 20. He’s a great loss for my family, as he was a great man.” A short note from CHRIS HENDERSON (A) and GENEVA HINKLE (A06), from Saratoga Springs: “We’re poor, but happy.” CHRISTIAN BLOOD (SF) is writing his dissertation: “Oh! The secondary sources! Woe!” LORI LYNN RUBELING (AGI) was just promoted to full professor of Art at Villa Julie College in Stevenson, Md. 2003 ALAIN ANTOINE (SFGI) is enrolled in the Eastern Classics program in Santa Fe. SCOTT MCCARLEY (AGI) is teaching science, math, and Greek at a private school. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } 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 December 20. 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 �44 {Alumni Notes} Justice and the Human Comedy ASON BIELAGUS (SF98) recently graduated from law school, J was admitted to the New Mexico Bar, and began working as an assistant district attorney in First Judicial District in New Mexico. “In some ways it is a return to freshman year and Plato,” Jason writes. “The Supreme Court has said a prosecutor’s job is not necessarily to win cases, but to see that justice is done. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what justice is and how it applies to a given situation. It’s an opportunity to try to apply practically a lot of what we talked about in freshman year. There’s a lot of Mills in it, too, in that the purpose of the system is to keep people from harming other people. It’s good trial experience, and prosecuting cases in Santa Fe and Española has given me some insights into the human experience, the human comedy. A lot of the Española cases are funny and sad at the same time.” x PAUL MCLAIN (SFGI) was awarded the Master of Divinity degree by Yale University on May 28, 2007. He was named one of the four student marshals who led the procession of Divinity School graduates during the commencement exercises. Paul is now a Postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas. As part of his preparation and journey toward possible ordination as a priest, he is working as a hospital chaplain resident for one year at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita. Ruthie McLain, Paul’s wife, is coordinator of volunteers at Faith Home Health and Hospice in Wichita. the Helicon/You should read Anacreon/Ovid’s Metamorphoses,/Likewise Aristophanes/And the works of Juvenal./These are worth attention, all;/But, if you will be advised,/You will get them Bowdlerized!” 2005 CHRISTOPHER BENSON (AGI) is joining the inaugural team of a new Christian preparatory academy in Santa Barbara, Calif., called Providence Hall. “I will help in the design of an interdisciplinary curriculum based on the great books and teach both literature and philosophy,” he writes. x CYNTHIA TOBIAS (AGI) played Lady Psyche, Professor of Humanities, in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Princess Ida. She donned her G.I. cap and hood for the part. “I also designed the set,” she writes. “Psyche’s opening lines are: ‘If you’d climb 2006 {Obituaries} WILLIAM C. OWENS, M.D. DOROTHY ROUDEBUSH Class of 1938 Former Member, BVG William C. Owens, an ophthalmologist whose work helped prevent blindness in infants, died on June 20, 2006, in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Owens graduated from St. John’s in 1938. He earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1942, where he served on the medical faculty until 1953. While at Hopkins, he and his wife, Ella, also an ophthalmologist, made an important discovery about retinal blindness in premature infants that led to methods of prevention. Dr. Owens spent two years in the army as assistant chief of ophthalmology at Walter Reed. In 1955 he opened a private practice in Easton, Penn., retiring to San Antonio in 1971. He is survived by his son, William C. Owens, Jr. Dorothy Roudebush, a women’s rights activist and journalist, died on July 4, 2007, in Chesterfield, Mo., at the age of 95. Mrs. Roudebush served St. John’s College as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1969-1982. A native of St. Louis, Mrs. Roudebush earned a bachelor’s degree in English and theater from Vassar College in 1932. She earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and joined the St. Louis Post Dispatch as a feature writer. After her marriage to George S. Roudebush in 1936, she became an educator. She taught English and directed publicity for the John Burroughs School. Later, she earned a master’s degree in counseling and became a student counselor at Lindenwood College. Her many accomplishments included working to repeal Missouri’s law that prohibited married women from teaching in public schools. An ardent champion of equal rights for women, Mrs. Roudebush worked to improve women’s access to family planning services and served on the board of directors for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis region. Planned Parenthood honored her by naming its headquarters in Maplewood, Missouri, the Dorothy Roudebush Education Center and Administration Office. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } ALSO NOTED GARNETT CLARK (Class of 1936), June 20, 2007 JEREMY DAWE (SF01), January 15, 2007 AARON FOGARTY (SF94), May 20, 2007 OSCAR LORD (Class of 1940), July 17, 2007 EDWARD LEGUM (Class of 1938), August 17, 2007 ELIZABETH JEAN MEISS (SF75), June 13, 2007 WILLIAM OGDEN (Class of 1946), July, 26, 2006 CHERYL RAMSEY (A68), January 2007 GUSTAVE RATHE (SF81), May, 23, 2007 PAUL SCHEMEL (Class of 1944), May 2007 H.A. STAFFORD (Class of 1957), December 28, 2003 DONALD TAUBE (Class of 1965), July 9, 2007 RICHARD YOUNG (Class of 1949), March 21, 2007 �45 {Alumni Profile} A Race Across America Andy Mead (SF04) Rides for a Cause by Rosemary Harty T here were more than a few moments last summer when Andy Mead (SF04) wondered whether entering the Race Across America was such a good idea. Mead had joined with the seven other riders of “Team Type I” to compete in one of the toughest bicycle endurance competitions in the world. The team set out not only to win the relay race from Oceanside, Calif., to Atlantic City, N.J., but also to draw attention to Type I diabetes, a disease Mead was diagnosed with at age 16. Taking his three-hour stints on the bike, Mead endured the desert heat of Southern California and the thin air and cold temperatures at 10,000 feet in the Colorado mountains. Mead sprinted ferociously on very little sleep—perhaps getting 15 hours in five days. “I didn’t see how we could keep going,” he says. When the team crossed the finish line in first place for their division, Mead was too exhausted to enjoy the celebration. “I went right from the finishing line to the hotel and slept for eight hours straight,” he said. All told, Mead put in about 500 miles on his bike. Mead is now in his third year of a doctoral program in physiology/molecular biology at the University of Pennsylvania. Throughout the winter, he rose at 5 each morning to get in at least four hours of training before his classes or work in the laboratory. His commitment to the race was a strong one, inspired by his own experience with the disease. “When I was 16, I got very sick, and they couldn’t figure out what was going on,” says Mead. “Fortunately, I lived in a town with a very good hospital. Since then, I’ve had to keep a good eye on what The Race Across America was grueling, but the opportunity to give back to those who helped him cope with Type I diabetes made the sacrifice worthwhile for Andy Mead (SF04). “We’ve learned that people with Type 1 can basically do anything.” Andy Mead (SF04) I eat and how I treat my body, but it’s not that hard to live with.” Treatment with insulin meant immediate improvement, but Mead had been a hockey player and very active as a youth, and he was initially concerned he’d have to scale back. “We’ve learned that people with Type 1 can basically do anything,” Mead says. “There are people who are afraid of taking risks with their bodies, afraid of participating in sports and exercising because of the fear of having low blood sugar. It’s a real balancing act { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } between food and insulin and but it’s manageable.” Mead’s 13-year-old brother, Charlie, also has the disease, and Mead raced in part to inspire his brother to feel that he can take on any challenges in his life. “A feeling of being handicapped and a fear of low blood sugar can keep kids with the condition from participating in activities and developing habits that would actually help them live healthier lives,” Mead says. “Providing a positive example is the team’s most important purpose.” Halfway through his doctoral program, Mead is considering a career in research or teaching. At Penn, he has been impressed with “all the brilliant minds” of the university, but he’s glad he attended St. John’s instead of a traditional biology or pre-med program. “The interesting thing to me is there aren’t that many conversations going on in the biomedical research world about the kinds of questions we ask about science and what kind of thinking we’re doing,” he says. Mead hoped to raise $4,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation with his own 100-mile ride in September. Being part of Team Type 1 and raising money on his own—even when it comes with sore muscles and sleep-deprivation— is immensely satisfying, Mead says: “It’s really the first time I’ve given back for all the excellent care I’ve had, all the lessons I’ve learned dealing with my own situation as an athlete and student. I’m really grateful.” x �46 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } Letters from China A Graduate’s Adventures Teaching in the East by Susan Swier (AGI06) October 19, 2006 susan swier Beijing is fascinating. Parts of the city are modern and Westernized, and parts of it look like something from a century ago. It is amazing how many bicycles there are in the city. I considered getting one, but the drivers here are crazy. I saw an entire family of four riding on one little motor scooter! The first few weeks, I went to all the tourist places: the Forbidden City, Beihai Park, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square. On one really interesting street, vendors sell bizarre snacks on sticks. I ate three scorpions and a centipede; the scorpions weren’t bad, but the centipede was disgusting. The private primary school where I was supposed to teach first and third-graders was terrible. They have a set curriculum, which I thought would be good since I don’t have experience. I could tell from the training that it was going to be bad, and when I started teaching it was even worse. It’s rote memorization, and the kids don’t learn anything except pronunciation. They push the students to get through so many pages of reading and don’t care if the kids really comprehend what they’re reading. My third-grade class read five sentences about a snail. When I asked if they knew what a snail was, one girl pointed to a nail in the blackboard. The first-graders were smart, could speak English on their own, and were able to think for themselves. The third-graders couldn’t say anything except what they were told to repeat. When I told the school I was quitting, they threatened to fine me and keep me from working anywhere else in China. Even after they found a replacement, they wanted me to pay the fine, but I was on my way to another job, at a university in Harbin. The Foreign Affairs officer met me at the train station and said they would talk about a contract the next day. However, he sent his assistant to tell me that they didn’t want me after all—I was too young. Then I met a high school recruiter from Sui Fen He, on the Russian border. She said I could take the overnight train with her assistant, look at the school and then come back the next night and think about it. I figured I had nothing to lose, and it would be a chance to see another city. But they had no intention of letting me go back and think things over! They left me at an apartment that had no kitchen, no real shower, and running water less than half of the time. I decided to find my own way out and took a train out the next day without telling anyone. Fortunately the agency that found me that job sent me an e-mail telling me that they had jobs in Beijing. I had three interviews and three offers, and decided to take { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } Susan Swier (AGI06) used her breaks from teaching to sightsee. She photographed this temple in Quanzhou. a job teaching writing and oral English at China Youth University for Political Sciences, the university of the Communist party. It doesn’t seem very “communist,” except that “youth leaders” from various countries come here all the time. I teach three days a week, just 10 classes, with two groups of freshmen for the oral English class and two groups of sophomores for writing. I really don’t know what I am doing yet. October 28, 2006 Last weekend, I went hiking with two students in Xiang Shan, the Fragrant Hills. The view was amazing. There were people all over the place and vendors selling laminated red leaves, even at the top of the mountain. �47 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } Since I teach just three mornings a week, I began tutoring: a group of four businessmen and a seven-year-old boy— quite an experience since neither the boy nor his mother speaks English at all. They come to my apartment and the boy runs wild most of the time, though his mother seems happy enough. Every other weekend, I read stories to children at the Bookworm, an English bookstore and café. Books are amazingly cheap here, at least those printed in China, and most are classics. The library on campus has a fair selection of English books, but until yesterday I hadn’t been in because of the guard at the door. (There are guards everywhere here, even at McDonald’s.) One week, important party officials came to inspect the school and the whole campus was worried. Students weren’t allowed to leave and there was a meeting for all the teachers that sounded quite serious. We foreign teachers had to go, and the dean later summed up the meeting in just five minutes. Supposedly the inspection went well. December 24, 2006 It doesn’t feel much like Christmas here, though some stores put up tinsel and decorations. My freshmen threw a party that was fun, but a bit strange. We ate sunflower seeds, peanuts, and oranges, and played games: guess-the-Chinese pop song, musical chairs, and the three-legged race. There was a gift exchange at the end. The freshmen are a lot of fun, and I’ll miss them. I tried to make Christmas cookies yesterday only to find that the oven in my apartment doesn’t work. On Christmas day, another English teacher and I are going to watch It’s a Wonderful Life on DVD. And we bought real wine, which we haven’t had in months. (Chinese wine tastes like Kool-Aid.) China is strange but fascinating, an incongruous mix of ancient and modern things so close together. The people are fascinating too, though many are hard to trust. I’m reading Alice in Wonderland right now, and there are definite parallels December 10, 2006 The university just informed me that I don’t have an agreement with them to teach until July, but only until the end of the term. The dean said the writing students had complained about my class. (No writing teacher has lasted more than a term here.) My oral English class was fine; the students were participating and seemed to like me. Unfortunately the writing class went downhill. Though they have improved quite a bit since the beginning of the semester, they want to write perfectly. Since they don’t, they blame me. They’re under a lot of pressure because they have to memorize an entire dictionary to prepare for an exam next semester. The Chinese education system is so focused on memorization. For writing, I think they would like to have a list of rules to memorize and set phrases to use that would somehow make them write perfectly. Would I have done better if I could have been more authoritative? I lined up another job at a public primary school in Quanzhou, Fujian Province. The English program is run by Australians, seems to be well run, and I gain a chance to see southern China. to China: The cards painting the roses red so the queen won’t notice and chop off their heads is like the way people hide things and help each other get away with things. The Cheshire Cat says to Alice, “we’re all mad here. They’re mad, I’m mad, you’re mad. . .if you weren’t mad, you wouldn’t have come.” December 31, 2006 My freshmen had a going-away party for me in my apartment and gave me an umbrella because it rains so much in Fujian. The train trip to Xiamen (Quanzhou is so small that it has no train station) took 36 hours because the train had to go through so many mountains. As we traveled further south, the winter countryside gave way to spring. In the north, the cows have thick coats, but in the south, they have sagging necks and hairless gray skin. I took a bus from Xiamen to Quanzhou, and arrived in the evening of my second day of traveling. Quanzhou is a quaint city. Marco Polo visited the city, and it used to be a major international trading port until the emperor forbid foreign visitors in about the late 14th century. There is a wide variety in the architecture, and temples for nearly every religion, even one of the last surviving Manichean temples. It is possible to walk anywhere within an hour and a half, and there are cheap motorcycle taxis everywhere. They keep an extra helmet on their handlebars, and you flag them down, haggle over the price, and jump on the back. I’m teaching in a private afterschool program run by an Australian at a public school. Each class has 30-35 students, and I am teaching kids from first through sixth grades. Many of the students board at the school even if their parents live nearby because the parents work so much. Here the kids have no shower, just sinks with cold water. Perhaps because the kids don’t get enough attention, they are extremely rowdy in class. March 5, 2007 Happy Chinese New Year! During our three-week spring break I traveled all Swier enjoys a night out in Beijing. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �48 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } Her freshman English students made Swier feel at home with a Christmas party in December 2006. April 27, 2007 over China. I started in Guilin, Guangxi, where I visited Seven Stars Cave Park, which has an amazing cavern and wild monkeys running everywhere. Though a sign said “these lovely monkeys are very bad tempered and sometimes attack tourists,” I saw a small child feeding a monkey a banana right out of his hand. The next day I took a train to Nanning, near Vietnam, and another to Kunming, the “City of Eternal Spring,” in Yunnan Province, a city famous for its flowers and fruit. I bought a half-pineapple on a stick for just 50 cents. That evening, I left on a bus for Lijiang, which has a beautiful Old Town that dates back to the Song Dynasty, almost 800 years ago. Most of the inhabitants are from the Naxi minority group, and many wear traditional costumes. Every few hours they performed traditional dances in the square near my inn, and musical groups performed in the evenings. Next I took a bus to the famous ShangriLa, which didn’t look exciting after all. Instead I tagged along with a Korean family and went to Meili Snow Mountain near Dequin, on the border of Yunnan and Tibet. That was the most exciting bus ride I ever had—six hours, up and around the mountains on narrow, unpaved roads, most of which had no guard rails. The Koreans, two Chinese girls, and I decided to go together to the mountain. We met a Tibetan taxi driver who said she would drive us there and back the next day, and offered lodging in her family’s farmhouse. Nearly a dozen half-drunk neighbors were gathered in the house’s main hall to greet us. The girl’s father offered us some of their local alcohol in a brass kettle, we drank several toasts, and they put white shawls on us to show we were honored guests. After dinner, we danced to traditional music. It was raining the next day as we went up the mountain on horseback, so we rented raincoats and pants for the excursion. As we climbed higher, the rain changed to snow. We went as far as the horses could go and continued further up on foot before turning back. At the farmhouse, they had just killed a pig that day, so the meat was quite fresh. A trip to China wouldn’t be complete without seeing pandas, so I went to Chengdu, to the panda research and breeding center there. In a setting close to their natural habitat, there were red pandas, which look almost like foxes, and giant pandas. I took the train home to Quanzhou the next morning: a 44-hour trip, and though I missed the New Year’s festivities, I could see fireworks from the window. With just a few months left here in China, I need to decide what to do next. I just finished applying to a literature PhD program at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } Well, I got fired. I can’t control 35 kids at once; the little ones run wild, and the older ones are bored and talk amongst themselves. Since the classes are so large, and I have more than 200 students, it’s hard to remember the children as individuals. Even first-graders spend the whole class talking amongst themselves, and I can’t shout over them. I made one kid stand in the back and he started doing cartwheels back there. Almost every month, I’ve had to give tests, and I can see the students are doing worse than when I started. I know now that I do not want to teach such large classes of small kids ever again! I have a month’s notice, but after that, I don’t know what to do. I don’t think it’s a good idea to get another English teaching job, but at least the whole thing has been an adventure. June 27, 2007 It didn’t really hit me that I was leaving China until I was at the airport. After stops in Bangkok and Seoul, I flew to Las Vegas, where my aunt lives. It was strange to hear people speaking English again and to see so many Caucasians. I haven’t received scholarship funding to St. Andrews, so I’m not sure I can make it this fall. I miss China, and I would consider going back again. I certainly don’t want to be fired again, though. x Postscript: Susan Swier was accepted to the doctoral program at St. Andrews, but without scholarship funding, couldn’t attend. She flew to Scotland to try to work something out, but when she had visa trouble, she headed back to China. “I’ve accepted a job at a private school teaching small classes of adults,” she wrote in September. She hasn’t given up on studying at St. Andrews, where she hopes to concentrate on Thomas Hardy. �49 {The Tutors} Return to Shanxi by Krishnan Venkatesh Graduate Institute Director, Santa Fe I 100 undergraduates stayed late to hear me explain Shakespeare’s meter. The American teachers who pass through Chinese universities apparently do only language instruction and are usually not interested in books. Consequently, these students are hungry to learn how to think about big things, to examine their own ideals, and to discover new worlds through reading. Their intense curiosity about life outside China was very moving. In visiting Taiyuan, Beijing, and some “smaller” cities, even on this short trip I could see the bustle and energy of a huge krishnan venk atesh n March 2007, I returned to northern China after an absence of 18 years. From 1986-89, I had taught English literature and Western philosophy at Shanxi University, Taiyuan City, and forged strong, intimate bonds with about 100 inquisitive and idealistic young people. It turned out that none of those bonds had weakened through time and distance. All these people remain my close friends, and we picked up exactly where we left off, with discussions of life and books, and always over great food and drink. Now of course my former students are all in their 40s, with kids in high school or college, and they include university professors, teachers, managers, entrepreneurs, and translators. One of the wonderful things about China is the inviolable strength of the student-teacher relationship; I know that when I am 80 and my former students are 73, our bond will be unchanged and even deeper. On this trip I had been invited to give a series of lectures on liberal education and great books, to upper-class undergraduates, graduates, and university instructors. They were eager to hear about Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides, and more than country engaged in seizing the economic leadership of the world: hard-working people everywhere, roads bursting with aggressive cars and trucks (no longer the peaceful tides of bicycles), deals made on cell-phones as people walked the streets, buildings going up everywhere, many crowded restaurants. Service workers in restaurants, hotels, banks and airports were uniformly well-trained, efficient and friendly; you could see in their eyes that they knew they were going somewhere. China is no longer a sleeping giant; indeed, the sheer life-force of this toiling, wide-awake giant is all too evident and somewhat overwhelming. By the time I returned to the United States, it was America that seemed sleepily complacent and in decline. Spend some time in China, and you will wake up. And to all of you recent St. John’s graduates who already long for the college and miss the conversations you are used to: The world out there is an interesting and exciting place; go be part of it! x Above, The garden pavilion of a private mansion in Shanxi. Left, Krishnan Venkatesh’s former students from Shanxi University reunite with their teacher 18 years later. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } �{Alumni Association News} CHAPTER CONTACTS 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 Paul Martin, SF80 paul@martincapital. com DENVER/BOULDER Tom Byrnes, SF74 720-344-6947 tbyr@pair.com BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 617-666-4381 diannecowan@rcn.com HOUSTON Norman Ewart A85 713-303-3025 norman.ewart@rosetta resources.com MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net NEW YORK CITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net SOUTHERN CALIF. Jan Conlin, SF85 310-490-2749 conlinjan1@yahoo.com TRIANGLE CIRCLE, NORTH CAROLINA Elizabeth, A92 & Rick Ross, A82 919-319-1881 Elizabeth@ activated.com SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, SF03 WASHINGTON, DC 916-967-2194 erin_hanlon@juno.com Deborah Papier, A72 202-387-4520 deborah.papier@ SANTA FE verizon.net Richard Cowles, SFGI95 PHILADELPHIA WESTERN NEW Helen Zartarian, AGI86 505-986-1814 ENGLAND rcowles2@comcast.net 215-482-5697 Peter Weis, SF84 helenstevezartarian@ 413-367-2174 SEATTLE mac.com James Doherty, SFGI76 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org 206-542-3441 PHOENIX jdoherty@mrsc.org Donna Kurgan, AGI96 623-444-6642 dakurgie@yahoo.com NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 415-333-4452 reynaldo.miranda@ gmail.com { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } ’s C ohn olle .J mn u CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 rlightburn@gmail.com SOUTH FLORIDA Peter Lamar, AGI95 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com Al ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-275-9012 rim2u@comcast.net PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ basicisp.net Jason Walsh (A85) Alumni Association President ge Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. MADISON, WI Consuelo Sañudo, SGI00 608-251-6565 sanudoc@tds.net Annapolis also had a very fine Homecoming, with more than 400 attendees, and a full range of events. On both campuses, the programming for children done by select students under the direction of the alumni office, including games, babysitting, and “Future Johnnie Seminars,” encouraged more alumni to bring their families. We’ve heard from many parents who love this relatively new addition to the homecomings. One of the key lessons from this year’s schedule was that many alumni felt early September was too soon in the beginning of academic years. Next year, Annapolis Homecoming will take place September 26-28 and Santa Fe is scheduled for mid-October. As the college did this year, it will take advantage of the more attractive pricing of Santa Fe hotels in the fall to negotiate block rates. There have been many other great alumni programs this year, both around the country at our chapters and on campus through the Piraeus program. As the representative organization for alumni, we are driven by our mission to provide opportunities for more alumni to connect more often and more richly. We will continue to strive to make engagement with the college and our community a vital part of the lives of our alumni. n T he homecomings this year have just concluded, and the energy at both was revitalizing. I attended Santa Fe’s, where there was a wide array of activities for returning alums. You could start the weekend with an art studio and winery tour, attend the lecture Friday night, choose from a range of seminars Saturday morning, toast your classmates and the college at the banquet, and dance the night away in the Great Hall. This year’s Santa Fe Homecoming benefited from the active presence of our community of learning—current students and faculty, joined by returning alumni— sharing the energeia of the Santa Fe campus, made possible by shifting the event from summer to a time when the campus is in full session. The college staff, consulting with the Alumni Association, considered this change at great length over several years and announced this change in 2006. Like most changes, there were serious pros and cons to consider both as to changing the schedule and as to keeping things the same; unfortunately there was no single option that was ideal. In the end, after carefully weighing those pros and cons, we thought the benefits of having the full community present was of great importance to the essential nature of a homecoming for the St. John’s community. To paraphrase Dean Mora’s welcome to us: for the first time we were coming home to the Santa Fe campus when the college was fully there, rather than finding a key under the mat. More than 150 people signed up for Homecoming, one of the highest attendance rates in years. On Friday night, alumni were able to attend (or to skip) Friday night lecture and the time-honored Question Period. On Saturday night, more than 100 alumni and guests enjoyed a fine dinner on the Meem Placita. When we moved indoors to the Great Hall for the dance, the enthusiasm of the many students attending enlivened the event for all. Tutors also were present throughout the weekend, at cocktail parties, the picnic, and brunch. Students were excited to see alumni who were not tutors: such strange beasts had been rumored before but never observed in the wild. io From the Alumni Association President St 50 i A s s o cia t Providing opportunities for more alumni to connect more often and more richly �{Alumni Association News} Down to Piraeus—in Annapolis Last January, the Alumni Association joined with the college in offering a new continuing education program, Piraeus. In June, the association’s secretary, Joanne Murray (A70), spent a long weekend revisiting the Odyssey with 17 other alumni in seminars led by Annapolis tutor Eva Brann (HA90) and Santa Fe tutor David Carl. Here’s her commentary on Piraeus. The ODYSSEY I was being pretty diligent in getting the reading done, but I was still finishing the last book right up to the last seminar. I still have the Fitzgerald translation that was very popular when I was a student. This was the first time re-reading it since freshman year with Elliott Zuckerman. (It really is awful to have to see the underlining and comments one made as a freshman, isn’t it?) Best Metaphor in the ODYSSEY The night before Odysseus is going to take out the suitors, he could not sleep. He rocked, “rolling from side to side, as a cook turns a sausage, big with blood and fat, at a scorching blaze, without a pause, to broil it quick: So he rolled left and right, casting 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. Life in the Dorms Jo Ann (Mattson A87, alumni director) is the best hostess ever. In our dorm rooms she left flowerpots filled with wine, cheese, chocolate, grapes, treats. Settling into a dorm room is like having a clean slate for the weekend, a real break from daily responsibilities. Part of the fun of the whole weekend was living in the dorm and being around people that you’re going to run into when you’re brushing your teeth in the morning. 51 about to see how he, alone, against the false outrageous crowd of suitors could press the fight.” The Seminars We met in the Barr-Buchanan Center—the library when I was a student—in the beautiful reading room. Of course, I knew Eva from way back, but David Carl was a new acquaintance who turned out to be an excellent tutor. He and Eva played back and forth across the table with evident pleasure. It wasn’t the same kind of discussion we had as freshmen. The conversations about Penelope were memorable: What were the difficulties of her position? Why did she have to outdo Odysseus himself in ruses? Even after he and Telemachus had killed the suitors, she had to test him one more time about moving the bed that he had built for their marriage. Only when he reacts to her saying that the bed had been moved (“what do mean you moved the bed?”) can she resume the marriage. How do you resume a marriage after so many years of separation? That’s something 18-year-olds don’t really know much about, but at our age, now, we think we know at least a few things about marriage. The Feasting We had the campus to ourselves, and the chef made it a show-off occasion for the kitchen. He took out the crystal and the linens, and there were flowers on the table. How was the food? It was not just better than regular dining hall food, it was really, really good food. It was food worth photographing. Saturday evening we made a pause in the seminar routine to feast on crabs down in Left, treats in the dorm. Top, elbow deep in crabs. Right, Miss Brann and the author. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } 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 boathouse. A few people said they’d had better crabs, but they said it elbow-deep in crab shells. They kept piling them up on their plates. Jo Ann and her husband Walter (A87), Chris Nelson, and the tutors joined us for the party. We sat up talking in the common room, over a supply of wine and cheese that was magically replenished every evening. We talked about: what we’d been up to for the last 30 years, jobs, life, politics, the economy, the country, intellectual passions, and favorite amusements. For me it was a particular pleasure to see so many people from my class, and from classes a few years before and after us—people I really got to know for the first time. The seminar is central for many of us, but that feeling of welcome—that’s what the college does so well. And that’s what made the weekend so memorable. x �{St. John’s Forever} marion warren 52 Seventy Years of Genuine Conversation I n 1957, a would-be archaeologist from Stanford University joined the faculty of St. John’s College. Though she loved Greek archaeology and had been a member of the American Agora expedition in Athens, the young scholar decided she would rather spend her life “learning about the nature of things, instead of describing objects.” This year, when she sat down with her seminar partner to lead another group of freshmen through the Iliad, tutor Eva Brann marked her 50th year of teaching at St. John’s. Miss Brann studied history at Brooklyn College, going on to earn a master’s in classics and a doctorate in archaeology from Yale University. When she came to St. John’s for her first visit, Miss Brann recalls, “It was love at first sight.” Over the years she has served as the college’s first female dean, has written several books and articles, and has been honored many times over. When she received the National Humanities Medal in 2005, presented by President George Bush in a White House ceremony, she characteristically turned attention away from herself and to St. John’s. “I think the college had more do with this than me,” she said at the time. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } At Homecoming this fall in Annapolis, Miss Brann was presented with a Festschrift, edited by tutors Peter Kalkavage and Eric Salem (A77). The Envisioned Life: Essays in Honor of Eva Brann comprises 23 essays from faculty from both campuses, friends, alumni, and Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70). The books is available from Paul Dry Books in Philadelphia: www.pauldrybooks.com The college has changed, and grown, and modernized somewhat since this photo was taken in the Coffee Shop in the late 1950s, but St. John’s still concerns itself with the nature of things. x �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Calendar Piraeus St. John’s College, in cooperation with the Alumni Association, is pleased to offer Piraeus, a continuing education program that alternates between the two campuses and combines seminars with social activities. As the first modern novel, Don Quixote had a great influence over later authors, from Dostoevsky to Mann to Nabokov. The program includes five seminars over three days. Seminars will meet in the morning and afternoon on both Friday and Saturday, concluding with a final seminar and brunch Sunday morning. teri thomson randall January 18-20, 2008 Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote* January 18-20, 2008 Santa Fe Led by Henry Higuera and Cary Stickney (A75) * The seminar led by Victoria Mora and Peter Pesic has been filled. teri thomson randall Cost: $250 per person, includes all seminars, receptions, and brunch Saturday night dinner compliments of the Alumni Association. Registration and payment deadline: December 21, 2007 Homecoming, Annapolis September 26-28, 2008 Homecoming, Santa Fe October 10-12, 2008 amy raab photography Croquet St. John’s vs. The Naval Academy, Annapolis April 19, 2008 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Fall 2007 } Clockwise: children in Santa Fe join in the Homecoming games; alumni in Santa Fe relive the glory days through old yearbooks and photographs; Joel Ard (A95) and son David enjoy a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Annapolis. �P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED NON -P ROFIT ORG . U.S. POSTAGE PAID 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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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, Fall 2007 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 33, Issue 3 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Fall 2007. 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_2007 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/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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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/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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 <em>The College</em> 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. 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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 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 <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Fall 2011. 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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 <em>The College</em> 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/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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 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/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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a875cb0903fb570cf6fe9ad7b4d0b007.pdf d1e8b6a85fb25873ccd2c942f72d428f PDF Text Text �STJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE The College (usps 018-750) On Aristotle ristotle impresses us with both his breadth and his is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM. Known office of publication: depth. Breadth: he explains why we feel the way we Public Relations Office do when we watch a tragedy, he lays out all the pos­ St. John’s College sible types of friendship, he explores the founda­ Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 tions of logic and grammar and rhetoric, he marvels at the life cycle of butterflies, he prescribes cures Periodicals postage paid for lethargy, he explains motion and time. Depth: at Annapolis, MD he asks the most fundamental questions about nature, humanity, virtue, postmaster: Send address causes, - and he makes profound ­ lype in Aristotle’s name onthinking the search engine Altavista and you(yet getexquisitely simple) prochanges to The College nouncements: “ Man is by nature a political animal, ” “ Man, by nature, Magazine, Public Relations 12.4,335 entries, including “Aristotle and Target Marketing?” as well as Office, St. John’s College, desires to know. ” scholarly sites and Annapolis tutor Joe Sachs’ translation of The Physics A on barnesandnoble.com. Aristotle’s writings - in Latin translation were the “source of the dominant teachings of the European universi­ ties” for about five centuries up to 1600; “for the four centuries since then they have been reviled as the source of a rigid and empty dogmatism that stifled any genuine pursuit of knowledge,” according to Sachs in the introduction to his translation. Almost every book of philosophy read on the program alludes to Aristotle, whether to follow him or to divert from his supposed course. For example, Kant, in his preface to the second edition of the Critique ofPure Reason, notes: “That logic has already, from the earliest time, proceeded upon this sure path [of a science] is evidenced by the fact that since Aristotle it has not required to retrace a single step...” Aristotle lived from 384 to 32a B.C. He was the student of Plato, the teacher of Alexander the Great. His dad was a physician, so as a youth he probably was channeled into the kind of studies that would prepare him for a career in medicine. He founded a school in Athens, the Lyceum, where he walked around and lectured; he’s variously described as slight, a dandy of a dresser, and speaking with a lisp. When he wanted to write about politics, he collected information about the government and history of 158 cities. At St. John’s, a lot of time is spent reading and talking about Aristotle, and this is a place where what he actually said is taken seriously. -BG Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Annapolis 410-626-2539 b-goyette@sjca.edu Barbara Goyette, editor Sus3an Borden, assistant editor Jennifer Behrens, graphic designer Advisory Board John Christensen Harvey Flaumenhaft Roberta Gable Katherine Heines Pamela Kraus Joseph Macfarland Eric Salem Brother Robert Smith Santa Fe 505-984-6104 classics@mail.sjcsf.edu Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor Advisory Board Alexis Brown Robert Glick Grant Franks David Levine Margaret Odell John Rankin Ginger Roherty Tahmina Shalizi Mark St. John Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �{Contents} PAGE IO DEPARTMENTS a FROM THE bell TOWERS A Conversation with • • • • • John Balkcom Santa Fe’s new president talks about his past life as a consultant, his present challenges at the college, and his vision for the future. PAGE • • • l6 The Logos According TO Aristotle Introducing The College A spooky Mellon Hall Belly dancing alumnae Febbie class to be discontinued Philanthropia encourages thumos among future alumni Top ten program books Summer Classics offerings The life of Leo Raditsa 9 ALUMNI VOICES • Annapolis tutor Joe Sachs (A68) has translated four of Aristotle’s works. His principle: use ordinary English to capture the freshness of the philosopher’s thought. A defining moment for everyone from the 1940s: Pearl Harbor Day. a6 LETTERS aS ALUMNI NOTES ALUMNI PROFILES ag Lisa Simeone (A79 ) wins a role at NPR. PAGE 2,0 The Education That is Parenthood 33 Heather Moore (SFoo) became a shopaholic - for the coolest circus around. PAGE z6 Six Johnnies whose professions focus on children discuss the trials and triumphs of parenting. PAGE 35 Phil Woods (A61) combines his love of books with his devotion to Paris. 37 STUDENT VOICES • 2^ A transfer student trains her eye on the two campuses. 38 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION • • Choral Kaleidoscope To recreate an ancient Greek chorus, a tutor looked to Greek pottery, Plato’s descriptions of physical conditioning, and accent and meter in the tragedies. All about Senior Dinners Election Notices 41 OBITUARIES • PAGE 30 Nancy Buchenauer on Robert Bart 43 alumni connections 44 ST. JOHN’S FOREVER ON THE COVER Aristotle: His workspervade the St. John’s program. Illustration by David Johnson. �2. {From the Bell Towers} Introducing The College In which the editor utters heresy. Last fall, we bid farewell to The Reporter, which had been the St. John’s publication for alumni since 1974. We thought the time had come for a new look and a new way of present­ ing information that befits the many changes at St. John’s. Many changes at St. John’s?!? Heresy! Why do I write this? The program remains intact; McDowell Hall still stands; today’s Johnnies still have that head-in-the-clouds, not-distracted-by-fashion, young intellectu­ al air about them; Monte Sol still beckons for a solitary climb. The year I graduated from St. John’s is the year Becky Wil­ son, then public relations direc­ tor for the college, started The Reporter. When I returned to St. John’s after 20 years labor­ ing in the publishing world, the college, I found, was over­ whelmingly the same. The pro­ gram, after all, is still what’s important; the words that Barr and Buchanan used to describe the college, and the essays in which Jacob Klein explained the basis of liberal education still hold true. Yet there are differ­ ences: i) The college adminis­ tration is professional and the college is on sound financial ground. 2) The Santa Fe campus has grown to the same size stu­ dent body as Annapolis, with its own cast of fascinating and com­ mitted tutors, an array of stu­ dent activities that are Johnnielike yet uniquely southwestern, and a full complement of appro­ priate buildings. 3) The stu­ dents are as a whole more stu­ dious, and they are better ■ qualified. Sitting in on classes now, I find that almost everyone has prepared, everyone can par­ ticipate. (In my day, in a good class it might have been half The artwork on the cover is by David Johnson, who also draws PORTRAITS FOR THE NeW YoRK TiMES BoOK ReVIEW. EvERY COVER OF The COLLEGE'VniA. feature a writer from the program. who had done the translation or worked through the proof.) 4) The tutors represent a wider range of ages and backgrounds; they have a variety of interests that they are willing to share with students. 5) Student servic­ es are much improved - there is a full-time counselor and a stu­ dent activities coordinator on staff, and a thriving athletic program. 6) The alumni body as a whole has gotten much larger and much younger - more than 60% from the classes of the 1980s and after. And they have become much more actively involved with the college. 7) A lot of little things, mostly physi­ cal: the Woodward Hall library, newly renovated when I was a student, had become shabby and overcrowded and a new library was opened in 1996; there are {The College- new spaces like the Mitchell Gallery and the Conversation Room; the food in the dining hall seems pretty good. I’m sure that if I had been a student in Santa Fe and returned there the changes would have seemed even more striking. Alumni and others who care about the college should be aware of all this change. They should know how vibrant, funny, endearing, smart, intense, and talented the cur­ rent students are. They should know how St. John’s is governed and how decisions are made. They should be reminded of their shared experiences at these two places - Santa Fe and Annapolis - and their shared experience that is entirely placeless: the reading, study, and discussion of Plato, Sopho­ St. John's College ■ Spring 2001 } cles, Descartes, Aquinas, Cer­ vantes, Kant, Hegel, Austen, and the whole gang. That’s what this new magazine. The College, is all about. Although the look is new and different to better reflect St. John’s today, there are some things about this magazine that we wouldn’t want to change from their old and trusty Reporter format: class notes, profiles of alumni, college news, campus concerns. You’ve told us that you want to read about the program, so there will be more stories about the books and the curriculum itself. John­ nie traditions carry on through the decades, but since it’s always a new set of students playing croquet or setting up the games at Reality, we plan on telling you what’s happening with those. St. John’s history is a rich lode - through photos and articles, we hope to connect you with the college’s past. We hope to hear from alumni through letters, class notes, and article submissions. As the name suggests. The College is about the one college, St. John’s, that exists on two campuses. News from both cam­ puses will be included; students, tutors, and alumni from both campuses will be profiled. Although the actual production will be handled in Annapolis, alumni can feel free to contact the magazine’s staff at either campus about The College. Let us know what you think. Barbara Goyette, A73 Editor b-goyette@sjca.edu 410-295-5554 Laura Mulry, SFGI02 Santa Fe Editor classics@maiLsjcsf.edu 505-984-6104 Sus3an Borden, A87 Assistant Editor s-borden@sjca.edu 410-626-2538 �{From the Bell Towers} Down in the basement truly the weird and creepy lair ofCharon the storage areas have been emptied... Tales from THE Crypt It’s not Hades, land of shades. Although the hallways of Mellon now look nightmarish, fit for endless wandering with no hope of escape, they are in fact being stripped for a useful purpose: the beginning of a $12.5 million renovation. During spring break, workers took up the worn hall tiles, removed the rain-stained ceilings, and exposed crawl spaces in the south and west wings of Mellon (these wings contain the music rooms, music library, and all lab rooms). Down in the basement truly the weird and creepy lair of Charon - the storage areas have been emptied of their boxes of admissions propaganda, dusty chandeliers, broken desks, and seminar chairs in need of new seats and rungs. The circa 1958 heating, plumbing, and electri­ cal systems are being exposed and marveled at for their Rube Santa Fe Yearbook in THE Works The completion of the new gym and the installment of John Balkcom as president of the Santa Fe campus have con­ tributed to the creation of an energetic and highly motivated student body in Santa Fe this year. Enthusiasm for extracur­ ricular activities and attendance at school functions is much higher than in recent years. To quote Brendan O’Neill (SF93) in the Student Events Office, “This is the most involved stu­ dent body I have seen on this campus in a long time.” To tap this creative energy (and also to eliminate one comparison 3 Always dingy, the hallways of Mellon look even darker now that THEY have been TORN APART. ThE $13.5 RENOVATION WILL RESULT IN A BRIGHTER, MORE INVITING SPACE. Goldbergian nature. “There’s some old machinery down there all right,” says Sid Phipps, superintendent of buildings and grounds. Plans call for new mechani­ cals to be installed this summer, and the first series of renovated classrooms should be finished between Annapolis and Santa Fe) a few members of the sopho­ more class decided that this year they would create a year­ book. For the past 20 years or so the students on the Annapo­ lis campus have been able to put together an annual yearbook, but it was not something that happened in Santa Fe. According to Student Activi­ ties Director Mark St. John, over the years various groups of students have thought to put one together but didn’t have enough material when press time rolled around. Then last year’s Reality committee recom­ mended to the rising sopho­ mores adding a yearbook to the list of possible fundraisers. While the idea of a yearbook as a fundraiser was soon deemed impractical, the thought of cre­ ating one was openly embraced. After a month or so of planning. {The College. by Christmas. Work on an addi­ tion with tutor offices on the Heating Plant side of the build­ ing will commence this summer. Other phases of the project include installing a new roof, spiffing up the auditorium, adding a glassed-in satellite cof­ fee shop in the courtyard, and ''This is the most involved student body Ihave seen on this campus in a long time.'' Brendan O’Neill Student Events Office as well as meeting with the administration and Polity to gain their support, the year­ book staff was ready to go. Notices were posted in the Ephemera and MoonTag adver­ tising for writers, photogra­ phers, and graphic designers anyone interested in joining the fledgling staff. Not long after ideas about theme and content St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } putting in a new art and pottery studio, darkroom, and confer­ ence room. The whole project is due for completion in 2003. The Hodson Trust has given St. John’s a $4.5 million chal­ lenge grant to complete the Mellon Hall funding. The col­ lege has already raised more than $10 million for the project, leaving less than $2 million to be raised; the Hodson Trust will match dollar for dollar any donation for the Mellon Hall renovation. were being discussed and assignments handed out. Sub­ missions were collected, although layout work was delayed until the beginning of the second semester in order to upgrade the technological capa­ bilities of the office that is being shared with the MoonTag. The ambitions of this first yearbook are small. We do not hope to rival anyone’s high school yearbook in size, although we certainly hope to match, if not exceed it in quali­ ty. While the yearbook has yet to be named (a campus-wide contest is being held to choose a name), the theme for this year is community. The goal of the edi­ tor is to have every aspect of the college community represented, not just the undergraduates, so submissions are being sought from tutors and staff alike, -BY Erin Hanlon, SF03 �{From the Bell Towers} Febbie Class to be Discontinued The Instruction Committee on the Annapolis campus has rec­ ommended that the January Freshman class be discontinued in Annapolis in five years, with the last class enrolling in aoo6. Called the Febbie Class because its members originally came to campus in February, the mid­ year freshman class was con­ ceived to help keep the college at capacity by compensating for first-semester dropouts. The ao to 40 students began their freshman year in January, worked through the summer, and joined the rest of the fresh­ man class as sophomores the following fall. Today, admis­ sions to the freshman class are at an all-time high and keeping the class full is no longer a prob­ lem. Twenty years ago, many of the Febbies were transfers from other colleges; today most of those who enter in January wanted to come in September, but the class was already full. “The change is made possible by the relative financial health of the college and by substantial growth in the applicant pool for the fall freshman class,” said Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft in explaining the decision. “The reasons for discontinuing the mid-year class are instruction­ al...The regular freshmen get a school year with six more weeks of reflection and conversation together. They also have more time to prepare their essays, and are less likely to suffer a change of tutors between semesters.” The break between the end of the summer semester and the beginning of the sophomore fall semester is short, and Febbies are often exhausted just as their sophomore year is beginning. Beginning in January is attrac­ tive to some prospective stu­ dents, for example those who are undecided about college by the spring of their senior year in high school, or those who need to earn more money before beginning college. “Despite its inherent disadvantages, mid-year entrance has given many stu­ dents access to the benefits of a St. John’s education.” notes Mr. Flaumenhaft. The Santa Fe cam­ pus plans to continue to offer the option of enrolling in January. A Far Cry from Essay Writing ascertain how the web could be used to Si. John "5 College is a co-educatiooal, Si. lohn's was fouaded tn i6!>6 and has keep them more fotr-year liberal arts college known for it* two ctutpuses, one in Annapolis, disiinciive "greaf books" tuthMiwn. Maiylsid. and anorher in Santa f e. New Through <he reading of original lenis, Mexico. The College awards both (he involved in the col­ siodeni.'i (cOeel on ibc gteai igKSlioits of Bachelor ufArts »d Master ofAm ihe Western iradiiion from ancient Greece degreet. St. Julia’s has no ndijious lege (possibilities to nioilem tunes Siudenls study from the affilisrion St. John's is one coHeye on two ciassittof liierature. phiSosofil^. theology. cam}xtsc» The campuses idiare a conunou [«ychologs. ]»liticaf science, ectinomiCi, cuniculuni, and siudoils may transfer being explored (usury, nudiemMics. laboratory sciences, befweendsuu during the course of their music, and the visual am sanhes. include chat rooms, bulletin boards, email for life, and password-protected directories); and third, a site will be “architected” (web people actually use this word) and then bruit. Time­ line for the project is about a year. The initial telephone sur­ veys of alumni begin this spring. Like many small colleges, The St. John’s College web site St. John’s struggles with tech­ is in for a facelift. The college nology issues. On the one hand, has hired a firm called Genera­ the college needs a web site and tion to help redevelop the sites administrative computing sys­ for the two campuses, to look at tems that are comparable to ways to unify the sites, to those at other schools. On the increase functions for alumni, other hand, being technologi­ to explore avenues for market­ cally up-to-date doesn’t matter ing the Graduate Institute in the context of the program of online, and to provide prospec­ instruction. But even though tive students the kind of infor­ the program can function with­ mation they look for on the web. out it, the internet holds huge Generation has lots of experi­ potential for bringing alumni Megan Miller (SFGIoi - left) and Logan Wink (SFoo - right) start­ ence with higher education together in cyberspace and for ed BELLY dancing TWO YEARS AGO FOR EXERCISE AND FUN. “It WAS MY WAY TO clients and will help St. John’s increasing their involvement GET OFF CAMPUS AND RELIEVE STRESS DURING SENIOR ESSAY WRITING,” SAYS through a three-part process: with the college. 4" Wink. As the duo got more involved with the ancient Babylonian first, the college will look at DANCE FORM, THEY PROPOSED TO THEIR TEACHER, TaNYA KeRN (cENTER), internal and external needs and THAT THEY PERFORM. ThEIR FIRST SHOW WAS AT St. JoHn’s IN SaNTA Fe AND define audiences for its site; sec­ THEY RECENTLY FINISHED A THREE-SHOW RUN AT El FaROL ON GaNYON RoAD. ond, alumni will be contacted to SljOtlN’SCOLLlXJ Web News @SJCA.EDU {The College - St. John’s College • Spring 2001 } �{From the Bell Towers} 5 The Spirit of Philanthropia “Knowledge is power,” wrote Francis Bacon. And knowledge is powerful, says Amber Boydstun (SF99). Boydstun is chair of the Spirit Committee, part of Philanthropia - the alumni organization dedicated to fundraising for St. John’s. The knowledge that Boydstun finds powerful is the knowledge she gained while working as a student aide in the advance­ ment office for four years. There, she learned how the col­ lege works. She learned about college finances and fundrais­ ing. And she got to know the men and women who have dedi­ cated their professional lives to St. John’s. It made a powerful difference when it came to her decision to donate money to the college. “I’m not the kind of person who would normally have that team spirit, not the kind who normally donates. But I’m going to be donating every year and I already have in the two years since I graduated,” says Boyd­ stun. “Why? Because I have the facts and information that tell me that the college does need my help, that tuition is not enough to pay for the education provided to students.” Boydstun’s plan is to share this information with current students, and under her leader­ ship the Spirit Committee will meet with all Johnnies at four critical times in their college years: during freshman orienta­ tion, at the beginning of senior year, after essay writing, and before graduation. The idea is that seniors are just a step away from being alumni, and it would be a good thing if they could realize how important alumni are to the college from the very beginning. This year, there’s been a reception for seniors at the President’s house in Santa Fe and a series of dinners at the President’s house in Annapolis. “We ask the seniors about their experience at the college, what they would have liked to be dif­ ferent, what they thought was particularly good,” says Annapolis Vice President Jeff Bishop. “They have a chance to ask questions about the admin­ istration of the college. We also present our case to them: that St. John’s really needs financial support from alumni after they graduate; that tuition only cov­ ers 75% of what it costs to edu­ cate each student, and that the rest of the money to run the col­ lege must come from contribu­ tions. We encourage them to stay connected to the college after they leave. They really seem to appreciate the informa­ tion and to enjoy the evening.” “So many people graduate loving the great books and thinking St. John’s as a school is greater than anything else in the world, but they don’t donate. My goal is to encourage spirit - thumos - for St. John’s as an institution,” says Boydstun. “I’d like to help them under­ stand that St. John’s the school they love is the same as St. John’s the institution that needs their help.” > {The College Thomas Burke Top Ten of THE Favorite Five The fundraising brochure sent out last fall by the alumni group Philanthropia pictured five Johnnies in the midst of their daily activities - with their five favorite books from the pro­ gram. The idea was to ask alum­ ni to think about how the books had permeated their conscious­ ness, about how important the St. John’s curriculum is to the intellectual development of the teachers, businesspeople, par­ ents, artists, computer pro­ grammers, and whatever else St. John’s alumni become. Along with their checks, many alumni sent in responses to the question: What are your five favorite books from the program? Here’s the tally of the win­ ners. Many people answered by listing an author (Plato) rather than a book (The Republic). There were many books/ authors receiving one vote: Claude Bernard’s Introduction .St John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } (SFgz) poses in HIS home office in Baltimore WITH HIS five favorite PROGRAM books: Montaigne’s Essays, Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, The Prince, Joyce’s Ulysses, and Thucydides. to the Study ofExperimental Medicine; Tacitus; Hume; Henry Adams’ History ofthe U.S. In all, alumni named 87 different books or authors. The top ten of the alumni’s five favorites are: • Plato (The Republic was mentioned most often) • Homer (equal numbers named The Iliad and The Odyssey) • Euclid • The Bible • Jane Austen - Shakespeare Aristotle (The Ethics was most named) were tied • Greek drama (Sophocles, Euripedes, and Aeschylus) • The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky • Kant - War and Peace by Tolstoy were tied • Thucydides • Dante �6 {From the Bell Towers} Off TO Santa Fe FOR Summer Classics Dante and Milton and Eva Brann... Oh My! Summer Classics, the program that brings book and opera lovers from across the country to Santa Fe, will be held July 15 to August 4. Participants go to seminars in the morning, spend the afternoons on field trips and other southwestern activities, then attend the Santa Fe Opera in the evenings. You can sign up for one, two, or all three weeks (one seminar topic per week), and can either stay on campus or arrange accommodation in Santa Fe. The program is appro­ priate as an introduction to the college and also for those who’ve done it before - alumni and those who have participated in community or executive sem­ inars. For more information, check the web site at www.sjcsf. edu/classics/classic.htm, or e-mail classics@mail.sjcsf.edu, or call 505-984-6104. Week I, July 15-21 • Opera: Donizetti, Lucia. Sem­ inars led by William Fulton and Elliott Zuckerman • Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. Seminars led by Michael Bybee and Caleb Thompson • Darwin, The Voyage ofthe Beagle. Seminars led by Mark Rollins and Linda Wiener • Milton, Paradise Lost. Semi­ nars led by David Carl and Claudia Honeywell • Paul Scott, The Raj Quartet. Seminars led by Eva Brann and Janet Dougherty • Thucydides, Peloponnesian War. Seminars led by James Carey and Matthew Davis Week II, July 22-28 Week III, July 29-August 4 • Opera: Richard Strauss, The Egyptian Helen and Mozart, Mitridate. Seminars led by William Fulton and Robert Glick. • Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics. Seminars led by Clau­ dia Honeywell and George Lane • Dante, Purgatorio. Seminars led by Basia Miller and Caleb Thompson • Dostoevsky, Demons. Semi­ nars led by James Carey and Frank Pagano • Plato’s Critique of Rhetoric: The Ion, Gorgias. Seminars led by Jan Arsenault and Elliott Zuckerman • Shakespeare, Richard II and Henry IV. Seminars led by Judith Adam and Warren Winiarski • Shakespeare, Pericles and Twelfth Night. Seminars led by William Alba and Krishnan Venkatesh • Opera: Verdi, Ealstaffand Alban Berg, Wozzeck. Semi­ nars led by William Fulton and Robert Glick • Dante, Purgatorio. Seminars led by Cary Stickney and Susan Stickney • Goethe, Theory of Colors. Seminars led by George Lane and Julie Reahard • The Plays of Kalidasa. Semi­ nars led by Michael Bybee and Michael Wolfe • The Poetry of Wallace Stevens. Seminars led by James Forkin and Thomas Scally {The College- St. John’s College ■ Spring zoot } India is the setting for two Summer Classics readings: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott AND The Plays of Kalidasa (Above). Two seminarswill read Dante’s Purgatorio (Below). �{From Bell Towers} the One College - How to Make It Really Work For 36 years, St. John’s struggled with how to administer a eoUege with two campuses that are sepa­ rated hy 1800 miles, a two-hour time difference, at least six hours of travel time, and hundreds of different ways of dealing with both day-to-day and long-term issues. The curriculum has always been the great unifier and under the direction of the Joint Instruction Committee (composed of tutors on both campuses) it has remained virtu­ ally identical in Annapolis and Santa Fe. But administration is another matter. Over time, tiny management decisions on each campus led to more substantial policy differ­ ences. The Board of Visitors and Governors, while acknowledging the importance of a president for each campus, last year re-organ­ ized the college’s basic adminis­ trative structure, creating a Management Committee that includes the presidents and deans of both campuses, who may bring in other college officers during their discussions. The Committee’s purview is cer­ tain college-wide functions and its single executive (a chair) han­ dles comprehensive issues with­ out diminishing the responsibihties of the campus presidents and deans for their own opera­ tions. Annapolis president Christo­ pher Nelson is serving as the “We need topre­ serve the special sense ofcommu­ nity that exists on each campus, and we will not take any action that would threaten that. Chris Nelson, Annapolis president and chair of the Management Committee, says,“We have a lot of work ahead of us.” {The College. first chair of the Management Committee. “There is a clear spirit of cooperation,” he says. “John Balkcom (the new presi­ dent in Santa Fe) and I are com­ mitted to the notion that with respect to certain issues, col­ lege-wide treatment is essential. We need to preserve the special sense of community that exists on each campus, and we will not take any action that would threaten that.” During its first year, the Man­ agement Committee: • Equalized tutor salaries, which had been less in Santa Fe since 1994-95 • Formulated a plan for equaliz­ ing tuition, which had been different on the two campuses • Worked out a college-wide budget, with separate consid­ eration of capital projects and other issues specific to each campus • Considered differences in the financial aid policies of the campuses and began to work on making them more consistent • Re-organized the advance­ ment offices to prevent dupli­ cating all functions on each campus • Adopted an information tech­ nology plan for both campus­ es, including a joint web site • Provided for a joint recruit­ ment strategy and new publica­ tions for the Graduate Institute • Prepared a framework for a college-wide strategic plan that considers needs and resources well into the future • Formulated a way to resolve inconsistent alumni databases on the campuses • Standardized a host of report­ ing functions so that college­ wide information is available on everything from budget matters to admissions enroll­ ment During this first year the Man­ agement Committee concentrat­ ed on resolving differences that had arisen over time. The com­ mittee is also beginning to make college-wide policy decisions, for St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } example; it extended benefits to the domestic partners (same and opposite sex) of faculty and staff. In the coming year the Com­ mittee will complete a strategic plan and needs assessment for the campuses, and will help organize the elements for the college’s next fundraising capi­ tal campaign. “I anticipate focusing on the need to have comparable faculty staffing, class sizes, and faculty develop­ ment programs on both campus­ es,” says Nelson. St. John’s in THE News An article called “Where Plato Is Your Professor” in the Febru­ ary aoor issue of Smithsonian magazine describes the col­ lege’s program, the students and classes, and the various extracurricular activities. Also interviewed are several alumni, identified as a building contrac­ tor, a lawyer, a biologist, and an editorial assistant. Written by Edwards Park, a retired Smith­ sonian contributor who lives in Annapolis, and photographed by Cameron Davidson, the arti­ cle focuses on the intellectual atmosphere of St. John’s. St. John’s is also featured in a book about investing (yes, the financial kind). Latticework: The New Investing by Robert G. Hagstrom (published by Texere ) describes an approach to invest­ ing that is based on a liberal arts-style understanding, where the interconnections between the important ideas from a num­ ber of fields are discovered. Hagstrom, who is a senior vicepresident of Legg Mason Focus Capital, talked with alumni in investment fields, who cited the importance of St. John’s in their development as “better thinkers.” -f- �8 {From the Bell Towers} Leo Raditsa The Face of SJC Today About the freshmen who arrived in Santa Fe and Annapolis in September and January: There are 319 of them, 167 men and 152 women. 8 didn’t finish high SCHOOL (they are CLASSIFIED “eARLY ENTRANCE”) AND 52 ATTENDED ANOTHER COLLEGE BEFORE THEY BAILED OUT, SAW THE LIGHT, AND CAME TO St. John’s. Age range is i6 to 51. About 68% receive financial aid. 223 ATTENDED PUBLIC SCHOOLS; 93 ATTENDED INDEPENDENT OR PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS. 6o% RANKED IN THE TOP FIFTH OF THEIR CLASS; 4% MeRIT HONORS. St. John’s doesn’t require SAT scores for admission, but of those RANKED IN THE FOURTH FIFTH. 183 RECEIVED NATIONAL THAT submitted SCORES, THE RANGE OF THE MIDDLE 50% VERBAL IS 65O TO 750 AND THE RANGE OF THE MIDDLE 50% MATH IS 580 TO 680. 39 STATES AND 3 FOREIGN COUNTRIES ARE REPRESENTED (HIGHEST NUMBERS ARE 32 FROM California in Santa Fe and 20 from Maryland in CHRIS QUINN SFGIo Annapolis), Within a few weeks, the FRESHMEN BLENDED IN SO WELL IT WAS HARD TO DISTINGUISH THEM FROM MORE SEASONED Johnnies - you had to check WHAT they were READING TO FIND OUT. Students are SHOWN ON THE AnNAPOLIS (left) and AT Meem Library (above). GREG WHITESELL quad {The College - Leo Raditsa, a tutor at the col­ lege since 1973, died February 22 in Annapolis after suffering a stroke. He had been ill with myeloma. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1936, where his father, Bog­ dan Raditsa, was a delegate to the League of Nations, Mr. Raditsa came to this country in 1940 when his father joined the Yugoslav Embassy in Washing­ ton, D.C. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and then from Harvard College in 1956. At Harvard he founded and edited i.e.. The Cambridge Review. The grandson of the noted Ital­ ian historian Guglielmo Fer­ rero, he held two graduate degrees in history from Colum­ bia University: a 1962 master’s in medieval history and a 1969 doctorate in ancient history. He was also a University Fellow and a President’s Fellow at Colum­ bia. In 1964-65 he held a Ful­ bright Fellowship at the Univer­ sity of Munich. After teaching at New York University, Washington Square College, from 1965 to 1973, he joined the faculty of St. John’s College. He was the founding editor of The St. John ’a Review. He was affiliated during the 1977-78 academic year with the Hoover Institute on War, Revo­ lution and Peace at Stanford, Calif., as a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow. Mr. Raditsa was the author of numerous articles and of two books: Prisoners ofa Dream: The South African Mirage, which he wrote following 1991 when he was a lecturer at the Rand Afrikaans University and at the University of the Witwatersrand, seoA Some Sense About Wilhelm Reich, concerning the controversial psychiatrist. Mr. Raditsa was also a painter whose watercolors were exhibited at galleries in the Annapolis area. Mr. Raditsa was a member of a distinguished Italian family St. John’s College ■ Spring soot } Leo Raditsa and great-grandson of the crim­ inologist Cesare Lombroso; he divided his time between Annapohs and his family home outside Florence. Survivors include his son, Sebastian, and a sister, Basiljka Raditsa, both of New York City. His marriage to Larissa Bonfante of New York City ended in divorce. The fami­ ly requests that gifts be made to the St. John’s College library, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. A memorial service for Mr. Raditsa was held in March. A memoriam will appear in the next issue of The College. �9 {Alumni Voices} CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS A Pearl Harbor Day memoir BY Peter Wolff, A44 y the time I got to St. John’s in the fall of 1940, the New Program was in full swing. A few (less than a dozen) Old Program stu­ dents still remained. The college got a boost from an article in Life magazine that appeared in February of 1940. It spoke glowingly of the Program in a spread of 10 or B I cannot resist a swipe at American journalism: One of the pictures showed a student reading Horace’s poems in Latin. A fine picture except that the student shown was an Old Program student; the book he was reading was by an author (Horace) not then being read in the Program; the book was being read in the original Latin instead of in translation, whereas all of the great books authors were and are being read in English. I took to the college immediately and felt that I had found my intel­ lectual home. I read the books, dis­ cussed them and thought of little else. I had little money but I didn’t need it: $a6 lasted me through the first semester, as I barely stepped off the campus. I cannot remember what I did in the summer of 1941, but I returned to St. John’s in the fall of that year with enthusiasm and threw myself into reading the second year list. It includ­ ed Virgil, but also St. Augustine’s Confes­ sions and large parts of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa The.ologica. I had joined a film club that was being formed by a few students. It proposed to show classic movies to those who joined In 194a, THE COLLEGE HELD A DANCE TO ReLIEF. In ATTENDANCE WERE STRINGFELLOW BaRR (left) and Admiral Beardall, Superin­ tendant OF THE Naval Academy. RAISE MONEY FOR ALLIED WaR the club. The movies were obtained from the Museum of Modern Art on a rental basis. Club members were mostly St. John’s students but also faculty members and a few faculty from the Naval Academy. I can only remember two films. One was A {The College . St. John’s College ■ Spring soot } Nous La Liberte, directed by Jean Renoir; the other. Carnival in Flanders, was scheduled for the evening of December 7, 1941. The gymnasium, an old building, had to be prepared for the film showing. So at a little after noon, several of us were setting up the screen and folding chairs for the audience. At about r:3o in the afternoon, some­ one came running into the building and 12,yelled, pages. “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.” For a little while, I did not fully take in what had been said; then we all abandoned our efforts (we were nearly finished anyhow) and repaired to our dormi­ tory rooms to listen to the radio. The film showing did take place in the evening. Not many of the Naval Academy members of the club showed up; those that did for the first time wore their uniforms. The next day, a radio (these were pre-television days) was brought into the dining hall and at noon we listened to President Roosevelt referring to December 7 as “a day that will live in infamy,” regretting the many casualties that had been incurred, and asking the Congress to declare war on Japan. People of my age and generation all remember what they were doing on December 7,1941. For younger people, it is just another date. For some of them, November aa, 1963 has a similar significance, but even those who remem­ ber President Kennedy’s assassination are now growing old. What are the mythic dates for those who are now in their twen­ ties or thirties? The first moon landing? President Nixon’s resignation? The fall of the Berlin Wall? �IO {Interview} A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN BALKCOM The newpresident in Santa Fe begins his tenure Johnnie-style—in a dialogue with students, faculty, and alumni. N November 7 John E. Balkcom became the fifth president of the Santa Fe campus of St. John’s Col­ lege. A fit and athletic 53-year-old with wide interests beyond a career as head of a college, he radi­ ates an affable, energetic person­ ality and addresses the complex challenges of his new job with cheerful confidence. He has enjoyed a close association with the college, having been not only a graduate student in Santa Fe but also a member the Board of Visitors and Governors for five years. In January the president sat down for an interview with James Idema, a Santa Fe writer whose affection for St. John’s stems from his participation in the Community Seminar Series. Q: Your background is an unusual combination ofbusiness and academics. Your education includes an AB in philoso­ phyfrom Princeton, an MBA from the University of Chica­ go's Graduate School ofBusiness,and a master’s degree in liberal artsfrom St. John’s. You have also pursued a career as a business consultant and served as an adjunctprofessor ofeconomics at Chicago. Is itfair to say that, with this back­ ground, your visionfor St. John’s ispractical as well as ide­ alistic? JB: I would hope so. Practical in the sense of my aspiring for this program - “this brilliantly conceived small college,” to {The College- quote one of our tutors emeritus. Bill Darkey - to be far more secure financially in the future, to have the ability to deliver this distinctive kind of education, this expensive way of doing an education, and to give that method long economic life through significant improvements in the endowment. This would allow us to maintain a student body of about 450 undergraduate and about 60 graduate students. My feeling is that we could continue to grow somewhat in the graduate program. We have no aspiration to make the undergraduate program 500, 600, 700, but rather to keep it at its current size or smaller, to serve that population well, and to continue to sustain the intimacy that happens at the seminar level between tutors and stu­ dents. I believe that the seminar table is the locus of the unique value of this program and I want to continue to be able to deliver that close personal attention of our tutors to our students, both in and out of class. Q: More to the idealisticpoint. I’ve been reading in the local press about the kind of epiphany you experienced in which ethics came unexpectedly into your approach to life, per­ haps gaining ascendancy over the business aspect. Can you comment on that? JB: One of the primary responsibilities of a partner in a management consulting firm is to sell business, to build new client relationships and to provide services that are both valuable to the client and profitable to the consulting firm. It’s a rather weak joke among consultants that when St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �ERIC SWANSON {The College -St John's College • Spring 2001 } �{interview} one receives a call from a prospective client asking the question “Do you do X?” the answer is almost always “Why, yes, of course. And, indeed, we are deeply expert in that area. That’s our business and we have just the people who can help you.” I certainly appreciate the commercial impera­ tive of growing one’s business when one is a management consultant, but at times I found it troubling that I was at least stretching the case for my capability or my firm’s capability for what we might do to help a client. In particular, after reading Augus­ tine’s Confessions for the first time in the Graduate Institute, I had this blinding realization of the three white lies a management consultant tells when a prospective client calls him. “(i) I’m thrilled to hear from you. (2) I’m utterly fascinated by your problem. (3) I’m immediately avail­ able to help you.” Out of the realiza­ tion that none of the above is always true and in the process of reading the Confessions, I began having much more candid conversations with my clients and prospective clients, asking them background questions and then, with increasing fre­ quency, suggesting that I was not the right person to handle their problem but giving them names and phone numbers of others who might be better qualified to serve them. JB: Sure. We have eliminated that disparity as of January i, which, as a board member, I wanted to see hap­ pen during my five years of tenure. So I’m pleased that we have now taken the steps that were needed. Q: It took a long time. It took a long time because of differences in resources available to the two campuses. And it put some added pressure on this campus in terms of balancing our budget going forward. We’ve had several areas of cost increases in the last two years. First, the increase in salaries for fac­ ulty. Fortunately, we’ve had generous benefactors who have increased our endowment to help us fund the need­ ed increase in faculty salaries. Two years ago my predecessor and his staff did an evaluation of staff compensa­ tion and found that it was off the mark quite a bit. So we have had some significant staff compensation increases as well. We’ve also changed the kind of retirement plan for the staff to be similar to that of the faculty. Our health insurance costs, like those of almost every other organization I know, are rising rapidly. And then throw into that the recent spike in natural gas prices, and our fixed costs have gone up tremendously. JB: It did. Ybelieve the seminar table is the locus ofthe unique value ofthis program... Q: One might think you risked losing clients that way. That was the risk I expected at the beginning of those con­ versations, but I must tell you it brought clients back to me repeatedly, clients who had appreciated my candor. More important for me, my speaking that way proved to be hugely liberating. Now you’re no longer a consultant but the man in charge. What are some ofthe major challenges youface in thisposition. Can we start with the faculty salary disparities between this campus and Annapolis? {The College Bad timing, indeed. But I must say, we’re still finding our friends, alumni, and certain foundations quite generous. It’s not an easy challenge to raise the money, but they’re continu­ ing to be generous with us. Friends of the college are still com­ ing to us with significant gifts. So, in that sense, our timing is quite fortuitous. JB: JB; Q: Q: Also a weakening ofthe economy. Bad timing. Q: You ’re going to be able to increase the endowment? The board and the capital campaign committee are just beginning to plan for the next capital campaign. But my person­ al aspiration is to see the endowment move from its current level JB: ■ St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �{interview } 13 ‘7found the... issues ofthe nature of the soul [in the ' Phaedrus 7... quite immediate and urgentfor every man and woman in the room. of just under $ioo million for the whole college to something in excess of $250 mUhon hy the end of this decade. That’s not an easy task. It takes a great deal ofwork. But I know it can be done. Many other fine hberal arts colleges in a similar period have raised significantly more than that. I think we have the opportunity to present this story to alumni, friends, and foundations and corpo­ rations in a way that wiU be com­ pelling, to improve our endowment substantially. That, by the way, will help with our sustaining and improving the salaries of faculty and staff. study area that would be more friendly to students. Probably the most notable physical change that a number of us would like to see is an auditorium that would house 600 to 800 at one time. Today we have no single venue within which we can convene the entire college commu­ nity, meaning faculty, students, and staff. L Q: Would this replace the Great Hall? Q: Willyou yourselfbe taking an active role infundraising? JB: Oh, yes, I already have been. I am traveling some in con­ nection with that task, and Robert Glick, the vice president for advancement, has scheduled me for a minimum of three lunches and two dinners a week with potential donors of vari­ ous kinds in the Santa Fe area. envision physical expansion of the campus, bricks­ and-mortar improvements? Q: Do you JB: Yes, in a modest way. Again, we are at the maximum stu­ dent size that we want, so we won’t be growing in that sense. But I would like to add - and again, this is yet to be worked out - another 60 rooms on campus, which would allow us to house up to 75 to 80 percent of our student body. Q: That means new dormitories. JB: Two new dormitories would be my guess. Q: The dormitories arefilled up now? JB: To the brim. So that’s one physical change - a modest one, I think. A second needed improvement: We have about $12 mil­ lion of deferred maintenance on campus buildings and need very much to upgrade the fire protection systems. Thirdly, I’d like to see a project suggested, just as a possibility, by the head of our bookstore of breaking the wall between the bookstore and the coffee shop and combining them into a sitting and {The College . JB: I hope it would replace the Great Hall. And it would do three impor­ tant things for us: It would give us a venue for convening the entire college community. Second, it would give us a more attractive space for student productions of plays and musical performances. Third, it would give us an opportunity to bring the local community here for events of various kinds, to house musical events and professional performances, and allow the community to become even closer and better acquainted with the college. So, I’d like to see that change. It might be the most noticeable of the changes I would envision in bricks and mortar. Q: I was going to ask whether St. John "s alumni, as other college alumni, are generally successful, well off, dependable support­ ers ofSt. John's. Or does the St. John'sprogram tend toproduce scholars who don’tpursue more remunerative careers? JB: We produce alums who enter a great variety of careers, from teaching at the secondary school level to advanced aca­ demic careers in higher education to authors to producers and directors and screenwriters for movies to proprietors of pri­ vately owned businesses to heads of investment management businesses. We have the variety of alums you would find in many other colleges, and a wide range of economic success in that population. It is an alumni body that has the capability of providing great support for the college. During the last capital campaign, we had a participation rate that was quite attrac­ tive, compared to our other liberal arts competitors. On an annual basis, the participation rate is modest, but growing rapidly, and we expect to continue to see that grow. We have a new organization of alumni called Philanthropia, and its pur- St. John's College • Spring 2001 } �^4 I { 1 NT E RVI E W } 'Tor sure, we could do a betterjob ofreaching a more diversepopulation.'' pose is to engage the alumni in their support of the college. That holds great promise. enjoy it newly every time. So, one aspect of a great book is the re-readability. A second aspect of “greatness” is the connectedness, the pervasiveness, of the ideas of these texts in our culture. When I read a new piece of fiction that somebody says is a really great book, I frequently find it enjoyable reading. However, I’m not likely to read it again because it’s not terribly re-readable. But it may have three or four ideas in it that came out of Plato or out of Aristotle, whose ideas remain pervasive. Q: In the category ofother changes and chal­ lenges, what about the curriculum? JB: My expectation is that the curriculum will change very slowly, if at all. The way that our founding document, the Polity, is writ­ ten, it assigns to our faculty, to our joint Instruction Committee of the two campuses, and to the deans the responsihility for over­ seeing the design and content of the curricu­ lum. Our faculty retains to this day a very strong commitment to what was called in 1937 “the New Program.” £ I think one of the reasons people ask you that perhaps frivolous question is that it’s such a long time between Aristotle’s day and today. Q: o Q: It's still the New Program? is still the New Program. And I think that’s a distinguishing characteristic of this college that will change very little. It’ll he a little more of this and a little less of that. Add a Platonic dialogue here and two fewer essays of Montaigne there, or whatever. These things go through care­ ful consideration and dehate at our faculty meetings and in our Instruction Committee meetings. By design, they change very slowly. JB: It JB: But the program comes to the 19th and aoth centuries.We certainly talk about Kant, Hume, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Yeats. And the sciences, from Galileo to Newton all the way forward to Einstein. There are a few Gommunity Seminars, I believe, with Richard Feynman’s writings, in them. So we have, in some of our courses, very contemporary authors. Q: “Ijust read a great new book. Why don ’tyou include that?” That is an interesting question, I think. What does make a great book? Q: Surelyyou must run intopeople who say, JB: Well, I’ve just heen re-reading the two opening essays, one by Mortimer Adler and one by the former president of the Uni­ versity of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, for the original editions of the Great Books, as they were published by Ency­ clopedia Britannica, and there are a few ideas that I found quite intriguing. One of them is the notion that a great book is highly re-readable. That is, it deserves to be read, not once, and maybe not even twice or three times. Every time I read the Iliad - and I’ve read it four or five times in the last five years I find half a dozen things that strike me as, “How could I pos­ sibly have missed this?” The Iliad and the Odyssey and the Platonic Dialogues and the works of Aristotle - there are many others, of course, with this character. For me, personally, I re-read the poetry of Yeats weekly and {The College. Notjust dead white guys. JB: I’ve certainly heard that charge. No, I think they’re quite alive. In my last preceptorial in the graduate program, we had seven graduate students and six undergraduates reading Plato’s Phaedrus. It has to do with rhetoric, with erotic love and with the nature of the soul and with poetry. And I found the issues of how one expresses oneself in writing or in speak­ ing, the issues of the nature of the soul, the issues of the nature of erotic love, quite immediate and urgent for every man and woman in the room. And not at all stale by virtue of having been written by a “dead white guy.” Q: That naturally leads to the question ofwomen. And I know you expressed interest in that and thefact that your wife and daughters sometimes bug you to pay more attention to the female gender. Two things I should mention in that connection. In one of my very early classes in the Summer Glassies, one of the tutors JB: St. John ’5 College • Spring zooi } �{interview} 15 Y think ofthe students as thefirst group lam responsiblefor serving. son we consider as a potential student is that person’s seriousness about and capability for studying in this particular way, reading a text slowly and discussing it at length with col­ leagues in a classroom. put me onto the text The Book ofthe City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan, which is quite a remarkable story of court life in the 15th or i6th century from a woman’s point of view. And I’ve mentioned as well that we have had a preceptorial in the Graduate Institute on the work of Toni Morrison. Q: JB: My meetings with students are what I call I want to ask you about the relationship between St. John’s College and the city of Santa Fe. Do you sense an affinity between this comparatively new (1964) institution and this ancient (1610) city? Q: JB: Yes. In the last ao years many adult learn- 2 z ers, if I could use that phrase, have moved 5 o into Santa Fe. These are men and women 2 cc who may have retired or may be in the « process of winding down their full-time pro­ fessions, and who are seeking an opportunity to look with some seriousness into matters of the quality of life and whether or not the soul is in fact perpetual. And to examine, to stop and lookback on what they’ve done in the last 30 or 40 or 50 years of their lives and reflect on them in a thoughtful way. We draw many such men and women to us through our Com­ munity Seminars, through our Summer Classics, even through our Graduate Institute. So, I think that’s part of the affinity with this town. Q: Santa Fe has a notoriously poor public education system itself. Many ofthesepeople you refer to arepart-time residents, and, as you say, are retired, and they can afford to stop and reflect on their lives. One would wish that somehow this oppor­ tunity could be made available to people who have not had thatprivilege. Let me say that we make all of our admissions decisions at the undergraduate and at the graduate level on a needs blind basis. I’ve heard more than once some passing comment about this elite program in which rich white folks come and study the dead white guys. But approximately 70 percent of our stu­ dents currently receive financial aid of one kind or another, so we welcome a very wide variety of students. And for sure, we could do a better job of reaching a more diverse population. We are working on that. The biggest question about every per­ JB: Tell me aboutyour meetings with students. “town hall meetings.” I regard the agenda as belonging to the students. You call the students customers, your ‘^pri­ mary customers. ” Q: I think of them as the first group whom I am responsible for serving. They’re here, they are living here, they have entrusted themselves and their education to us. I feel responsible to them. So in that sense they are my primary customer. And so, once every four to six weeks I want to have a town hall meeting, invite any and all students who would like to come, and discuss what they would like to discuss. I don’t always have the answer, but I’m willing to take a question and tell them I’ll get back to them. JB: about exhausted my question list unless you sense an omission in what we’ve covered that you’d like to add to this informal accounting to St. John’s alumni. Q: I’ve JB: My added message would be that, whereas I regard the stu­ dents as my primary customers, if I can say that, I think of the alumni as a very close second. And it’s helpful to me - I’ve already heard from quite a number of alumni by e-mail and have received feedback on communications I’ve sent them, on publications we’ve put out as a college as well as articles that have been published elsewhere about the campus. Q: Well received? well received. We have listened to suggestions for improvements, too. This is a very thoughtful alumni body and I have a great deal to learn from them. Dialogue is the hallmark of this school. It is vital that we continue to have a rich dialogue with the alumni, as well as the students and faculty. 4" JB: Very {The College -St John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �{The Program} THE LOGOS ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE Tutor Joe Sachs thinks the key to understanding Aristotle lies in ordinary speech - whether its Greek or English. BY Barbara Goyette, A73 o surprise: Joe Sachs, an alumnus who graduated in 1968 and became a tutor in Annapolis in 1975, first encountered Aristotle in his freshman seminar, which was led by Bob Bart and Debbie Traynor. Slightly surprising: He found a kind of joy in reading and Studying Aristotle that was a deep­ ening of the delight he experienced while reading Plato. His favorite book was The Physics. “There were two things that happened,” he says. “1 realized that what 1 thought of as sci­ ence and philosophy didn’t have to be distinct. And then I realized that the world didn’t have to be thought of the way I’d been taught in high school. The Physics denies things I had assumed about space, time, body, cause, and explana­ tion.” Downright surprising: Sachs has spent a good part of the past ten years translating four works of Aristotle: The Physics, The Metaphysics, On the Soul, and The Nicomachean Ethics. The first two have been published, the oth­ ers have found publishers and will appear in print soon. Considering that Aristotle is probably the philosopher who most permeates Western thought - from his tutelage of Alexander the Great, to the adoption of his Latinized vocabulary as the very speech of philosophy for hundreds of years, to the easy acceptance of the nickname “The Big Aristotle” by basketball’s superstar Shaquille O’Neal - why {The College- would there be need for more translations? Because the translations out there are inadequate, says Sachs. The prob­ lem with the translations dates to the i6th and 17th cen­ turies when scholarly work that had previously been avail­ able only in Latin began to appear in modern languages. The Latin versions of Aristotle established a vocabulary that carried over into the modern languages, a vocabulary that included such familiar philosophic staples as “acci­ dent,” “substance,” “essence,” “actuality,” and “priva­ tion.” Not only did the Latinized versions of these words become a jargon, but that jargon disguised much of what is important in Aristotle, Sachs thinks. “The twists and turns of the tradition that got lost from view led to mistakes and misunderstandings of Aristotle,” he says. Here’s an example of how the words used in the scholar­ ly tradition don’t really capture the Greek: The phrase kata sumbebekos became, in Latin translations of Aristotle,/>er accidens, and then in scholastic English the Latin word’s descendent, “accidental.” “The Latin is a good translation for the Greek, and the English is cognate with the Latin,” says Sachs. “But the original Greek meaning doesn’t come through when you make kata sumbebekos into ‘acciden­ tal.’” He renders kata sumbebekos as “incidental” rather than “accidental.” In his Glossary to The Physics, he explains, “The word ‘accidental’ is appropriate to some, but not all incidental things; it is not accidental that the housebuilder is a flute player, but it is incidental. To any St. John's College • Spring 2001 } �{The College -St John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �{ThePkogram} ''LikePlato 's dialogues, Aristotle's writings lead us onfrom untested opinions - those expressed in ordinary speech toward more reliable ones. " thing, an infinity of incidental attributes belongs, and this opens the door to chance (196 b).” Nineteenth and aoth century English translations of Aristo­ tle include those found in the Loeb editions and in the huge beige McKeon edition that Johnnies of the 1970s and 1980s relied on. Loeb translations are loose by design. McKeon’s edi­ tion contained parts of a series of Oxford translations made early in the aoth century. Some were very graceful, but they relied entirely on the Latinized vocabulary carried over from the earlier translations. Beginning in the 1960s, Hippocrates Apostle produced a set of translations that attempted to stan­ dardize Aristotle’s vocabulary in English - Apostle always used the same English word for each Greek term, but he still relied on the adopted Latinized words. During the course of many years’ worth of classes, study groups, and advising sessions, Sachs found himself having to say to students “it doesn’t really mean that” about many of the words they were wrestling with. He would give long explanations of each such word, and wish there were some better way to translate it. Behind Sachs’ resolve to try to render Aristotle into English more effectively lies a deeper reason than being discontent with the use of the fossilized Latin vocabulary. Aristotle looks at ordinary speech and the thought behind it, and he “puts together the most ordinary words in unaccustomed combina­ tions. Since the combinations are jarring, our thinking always has to be at work,” says Sachs. Here’s the paradox of Aristotle for us today: He’s at the same time the most referred-to thinker whose ideas form the very foundation of all Western philoso­ phy, from Locke, Kant and Hegel to Whitehead and Husserl, and yet - according to Sachs - he’s the freshest because he makes us examine the most simple assumptions about our lives and what they might mean. Getting to the root of this fresh quality of Aristotle’s work was Sachs’ aim in translating the the­ oretical books with the resources of “ordinary English.” Gertainly this is an enterprise characteristic of how the Greeks are treated at St. John’s. “[Jacob] BClein is the main source of my thinking about Aristotle and Plato,” notes Sachs. He cites Klein’s essay “Aristotle, an Introduction” (which appears in Jacob Klein: Lectures and Essays, St. John’s College Press) as something he’s read many times. But Sachs calls his translations an appropriate entry point for any educated reader - not just Johnnies - into the world of the ancients. {The College Turning The PHYSICS wyg English rom 1990 to 1992, Sachs held the National Endow­ ment for the Humanities (NEH) chair at the col­ lege. This fellowship enables tutors to spend their time studying a topic in depth for two years; dur­ ing the second year they also lead a faculty study group on their topic and give a lecture. He used the tim begin a translation of The Physics. “At first I didn’t know was practical - whether I knew enough Greek, whether there were solutions to the difficult problems I saw,” he says. But he began to work with the aim of making Aristotle’s sentences real by getting rid of the jargon and using instead everyday, common words that exist in both English and Greek. “Aristotle respects ordinary speech more than most modern philosophers do. We use a lot of important words in inconsis­ tent ways. For Aristotle that is an indication of something deeply true,” explains Sachs. For example, take the Greek word kalon. Sometimes it is translated as “beautiful,” some­ times as “noble.” But the English word “noble” loses most of the vividness and power of the Greek. Aristotle considers the linguistic usage as a clue that leads to an understanding of moral virtue as something for its own sake, that hits a mean. In English we might also say, “That’s a beautiful thing you did.” We all know what that means, and it somehow tells us some­ thing about that action. “Ambiguities in speech that are deeply revealing about the thing referred to can arise in similar ways in more than one language,” says Sachs. “The trouble with ordinary speech for the purposes of phi­ losophy,” says Sachs, “is that it carries too much meaning. We are so accustomed to its use that it automatically carries along all sorts of assumptions about things that we make without being aware of them. ..Like Plato’s dialogues, Aristotle’s writ­ ings lead us on from untested opinions - those expressed in ordinary speech - toward more reliable ones.” Getting something out of The Physics depends on how will­ ing people are to let go of their assumptions. “It’s full of things that people laugh at when they encounter them - take his notion that bodies falling in a void would speed up without limit. But reading Aristotle is a way of getting back to the ques­ tions. Sometimes to get that fresh look you have to uproot things that stand in your way. The Physics has everything to do with living in the world.” F St John’s College • Spring 2001 } �{TheProgram} 19 ''The argument is on the way somewhere and things are changing. Things get revised. Progress on the translation was sometimes slow - a sentence in a day - and sometimes faster. Sachs found that he couldn’t leave a decision half-made. “So many things that I hadn’t paid attention to turned out to he very interesting and important,” he says. But at the end of the second year he had a draft. Find­ ing a publisher was a real-world challenge. His translation wasn’t favored hy the classicists because “it wasn’t good Enghsh,” meaning that it read like philosophy instead of litera­ ture. The philosophy departments, on the other hand, didn’t like Sachs’ translation because it wasn’t consistent with the other works in the tradition - no “substance,” “essence,” “accident,” etc. Sachs wound up using Rutgers University Press, and his Physics appeared in 1998 as part of their “Mas­ terworks of Discovery: Guided Studies of Great Texts in Sci­ ence” edited by Annapolis tutor Harvey Flaumenhaft. been obscured by technical jargon the same way they had been in the theoretical works. But there were enough ways that I thought those translations fell short that I decided to try doing my own,” says Sachs. All of the books reflect the basic aims of recapturing the original focus of Aristotle’s thinking. What’s Aristotle Doing? hat has Sachs learned about Aristotle after spending so much time with him? Not a few St. John’s students and alumni have trouble reading Aristotle because of his style - it’s so densely packed, the sen­ tences are opaque, and it lacks the drama of the dia step-by-step explications of Kant, or the perverse Nietzsche. Sachs doesn’t exactly buy the commonly accepted story that Aristotle’s writings are transcriptions of lecture The Other Translations notes. “I think they may have begun as lecture notes, but they he year following his second spent holding the got written down and polished,” he says. He compares the method to that described frequently in Plato’s dialogues, when NEH chair, Sachs had a sabbatical, which he used a character says “I heard this from so and so, and then I wrote to begin working on a translation of The Meta­ it down and checked it with the source.” physics. That book was published in 1999 by Green “I think you can feel the movement in the classroom,” says Lion Press, an independent pubhshing house con­ Sachsofabout the writings. “An objection outlined is something centrating on primary texts in the history of science, history someone brought up in one of the classes. Or there might be a mathematics, and history of ideas and run by St. John’s alumni joke about the educated person being pale - that would refer to Wdham Donahue (A67) and Dana Densmore (A65). someone in the room. A lot of the things we puzzle about would Even more than The Physics, The Metaphysics has been mis­ have been obvious to Aristotle’s hsteners.” The movement of understood, thinks Sachs. It’s commonly criticized as not the arguments is dialectical - that’s the structure that prevails being cohesive, because it appears to make new beginnings in The Physics, The Metaphysics, and even in The Ethics. “The over and over again, as well as covering the same ground argument is on the way somewhere and things are changing. repeatedly. Sachs found an underlying order as he worked Things get revised,” says Sachs. This flowing structure to the through the translation; rather than becoming so enmeshed in works is another reason the accepted notion of Aristotle laying details that a sense of the whole is obscured, the opposite hap­ down the law or offering a series of set answers is so wrong. pened - he came to a clearer understanding of the differences “Instead, I find it a record of careful thinking,” says Sachs. between demonstration and dialectic. Aristotle’s record of careful thinking is something that has At the urging of tutor Brother Robert, Sachs also translated kept Sachs busy translating for about ro years. Although he On the Soul over the course of a few summers; it’s currently says the efforts never turned into a chore, he’s finished with being prepared for publication by Green Lion. And, during a translating, at least translating Aristotle and at least for now. second sabbatical, almost 10 years after working on The But the thoughts are still alive for him: “Every time I pick up Physics, he translated The Nicomachean Ethics. That transla­ one of his books or sit down with people to talk about Aristo­ tion is being prepared by The Focus Philosophical Library in tle, I find new things.” Massachusetts. “The Ethics is a book that I love. The translations seemed good enough because the things Aristotle was saying had not W T {The College -St John's College • Spring 2001 } �{Johnnies on Parenting} THE EDUCATION THAT IS PARENTHOOD From birth to the empty nest, raising a child means learning to deal with each new challenge. BY Sus3AN Borden, A87 OR ALL WE LEARN FROM THE GREAT ROOKS, they don’t seem to answer parent­ hood’s most pressing questions: What did Penelope do to make Telemachos sleep through the night? Would attachment parenting have saved Oedipus? If Desdemona and Juliet had been allowed to try “group dating,” could tragedy have been averted? Pedi­ atric rheumatologist Jim Jarvis (A75) agrees that there are limits to the insights on parenting to be gained at St. John’s. “Will studying Apollonius make you a better par­ ent?” he asks. “I don’t think so.” He suggests more intimate sources for learning how to raise children. “You learn from your parents, you learn from your children, and you learn from your heart, if you leave your heart open and attentive to all the wonderful things your child is trying to teach you,” he says. And that, he explains, is where St. John’s comes in. “St. John’s prepares your heart to be open,” he says. “I remember tutors Michael Littleton and Elliott Zuckerman teaching me that it’s okay to love something because it’s beautiful. I remember seeing the look on Michael Little­ ton’s face when he was listening to Beethoven’s Eroica Sym­ phony. I realized that I was watching not only a man who found this piece of music intellectually satisfying hut who, in the very core of his heart, found it beautiful. If you let it, your St. John’s education can prepare your heart for accept­ ing the incredible beauty and mystery of childhood.” Granted, Piaget and Montessori are not on the St. John’s reading list. And there’s no manual for raising children that {The College- provides an answer for every troubling situation. But in this inaugural issue of The College, six alumni who work with parents and children offer their insights into the education that is parenthood. I•Convocation Birth Parenting studies - like college studies - begin with a sud­ den immersion into a completely different kind of life. Eor both experiences, it’s a change you’ve been waiting for for months, mainly with excitement, but also with anxiety. You pack your bag, climb into the car, and the adventure begins. One key difference: when you’re heading for col­ lege, it’s just butterflies in your stomach. One similarity: you’re beginning a new life with a journey into the unknown. Midwife Laureen Sutton-Borgilt (SP86) says that, because she works mainly with home births, the couples she works with have a high sense of responsibility. But, she says, taking responsibility can be confused with taking con­ trol, and when it comes to childbirth, control is an illusion. “One of the biggest jobs in preparing for birth is accepting what it means to deal with uncertainty. You don’t always get to choose how things are going to come out. You can choose the little things, like to stay home or to have the baby in water, hut birth doesn’t always give you your choice. Parenting doesn’t always give you your choice either,” says Sutton-Borgilt. “Parenting plunges us into an unknown over which there is no control and pregnancy is definitely a first step into this realm of the unknown.” St. John’s College • Spring 2001 } �ai their own temperaments, their own way of dealing with the First year oflife “God Creating Adam” world,” she says. “The best a FROM Chartres Cathedral parent can do is help them learn how to Sure you studied virtue at St. John’s, make good judgments and accept but these days you’re modeling good themselves with whatever limitations behavior at home. Of course you read and strengths they have.” about beauty during college, but par­ Friehling offers a Johnnie-like enthood leaves you marveling at your approach to child-raising: “Just like baby’s perfect features. And while love tutors are not professors but are there was once a subject for discussion and to guide students in dialogue, I see par­ contemplation, it’s now something ents as guiding their children in a dia­ that overtakes you every day. Like logue. From the time the child is six freshman year, early parenthood fasci­ months old, parents should set up a dia­ nates us with its subject matter. But logue to help the child figure out this there’s a lot to learn and a world of world on his or her own. By the time adjustments to make. Jim Jarvis [A75] they are adolescents, children are very “There’s no bigger transition in the much participants in the dialogue and world than becoming a parent,” says they don’t have the same kind of rebel­ pediatrician Melissa Sedlis (A73). “No lion issues as children whose parents set themselves up as matter how old you are, you’re just someone else’s child arbitrary authorities.” until you become a parent yourself. There’s a great divide II- Freshman Year J. ''Ifyou let it, your St. Johns education can prepare your heart for accepting the incredible beauty and mystery ofchildhood. ” you cross. “Everyone has watched a child misbehave, seen how the parent handles it, and thought, ‘I’ll do it so much better. My child will never go to McDonald’s. My child will never want sugar cereals.’ There are a lot of illusions that parents have to lose. What we often have in our minds during pregnancy is an idealized version of what our child will be like. We try to fit the child into our idea of what the child should be.” Pediatrician Linda Friehling (SF71) warns parents not to impose such ideas onto their children. “Children have {The College- III-Sophomore Year Toddler andpreschool years More than any other year, sophomore year seems to focus on a single book: the Bible. Parents of toddlers and preschoolers, their faith tested by temper tantrums and toi­ let training, can find themselves haunting bookstores’ par­ enting sections, praying for a divinely inspired source of wisdom. Some find a favorite - a parenting “Bible.” Among St. John's College - Spring 2001 } �2,2, {JoHNNiES ON Parenting} ‘7sometimes have to remind parents that the ape at which you first eat preen beans is not on the applicationfor Harvard. ” Melissa Sedlis [A73] today’s most popular are T. means and interest to support Berry Brazleton’s Touchpoints, good daycare.” Penelope Leach’s Your Baby But what about intellectual and Child, Arlene Eisenberg’s enrichment? Wouldn’t a top­ What to Expect the Toddler notch daycare offer children a Years, and Dr, Spock’s Baby and head start in the academic Child Care. world? Berkowitz doesn’t think Steve Berkowitz (A8i), associ­ so. “You can get your kid to read ate professor in child and adoles­ earlier, to know the capitals ear­ cent psychiatry at Yale Medical lier, to do math earlier, but what School, says he likes some, but has been demonstrated is that it not all, of these works. “Throw all evens out in the end,” he says. Brazleton out the window,” he “The important factors in pre­ says. “He’s a nice guy but all too school are the social and nurtur­ easy.” Berkowitz says that Bra­ ing elements. While formalized, zleton’s “let it happen natural­ rigid education in reading, writ­ ly” approach is too hands-off for ing, and arithmetic is becoming most parents and children. “For more popular, this might be at instance, toilet training,” says the cost of something very Berkowitz. “I don’t think you important to children: the use of just sit there and tell a kid ‘you their imaginations, working can potty train whenever you’re things through, and learning ready.’ I don’t think you have to and understanding through play demand it when they’re i8 and imagination.” months old, but at 3 years, when Sedlis says that this rush to they’re not potty trained, you academics is particularly a prob­ An icon of parental affection - a madonna and child can say ‘we want this, you have lem in New York City, where she to do it, it’s what kids your age lives and practices. “Children do.’” Berkowitz thinks parents should be more directive than begin to apply to nursery schools at the age of one or two. They Brazleton advises. “I don’t think young children want a mil­ go on a round of interviews and many of them get rejected. lion choices,” he says. “They want comfort, nurturing, direc­ There’s enormous anxiety over this and parents beheve if you tion. They wantyou to make choices for them. That’s what par­ don’t get into the right nursery school, you won’t get into the ents do.” right ongoing school, then the right college, and then the right While he’s not so crazy about Brazleton, Berkowitz does like job. I sometimes have to remind parents that the age at which Penelope Leach. “I think she’s great and has a lot to offer,” he you first eat green beans is not on the application for Harvard.” says. “Like anybody else, there are things I disagree with her about, like her strong stance against daycare. Studies show IV • Enabling that good daycare is very good for children, there’s just very Are youfit to continue? little of it.” What is good daycare? Berkowitz points to the daycare cen­ It’s the end of your sophomore year. You go to your mailbox ters affiliated with Yale. “Theyhaveverylowchild/staffratios, and find a letter from the dean. You’re either in or out. But as highly trained staff who are well paid and have the benefits of a parent, it’s not that simple. There are many points in a being in an academic environment, and parents who have the child’s life when you find yourself scrutinizing your perform{The College - St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �{JoHNNIESOnPaRENTING} 2,3 JOHNNIES RECOMMEND... great books on parenting Touchpoints: Your Child’s Emotional and Behav­ ioral DevelopmentYyY. Berry Brazleton Toddlers and Parents: A Declaration ofIndepen­ dence by T. Berry Brazleton Infants and Mothers: Differences in Development by T. Berry Brazleton The First Twelve Months ofLife by Frank Caplan ance, uncertain if you’re really V • Junior Year and Theresa Caplan qualified to proceed. And like tutors Elementary school How To Talk So Your Child Will Listen, and Listen at an enabling meeting, there are So Your Child Will Talk by Adele Faber plenty of people who seem ready During junior year, you read Hume and willing to judge your fitness as a and Rousseau. As the parent of a The Magic Years by Selma H. Fraiberg parent. Certainly you can ignore schoolage child, a visit to the play­ First Feelings: Milestones in the Emotional Develop­ onlookers at the grocery store when ground reminds you that life can ment of Your Baby and Child by Stanley Greenspan your child is having a tantrum. But still be nasty, brutish, and short. The Course ofLife by Stanley Greenspan what about your mother, your The temptation to tighten control spouse, your adolescent who is strong as your child learns to Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five by screams “I hate you,” your in-laws, Penelope Leach negotiate the social contracts of the or your child’s pediatrician or school yard, soccer team, and Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn teacher? scouts. But even as the outside The Emotional Life ofthe Toddler by Alicia F. When daycare director Karen world claims more and more ofyour Lieberman Shavin’s (Aya) son was diagnosed child’s time and interest, the The Interpersonal World ofthe Infant: A Viewfrom with a learning disorder at age experts agree: it’s time to loosen Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology by three, she was devastated by his your grip. “Most of my peers from Daniel N. Stern prognosis. “They told me he would St. John’s will remember that I’m a never go to college and never have rabid baseball fan,” says Jarvis. . The Toddler Years: A Practical Guidefor Parents & Caregivers by Irene Van De Zande friends. And they said that all his “And yet I know that my son’s problems were related to an overfavorite sport is not baseball. He’s a protective mother.” good player, but he’s not as excited Shavin says that, being in the child development field her­ as he is about soccer. One of my most important jobs as a par­ self, she tried to follow the advice of the experts she periodi­ ent is to share his excitement about soccer and not push base­ cally consulted. However, she saw that even professionals ball on him. “When we lived back east we saw parents trying to don’t agree and noticed they can fall into the trap of giving live vicariously through their children through their academ­ one-sided advice, influenced more by their training than by ic and artistic endeavors. In Oklahoma, it’s through football the needs of the child. “I needed to hear the experts’ recom­ and cheerleading. I call it child abuse by sports.” mendations,” she says. “But then I needed to analyze what “Some parents wrongly view their children’s accomplish­ they said to see if their method really applied to my child’s ments as their own,” says Friehling. “That’s where distance needs.” Shavin recommends that parents in similar situations becomes necessary. You’re there as an enabler. You can nei­ learn as much as they can from professionals, but then think ther reap the accolades nor accept the blame for what happens about what they know about their child and be willing to do to your children as they move through school. There’s a differ­ what the child needs, regardless of anyone’s advice. ence between encouraging and pushing.” This approach worked well for her son, who has made great progress despite a significant auditory processing disability. VI- Senior Year “He’s 18 now, just finished his first semester of college, got all Adolescence As, and has a steady girlfriend,” she reports. “When he makes friends, they’re friends for life.” It’s not unusual to be intimidated by senior seminar readings. What is this phenomenology, this theory of parallels, this Beaute that Baudelaire seems so taken with? Fortunately, a second reading and some careful reflection often reveal that {The College St John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �“4 {JohnniesonParenting} ''The adolescent is like Socrates, asking the tough questions, forcing parents to examine themselves and how they ve lived their lives. Linda Friehling {SF71) these are the questions of freshman, VII "Graduation sophomore, and junior years dressed Empty nest up in fancy clothes. So too with adoles­ cence. Like commencement, the empty nest is “Parents of adolescents constantly both a beginning and an end. “It’s won­ pull their hair out, forgetting that they derful and painful, letting go,” says are struggling with the same issues Friehling. “When my first child was in with their children at 14 as they were the middle of college I was cleaning out with their children at 3,” says a room in the basement where a lot of Berkowitz. “The difference is that you the toys were. I kept going up to him can’t pick up a 14-year-old and say no.” and saying, ‘Mattie, do you want this Parents can find themselves regret­ any more? What about this? Is this ting this difference when it comes to important to you?’ He was very gentle, issues like sex. “Sexuality exists from but finally he said, ‘Mom, do you think very early on, but adolescents are actu­ I’m going to play with any of my toys ally able to do something about it that again?’ I had a tear in my eye because I they couldn’t do when they were 3,” realized no, I suppose he’s not.” Berkowitz says. He adds that this is Friehling says that, while the vision more troubling to parents of girls. “It’s of a grown child can provoke tears, it an issue of biology. Boys don’t get can also bring joy to a parent: “Ifyou let pregnant.” Sibling interaction depicted by Rembrandt yourself enjoy each phase, you can look In her practice, Sedlis offers adoles­ back at it with pleasure.” cents a safe place to talk about sex, drugs, and alcohol. And she gives them at least one important Steve Berkowitz (A81) is an assistantprofessor in child and adoles­ piece of information. “With older teenagers. I’ll say, ‘have you cent psychiatry at Yale University's School ofMedicine as wed. as the medical director of the New Haven Child Development-Community ever heard of the morning after pill?’ They look at me like I Policing Program and the Yale Child Study Center Intensive Home­ have two heads,” she says. “But every four to six months, a girl based Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services. He is also thepsychi­ will come to me for this, a girl you would think of as a good atric consultant to the National Centerfor Children Exposed to Vio­ girl, who is a good girl, who has made a mistake.” While Sedlis lence. He is thefather oftwo daughters. encourages teens in such difficult situations to leave the hnes Linda Friehling (SF71) is a pediatrician and the mother ofthree sons. of communication with their parents open, she says that there She lives in Great Falls, Virginia. are some thing a child needs to keep private. liM Jarvis {A75) is director ofpediatric rheumatology at the Children’s Fortunately, the world of teenagers isn’t all about risky Hospital of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, and a clinical associate pro­ behaviors. Friehling is energized by the intellectual and moral fessor ofpediatrics at the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Cen­ challenges teens constantly pose. “Adolescents are wonderful ter. He is thefather oftwo daughters and one son. because they are thinking, idealistic, and energetic. They keep Melissa Sedlis (A73) is a pediatrician in private practice in New York you on your toes and don’t take any nonsense,” she says. “The City. She and her husband, Steven Sedlis (A7;j), have three daughters. adolescent is hke Socrates, asking the tough questions, forc­ Karen Shavin (A73) is the executive director ofBright Beginnings, an ing parents to examine themselves and how they’ve lived their infant-toddler and preschool Head Start program for homeless chil­ lives. You have to back up what you say and give reasonable dren in Washington, D.C. She and her husband, Jeff Crabtree (A72), arguments. They’re not going to take things at face value; are theparents ofone daughter and two sons. they’re going to question everything.” Laureen Sutton-Borgilt (SF86) is a midwife and the mother of two daughters. She lives in Ashland, Oregon. {The College - St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �as {Campus Life} CHORAL KALEIDOSCOPE BY SuS3AN Borden, A87 he Great Hall of McDowell has seen many Odysseus,” says David. “When they have finished their performance with Demodsights in the past 200 years: the schooling of ocus of the tale of Ares and Aphrodite, Francis Scott Key in 1796, a hall honoring Gen­ two youths are singled out to make a solo display of their gymnastic prowess, throw­ eral Lafayette in 1824, and the treatment of ing and catching a ball in mid-air.” Following Plato’s formulation, David’s Civil War casualties in 1863 and 1864. In recent group began with a bardic rendition of the years, it has been the site of college registra­ opening of Homer’s Catalogue of Ships with the singer in the middle (like tion, Fehhie convocation, and G.I. commencement. It has Demodocus) circled by dancers. Then two of the students, hosted coffee houses, rock parties, and waltz parties. PlaysJohann du Hoffman (A04) and Danae Marshall (A03), performed a have been staged and freshman choruses have sung within its carefully choreographed gymnastic dance. Next, Sarah Frost (A04) gave a solo per­ walls. And one chilly afternoon this past February, it was the formance of a short Sappho poem, and setting for a spectacle rich and strange. finally the group presented a full choral T Drawing inspiration from the figures on GrEEKVASES, AmIRTHANAYHGAM David (center, left photo) leads stu­ ANCIENT dents IN A recreation OF A CHORAL DANCE. Annapolis tutor Amirthanayagam David (A86) and Miriam Rother, a choreographer from Switzerland (and mother of sopho­ more Noam Gedalof), led eleven students in a two-week workshop reconstructing a Greek chorus. When the group presented a “workshop-performance” in the Great Hah, about 150 students and tutors showed up to watch. David explained that the first part of their presentation was a reconstruction of a gymnastics lesson described by Plato in the Laws. “It is likely not a coincidence that the two types of dancing Plato pre­ scribes, one imitating the language of the Muse, the other more gymnastic and ath­ letic, correspond to the two types Alcinous has his Phaeacian youths display for {The College. St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } rendition of the “Ode to Man” from Antigone. A key to the reconstruction was David’s theory of Greek prosody, which allowed the dancers to know where to stress their words. Since the main floor of the Great HaU was packed, many onlookers saw the per­ formance from the second floor balcony. From on high, the movement of the dancers looked like the jewels in a kaleido­ scope moving through a set of comphcated but orderly symmetrical patterns. �2,6 {Letters} Editor 's Note: Thanks to those who wrote in with information about thephotos in the calendar. We were hoping that thepho­ tos would elicit memories and waitedfor the e-mails and letters to come in telling us who waspictured in each shot. We weren i sure about the date ofthe staircasephoto (hence the ''ca. uj7O ”). But we are sure about thephotographer because his name is stamped on the back ofthephoto: Mari­ on Warren, an Annapolis artist who took manyphotos ofthe college—on both cam­ puses—from the late tgsos through the mid-iQ’^os. E-Zine Proposal Photo Recollections For the record, the picture accompanying the month of March in the aooi “Founders & Foundations” calendar is Brother Robert’s freshman (not sopho­ more) geometry class in the fall of 1973. Since we aren’t wearing heavy jackets (and Lauren has her shoes off) it must be early in the semester and we’re all sweating. Sweating because we’ve each been given a proposition to demonstrate; judging by the models on the table we’re proving the existence of the regular solids. I had to prove the existence of the cube. Sara Anastaplo did the dodecahedron (better her than me) That’s Leslie Combiner at the blackboard. Clockwise from Leslie are Carolyn Wade, Sara Anastaplo, Paul Rneisl, Janis Popowitz, Louis Eckler, Jean Murdock, Lauren Ballard, Brother Robert, Michael Levine, Eric Salem, Charlie Bor­ ders, Rick Smith (I think) and Elizibeth Hennessy. I seem to remember Ann Browning and Pam Lobdell in this class also. Once I hit Pam in the face with a snowball thrown from the fire escape right next to this room (three stories up...do the physics) and she didn’t cry even though she wanted to. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that I owe you, Pam! me an impression he had about the photograph on the back cover. John and I con­ curred that the picture of six students sit­ ting on the stairs is not from 1970, but from 1965-66. The students are from the Santa Fe class of 1969, in order, clock­ wise, beginning on the left: Robert Rosenwald, Karen Jurgensen (feet), Helen Smith (with cigarette in hand), Jim Pipes (next to the rail), Ted Propeck (at the bottom of the picture), and Jim Walk­ er (in the center). My hunch is the photo was taken by Carl Bostek, SF68, who took a number of pictures around campus dur­ ing that period. If someone out there has a different “perspective” I would certainly welcome correction. But, as John noted, some shoes you never forget! — JoE Reynolds, SF69 As profound as most of the content of The Reporter may be, isn’t it about time to move away from consuming the natural resources of our planet, i.e. trees, for the manufacture of paper, and energy to print and to disseminate it by mail? Isn’t it time to put The Reporter on-line and distribute it as an E-zine? At the very least, let alumni choose the printed version or the web version. If some tidbit inspired by divine madness tickles the fancy of an E-alum, he or she can print it, or save it on a diskette. There needn’t be concern over losing E-articles. If a magnetic pulse occurs in the manner in which is predicted, there will be neither college nor alumni left to lament the loss. — William Malloy, SF77 Editor’s Note: Currently weput the Class Notes—the mostpopularfeature—from The Reporter (and nowfrom The College) on the St. John’s web site (www. sjca. edu click on “Alumni”). Weplan to include articles, letters, and other sections p/The College on the redeveloped St. John’s web site in thefuture. — Paul Kneisl, A76 Two PHOTOS FROM “Founders & Foundations” cal­ THE I enjoyed receiving the new “Founders & Foundations” calendar, poring over the pictures, and reliving memories. Regard­ ing memories, I had dinner with John Strange (SF69) and his wife, Carol, recent­ ly. John pulled out the calendar to run by endar INSPIRED rec­ ollections; THE FRESHMAN MATH CLASS (above) AND THE STAIRWELL STUDY GROUP (lEFt). {The College. St. John ’5 College ■ Spring soot } �{Letters} Seminar Dynamics To the tutors - Consider whether this is a fair description of what happens in semi­ nar: Jane is making a point. The instant her mouth shuts, John launches in on his own topic. Or he may not even wait for Jane to stop, or he may have to drown out several others who are equally ready to jump in. John makes his point, and the instant he stops, somebody else jumps in without the slightest pause. In my experi­ ence, this was how it went two nights a week for four years. But in order to be ready to start talking as soon as Jane stopped, John must have ceased listening to Jane and begun formulating his answer long before she was finished. Some or most of what Jane said, John didn’t hear, because he was busy composing his own speech. The result is not a discussion, but a series of monologues. The opening question is a jumping-off point, and for­ gotten by 8:05. Those students who plan their own speeches instead of listening are rewarded with air time; those unfortu­ nates who can’t help listening and trying to understand what’s being said never get a word in. Yes, I was one of those. But I’m not writing to complain. I love St. John’s. A lot of the best of what I am I got at St. John’s. Even the seminar was valuable to me, although I wasn’t very valuable to it. I got a lot of good thinking done in there. I’m writing to talk about teaching lis­ tening. When I was a student I heard that the tutors keep to the background in sem­ inar because their job is not to teach what the books say, but to help students find it for themselves. But because you’re not in seminar to teach the correct interpreta­ tion of the book doesn’t mean you’re not there to teach. In the seminar setting, you are in the perfect position to teach hstening - an important part of learning, maybe the most important. Imagine this alternate scenario: John gets halfway through his speech and you, the tutor, interrupt: “John, how does this relate to Jane’s point? Are you agreeing or dis­ agreeing?” With a few such words inter­ jected, you would completely change the nature of the seminar. If you were to con­ sistently enforce relevance, the students would have no choice but to listen before talking. We would be in a real discussion. We would be forced to take each other seriously, to really come to grips with the fine points of what the other person is try­ ing to say. After two hours of that careful listening, two nights a week for four years, we would graduate with a life skill as important as anything the college can give. And on the way we probably would learn a lot more about the books. — Jack Armstrong, A83 In Defense of a Telescope Maker I find Duncan North’s expressed disdain for “pansy philosophers” and telescope makers shocking. Although Galileo was not mentioned by name in the article “The Tao of Duncan” [The Reporter, Fall/Winter aooo), he was clearly implied by Mr. North’s reference to telescope makers. How can anyone say Galileo did not live his philosophy! For goodness’ sake, he stood trial before the Inquisition for it! For what? For believing that reveal­ ing the truths about the natural world could only benefit mankind and give greater glory to God. Galileo walked a precarious line, balancing on one side his incredible insight and vision, and on the other the salvation of his soul. Although the Church at the time felt that he lost his balance in favor of his own vision, Galileo maintained his innocence until his death, denying that he had violated the tenets of the Church. Galileo believed that the workings of the universe could be explained, especial­ ly with the aid of mathematics, in terms that could be comprehended by the human mind. These might not reflect the means God used to accomplish these phe­ nomena, but they are no less useful for man’s purposes. In so doing he replaced otiose theorizing about causes with quan­ titative observation of phenomena, and essentially created modern science. His emphasis of the practical application and value of science set Galileo apart from most philosophers of his time. He was interested in the physical world, from tel­ escopes and the moons of Jupiter, to the laws of falling bodies and the creation of the pendulum clock. His vision was star­ tlingly clear, his mind was never idle, even through his frequent illnesses. And how can anyone in this modern day and age deny the results of his efforts? We may be concerned with limiting the scope of mod­ ern science, but we certainly cannot do without it! {The College. St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } 2,7 Perhaps most important to remember, yet also most difficult to comprehend given the conflict between his insight and intellect and his treatment by the Church, Galileo was a believing Catholic. Not just paying lip service to those more powerful than he, but a believer in Holy Scripture and the preciousness of his soul. Believ­ ing that unveiling the truths about the natural world could only give greater glory to God, he published his Dialogues, incurring scientific jealousy and the wrath of Pope Urban VIII. Tried, convict­ ed, and imprisoned (under house arrest) by the Court of the Inquisition, Galileo thought that his works would no longer be valued and his reputation would be forev­ er stained. Yet, in the wretchedness of his confinement, at a time when most of us would be bitter or frightened or at best cautiously unproductive, Galileo wrote Two New Sciences. Galileo lived his phi­ losophy literally until he died. — Janette Fischer, SF85 Remembering Robert Bart For me, the most memorable character in my time at St. John’s was Robert Bart; we might grieve his passing, but delight in the full life and years he had. I have always thought of myself as an “Athenian;” no Spartan naked-on-theground sleeping for me. But Bart could outdo me: once, during a counseling ses­ sion with him, I mentioned that I always needed cold water on the face first thing in the morning. “How can you DO that?” was his astonished reply. What a dear softie! — Jerry Milhollan, A58 The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters maybe edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have abetter chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, md 21404 or The College Magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, nm 87501. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: b-goyette@sjca.edu, or via the form for letters on the web site at www.sjca.edu click on “Alumni,” then on “Contact The College Magazine.” �2.8 {Alumni Notes} 1938 With the birth of Grace Townsend Mullaney, Francis Townsend, Jr. now has nine grandchildren. 1939 At age 83, Malcolm Silver is in his 58th year of practicing dentistry. 1947 John Brunn has retired, but is still taking classes at the Fromm Insti­ tute in San Francisco. “A Johnnie never graduates!” he writes. er as well as an author of books in five or six different genres. Twenty to thirty times a year, I amuse myself by visiting schools around the country to perform my stand-up comedy/poetry assemblies and workshops. I also speak at confer­ ences for reading teachers and librarians, where I show them how to make learning a lot more appeal­ ing and fun for their students. (Amazingly, I get paid for this mis­ sionary work.)” Bruce’s books have sold more than 12 million copies overall. More of his poetry as well as poetry lessons and contests to enter for kids 6 to 13 can be found on gigglepoetry.com. David Schiller recently delivered papers on Confucius at four confer­ ences. songs, chant, or dance from the Baha’i, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, Lat­ ter-day Saints, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and such faith communi­ ties. I’ve directed the InterFaith Conference since 1979, just after it was founded. Learn more about its work at www.interfaith-metrodc.org or 202-234-6300.” 1968 During a sabbatical from teaching, Bart Kaplan (A) spent seven months cruising the Caribbean in a 32-foot sailboat. He visited Cuba twice. His wife and two daughters visited him in the Bahamas several times. Charles Watson’s (A) eldest son is 1964 1951 Tom Williams writes: “This past July I moved after 43 years in the same apartment. What to do with some 2,000 books? I gave my favorite, Euclid’s Elements, to my grandson who has a real feel for mathematics, sold some, threw away some, and boxed others for donation. Others, mostly from St. John’s, I took with me to our new address, and will feel at home with them in their new bookcases. They are indeed old friends - and the reason I went to St. John’s.” 1959 Barbara Tower is still living in downtown Annapolis and still in real estate. Her children, Elizabeth, John, and Alex, all live locally. She has eight grandchildren, including triplets. 1962 Lenke Vietorisz reports that she and her cousin’s son, Richard Repasy, have put out a book useful and handy for those learning Hun­ garian: A Guide to Hungarian Verbs (525 pages, including conjugations of 300+ verbs), which may be viewed (and acquired) at accessi.net/lenkev. Jeremy Leven is prepping in Paris, Prague, and Italy for a film on the theft of the Mona Lisa in the 1920s. He’ll be directing stars Robin Williams and Antonio Banderas from his own script. “I have taken the Harvard Negotia­ tion Course and now, though still/always a student, I am giving workshops on this ever-useful skill,” writes Cecily Sharp-WhiteHILL. Calvin Byles (who now uses the name Leif Smith) co-owns a research and training business with his wife, Pat Wagner, in Denver. “I run a think tank with mostly technology, business, and research clients - indi­ viduals who care about exploring new ideas (check out the web site at www.pattern.com),” he says. 1966 Penn State Press has published Postfoundational Phenomenology: Husserlian Reflections on Presence and Embodiment by James R. Men­ sch. Mensch teaches philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University. 1967 Bruce Lansky’s publishing compa­ Clark Lobenstine writes: “The ny, Meadowbrook Press just pub­ lished IfPigs Could Fly, his seventh book of children’s poetry and his “70th, 80th, or goth book overall I forget,” he writes. “I’m a publish­ InterFaith Conference’s 21st Annu­ al Interfaith Concert at Washington Cathedral featured a world pre­ miere of the five-part setting of an ancient Hebrew text, as well as {The College. now NPR correspondent to West Africa after a two-year stint as pro­ ducer for CNN in Moscow. “Our baby is looking at colleges with Russian languages and marine biol­ ogy,” he writes. Donald J. Schell and Marilynn (Wills) Scott (both SF) report that their daughter. Patience Alexandra Schell, was married in September to Arturo Costillo. “The wedding guests included almost 10% of the class of’68,” they write. Their daughter is a research fellow and lecturer at University of Lon­ don; her Oxford DPhil is in Latin American history. 1970 Edward Macierowski (A) reports that his latest publication, which came out in October, is his English translation of Henri de Lubac’s “Medieval Exegesis, Volume 2: The Four Senses of Scripture.” Hudi Podolsky (SF) writes: “I am the executive director of the Coali­ tion of Essential Schools - a great mission and a great team to work with. Bringing some of the wisdom of the St. John’s design to public schools-small schools and depth over breadth. Having a blast! ” Ken Joseph (A) was the subject of a column in the Pittsburgh Post­ Gazette. Brian O’Neill reported on Joseph’s circumnavigation of Allegheny County (Penn.) by bus, lightheartedly comparing his accomplishment to that of Magel­ lan. Joseph dates his love of public St. lohn’s College ■ Spring 2001} transportation to when he was ii and his parents sent him and a friend downtown with specific instructions about which streetcar to take. “Of course,” he says, “we didn’t take that one. We saw anoth­ er and said ‘Let’s see where it goes.’ It was really a feeling of freedom.” 1971 George Elias (A) writes that his wife, Deborah Nikkei, has finished her 40-chapter novel based on the takeover of Bank of America. His oldest daughter, Ingrid, will be studying in India this summer and fall as part of her undergrad work at UC Berkeley. 1972 SusannW. Rogsdale (SF) reports: “After 27 years in technology, we left it all behind and moved to the beach to pursue our first love books. We have a small used and rare bookstore in Cannon Beach, www.jupiterbooks.com. Our son is pursuing the liberal arts at Reed (the next best choice) although cur­ rently taking a break doing techni­ cal support - the job experience!” Evan Dudik (A) has been spending his time since last June publicizing his new book. Strategic Renais­ sance: New Thinking and Innova­ tive Toolsfor Creating Great Corpo­ rate Strategies... Using Insights from History and Science, which was published by the American Management Association. He claims major business schools and consulting firms are mired in the Middle Ages and says it is one of the few recent business books that starts with an auto defe. “Jay Leno hasn’t called yet,” says Evan, “but I’ve given 4 radio interviews, sever­ al print interviews, and had a num­ ber of speaking engagements. The book has made a steady climb up Amazon.com’s charts from their 1,437,936th to their 8,913th most popular, but who’s counting. Harry Potter watch out.” Alvin Aronson (A) submits this report about himself: “He has been writing a comedy for many years called Dr. Feelgood, based on the life of the famous Dr. Max Jacobson, who treated John F. Kennedy for his back problems. Jacobson was later disbarred by the American Medical �{AlumniProfile} 2,9 Lisa Simeone: Our Woman at NPR By Roberta Gable, A78 t’s not just the voice. But the voice is unmistakable: rich, intimate, memorahle - and intelligent, hut neither wiseacre nor world-weary. Perfect for National Public Radio (NPR), which has suited Lisa Simeone (Aj^g just fine: recently she became the host of NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered. Simeone’s post-St. John’s radio odyssey began with a focus on classical music. She had first discovered her passion for it while a student (at one point early in her enthusi­ asm rushing down to the music hbrary to ask Liz Bolotin, then the music librarian, if she had “anything by Brandenburg” on hand); then, after graduation, she volun­ teered at the ten-watt station at Anne Arun­ del Community College near Annapolis for three hours a week, the lone voice of classi­ cal in a sea of rock. She landed a job at WBJC, the classical station in Baltimore, in 1983, stayed there for a year and a half, then moved over to WETAin D.C., alarger, more important station, but a helluva commute from Baltimore. Two years was about enough of that, and she quit, not sure of the future, but meanwhile tiny WJHU in Balti­ more was about to upgrade from its humble status as a ten-watt station to something more substantial. Simeone became part of the original professional team, and stayed at WJHU (which, like WBJC and WETA, was an NPR affiliate) for ten years, from 1986 to 1996, hosting the afternoon classical music program. That’s a lot of classical music, even for an aficionado. She made things more interest­ ing for herself (and, as it turned out, for her audience) by running short interviews right before All Things Considered, the NPR evening news show. Her first interviews were with people having to do with music, and were four minutes long; gradually she extended the interview segment to 10, then 30, then 60 minutes, and the interviews to any topics that interested her, from music to health to science to social issues. She did the whole thing herself, editing, producing, and cutting the tape for the segments. In 1996, burnt out, she left WJHU to go freelance. She joined AFTRA, the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, and worked doing voiceovers and narration Lisa Simeone Y didn "t want to talk aboutJust music. I wanted to talk about a lot ofstuff.'' both on-camera and off. She also enrolled in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins Uni­ versity, getting an MA in non-fiction writing in 1997. But public radio was far from finished with her. The NPR documentary show Soundprint was looking for a new host in 1997, and they called Simeone to see if she was interested. She was, especially since it was a regular gig, but not full-time. She hosted the pro­ gram for the next three and half years, pro­ duced three documentaries herself, and also filled in as the perennial guest host of NPR’s Performance Today. (“I was always leaving, and every time I did they threw a cham­ pagne party.”) She turned down an offer to become the permanent host of the program, because she wasn’t interested in re-niching herself back into classical music. “I didn’t want to talk about just music. I wanted to talk about a lot of stuff! ” She had that {The College. Si. John’s College . Spring 2001 } opportunity when she began filling in occa­ sionally for Liane Hansen on Weekend Edi­ tion Sunday. Then one day Weekend All Things Consid­ ered (WATC) gave her a call. They wanted to know if Simeone was interested in audition­ ing for the host job. “I told them, ‘No! I’m not working weekends!’” But they finally persuaded her to audition, and she got the job. Her first show was October 14, aooo. Most NPR affiliates air WATC Saturday and Sunday evenings, from 5:00 until 6:00 (and most NPR listeners will be chagrined to learn that, in-house, “WATC” is pro­ nounced to rhyme with “Yahtzee”). Simeone’s show ranges from hard news to cultural pieces, from the ephemeral to the substantial, from soup to nuts, giving her the opportunity to talk, as she wished, about a lot of stuff. And although the ideas about what stories to do on the show come from her daily meetings with the producers and editors, Simeone’s preferences are influen­ tial. “This job is a generahst’s dream,” she says, “and I became a more thoughtful, wellread generalist thanks to St. John’s....! loved St. John’s, and the truth is there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars that I went there, or that I don’t call upon what I learned there. Just this morn­ ing I did an interview with the two transla­ tors of a new edition oiAnna Kareninawhat could be more St. Johnnie than that?! ” Remembering her one-woman interview show on WJHU, where she was interviewer, editor, and producer, Simeone revels in the luxury of not having to cut her own tape. She reads, she looks at books and CDs, she writes up questions, she conducts inter­ views, she writes introductions and leads, and she loves it when it’s live rather than on tape. Early on in her WATC career she start­ ed her show at 5:00 one fateful Sunday, when Katherine Harris was expected to cer­ tify the presidential vote count in Florida. She stayed on the air five until 10:00. The producer saved her some cold pizza. Working at National Public Radio is a pleasure for Simeone. “I love the environ­ ment - I spend my time with creative, inter­ esting people, with rich lives, who are burst­ ing with ideas.” Sounds like a talking college, with fewer books and more micro­ phones. �{AlumniNotes} 3° Association for his unorthodox practices, and this play is in defense of his methods. Archie Smith, the 83-year-old brother of the late Winfree Smith, has been an actor for ao years with the Denver Reperatory Company. He is going to stage a reading of the play in Denver the week of February 15. Alvin has many claims to fame: he was stage manager for Kennedy’s last birthday party at the Waldorf Astoria in 1963, when Audrey Hepburn sang ‘Happy Birthday.’ He had a talk with Louis Armstrong that night and told him how much he admired him, to which Armstrong replied, ‘Thank you. Pops.’ He shook hands with Marilyn Monroe, had lunch with James Dean, acted with Geral­ dine Page, and was once put down brilliantly by the late Jacob Klein (who was quite right).” 1973 Peter Ellison (A) is now Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. His new book. On Fertile Ground, was due to be published by Harvard University Press in March. 1974 2000 marked a year of big changes for Roger Burk, USAF ret., (A) and Robin Kowalchuk Burk (A72). In July Roger left his posi­ tion as a senior consultant/analyst with the Aerospace Corp, and joined the faculty of the U.S. Mili­ tary Academy (West Point). He now teaches optimization and decision theory within the Systems Engi­ neering department, drawing on his doctoral degree in operations research and his experience in the use of computer models and deci­ sion analysis to guide the selection and evaluation of complex national security systems. In addition to teaching, he mentors junior facul­ ty, assistant-coaches the crew and fencing teams, consults, and con­ tinues research activities. Accepting the position entailed a move to a few rural acres in the mid-Hudson Valley, where Robin keeps busy raising and training champion show dogs (English Cocker Spaniels, a hunting breed). She reports that the sight of an out­ standing dog standing with unself­ conscious grace or moving with perfect intensity through the fields takes her breath entirely away. Indoors, her weaving studio houses several looms and a not-yet-bigenough stash of linen, cotton and woolen yarns. She says that dogs and weaving provide some solace to the right hemisphere of her brain, sadly neglected during 25+ years in the computer industry, during which time she also perpetrated several technical books on unsus­ pecting Amazon.com customers. In her spare time and on the principle that her MBA should probably be put to some use even if there wasn’t a single right-brain course in the whole degree program, Robin con­ tinues to consult to companies try­ ing to figure out how to use all this new Internet stuff in their busi­ nesses. 1975 Kristin R. Lucas (SF) is working in downtown Houston in the IT department of an energy commodi­ ties trading company. Her older son is a junior at Carnegie Mellon Uni­ versity and her younger son is a high school senior. extraordinarily different wants and needs, and they let you know it. Since I never did/will father a child, this work is very satisfying to me, and a shock to the nurses, since many babies who don’t stop crying for relatives, never cry when ‘Uncle Bill’ holds them. I recom­ mend volunteerism for any and all. Children and youths can con­ tribute as well. Find something that is energizing, and ‘just do it.’” 1978 Caroline (Charlie) Allen (A) writes: “My occupations in life since graduation have been music (both classical and rock), software engineering, and writing, pretty much in that order. I got married in 1990 to Christophe (Kokou) Dossou, a master drummer from Togo whom I met while I was living in Germany and touring with various bands. I co-own a small but sophisti­ cated studio (24 tracks digital, 30 tracks HDR) called Dos Gatos in Los Angeles with my business part­ Diane Lamoreux Ciba (A) has finished her course work for a PhD in marketing at the University of Connecticut. She is currently teaching and has the research and dissertation writing ahead of her. Quantum Leaps 1976 van Canter (A81) writes: “When reading the last Peter Clark (A) writes that he’s still alive and well, living in Ranches­ ter, Wyoming. “Not the end of the world, but close enough to see it.” 1977 Carol Highshaw (SF) has left the academic world and moved back to the Washington D.C. area, where she’s working as a researcher and writer. William Malloy (SF) writes: “Although discussing ideas found in books and films can be very satis­ fying, I have found something at the other end of the spectrum of activi­ ty to be very wonderful as well. Since late 1999,1 have been a volunteer at a children’s hospital in Houston. One evening a week, I work giving respites to parents, by talking/playing with older children, or holding/rocking infants. On Sat­ urday afternoons, I hold, rock, or just comfort premature babies. They are not just ‘smaller newborns.’ Since preemies ‘aren’t supposed to be here yet,’ they have many {The College. ner, also my bass player. Like me, he works a lot in software, particularly digital signal processing. We have a band called BushTaxi which has one independent CD out and is about to release a second. Apart from that I’ve played on about five records/CDs for other bands, and have credits on a number of movies (for writing special effects code) the one I’m most proud ofis/a/nej and the Giant Peach, for which I was Sony’s CG software supervisor. Lately I’ve been focussing more on biotech and digital audio than on computer graphics. I can’t help think of Mr. Golding when I consid­ er my own dislike of telephones, but I’m very good with e-mail (it is, after all, one of the bases of my cod­ ing life since about 1986) and would love to hear from folks. My e-mail address is caro@nwc.net.” issue of The Reporter, I was reminded of a moment in my first day of junior French with Mr. Littleton. He was leading us in reading the first paragraph of Baudelaire’s ‘Recueillement’: ‘Soi sage, o ma doulour, et tiens-toi plus tranquille...’ We could hear the Freshman Chorus singing ‘white sands and gray sands, w buy my white sands.’ Mr. Littleton, who had been our Freshm Chorus tutor two years before, told a story. He was visiting Switzerland when he learned a local song about the change of sea­ sons and the level of the snowcaps in the mountains. ‘When the snow caps go up, I can roll up my shirtsleeves’ or something like that. He said it was remarkable to him because it showed that you can see time. He said sitting in that room with us as juniors, hstening to the song we sang as freshmen wafted up the staircase of McDowell, showed him that he could hear time, as well. We sat stunned, astounded at this quantum leap. “And now, reading The Reporter each time I have discovered a new phenomenon. I start with the class notes from the present graduating class and turn backward to find the news of my class­ mates, the class of 1981. And each year our class recedes farther and farther. It is as if we are retrograding into the past, soon to take our place next to the hero generations of the college. And so now as I turn page after page, I know I can feel time, as well. “My wife Ellen, five-year-old Taha, new baby Emma, and I hve in Chicago. I am now a course developer for Unext.com, an online grad­ uate and executive education university. I have been a lawyer, ele­ mentary school teacher, school administrator, and web developer.” ->■ E Sf. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �{AlumniNotes} Michael Ciba (A) continues as pas­ tor of Mill Plain Union Church in Waterbury, Conn., and is enrolled in a spiritual formation program with the Shalem Institute in Washington, D.C. Their daughter Rachel is a jun­ ior at UConn, majoring in anthro­ pology. Their son Daniel is a fresh­ man at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., majoring in drama and dance. Connecticut is the twelfth place they’ve lived since they were married, and it seems to agree with them. Anyone who remembers them is welcome to con­ tact Michael at RevCiba@aol.com or Diane at DiCiba@aol.com. 1979 Gregory R. Cowell ( SF) writes: “With my second child on the way I thought I would send in an update of my life, not having done so since I drove away 31 years ago. My wife Jeannine and 1 have been married for eight years. We have two future St. John’s candidates at our house: our daughter Cathryn is three and a half, and we are expecting a son in the next month. I have been practic­ ing medicine for 16 years and cur­ rently I am the medical director of a medium-size emergency room in llhnois. Music is my passion, but I have yet to figure out how to make a living as a musician. My e-mail is gcowelled@aol.com. Regards to all, but especially to old E and F dorm­ ers who might be reading.” 1980 News from Tony Waters (A): “I live in Auburn, Calif. My wife, Dagmar Waters, and 1 have two children, aged 12 and 9.1 am currently an assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Chico, and recently published a book. Bureaucratizing the Good Samari­ tan: the Limitations ofHumanitari­ an Relief Operations (Westview 2001). It is in part based on my work in the Rwanda Relief operation in Tanzania, in 1994-6. In terms of teaching responsibilities, I do the crime classes (criminology and juve­ nile delinquency), population, eth­ nic relations, and ‘macro-sociology’ in general.” in November in Columbia, Md. “Email me at Nhrosen@aol.com for any good reason,” he says. 1981 “I was married to the lovely SherryAnn Jhingai in June 2000,” writes Joshua Berlow (SF). “Sherry con­ vinced me to move back east from Santa Fe, where I had been living. We were married in St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Sherry has a lot of friends and family. The wedding took place on the famed North Side of St. Thomas, in a very dramatic villa (Villa LeMcAi) over­ looking the sea. My best man was Eric Quinn (A82). Sherry is origi­ nally from Trinidad, in the south Caribbean, so after the wedding it was off to her home village of Cumuto in Trinidad. I’ve never seen anyplace so lush and green! What seemed like the entire village turned out for a wedding party held in our honor. We are in the process of buying a house in Baltimore, and will be moved there by the time the magazine comes out. Anyone inter­ ested can check out my web site at www.joshuaberlow.com They can purchase my newly-published book Insanity Factory: A Psychiatric Mem­ oir on the web site, as well as view various articles, and some papers written for classes at St. John’s.” Joe Roach (A) e-mails: “My wife BJ (Sisson) (A) and I dropped off our daughter Katie at St. John’s - Katie matriculated with the new January Freshmen class. Our two other chil­ dren, Molly (15) and Nicholas (ii) helped move Katie in. After Nicholas was introduced to Peter Kalkavage (who was a freshman tutor when I was a freshman), he asked me, ‘Was he your college roommate?’ The cruelty of children. “I am in my sixth year as a staff member at The New School in Newark, Del., which is a democratic (or liberty-based) school. Melanie ( Jago) Hiner (A80) asked me to give her some help when she opened the school in the fall of 1995. At that point we had 7 students - now we have over 50. Nick and Molly have been at the school since the opening.” 1982 Nathan Rosen (A) and his wife Roberta Babbitt announce the birth of Brina Tamar Rosen on July ii. “Yes, that’s six children, for those who are keeping score,” he notes. His production of The Crucible ran {The College. 1983 After 13 years in the practice of law, Michael Henry (A) recently opened his own law office in center city Philadelphia. He has been mar­ ried for 13 years and is living in Media, Penn. His wife Lorie and he have three children: Michael, age II, Devin, age 10, and Daniel, age 7. “We are actively involved in our parish and children’s school, St. Mary Magdalen,” Michael writes. “My practice consists mainly of civil trial work and immigration. I have organized a Lawyer’s Retreat group under the auspices of the Cathedral Ministries for the Diocese of Cam­ den, N.J. We meet four or five times a year to discuss faith issues and the practice of law. I would love to hear from old classmates and other alum­ ni.” Michael’s address is i Gordon Drive/Media, Pa. 19063. Robin B.G. Laylin (SF) and his wife, Laura, report the birth of their daughter, Catherine, on June 26, 2000. 31 ness law at a big firm in Miami. I’m married to a beautiful and brilliant woman who hails from North Dako­ ta and Seattle, and who is a lawyer as well. We have two babies, Allegra (just two) and Ethan (6 months). Have visited with Mitch Buroker (SF84) in L.A. recently, and gotten a nice letter from Jack Armstrong (A83). Would love to hear from any St. John’s friends. E-mail at whill@steelhector.com.” 1984 ALUTHA JAMANCAR (BRAD WEST- gaard) (SF) says that he’s reached three milestones this pastyear: “I celebrated my six-year wedding anniversary with Daniela Chiapella, a native of Northern Italy; I changed careers from print to web publishing; and I changed my name from Brad Westgaard to Alutha Jamancar. Drop me aline at alutha@alutha.com or stop by my homepage atwww.alutha.com. I’d love to hear from old classmates, especially my freshman core group! Visitors to our home in Silicon Val­ ley are welcome, but had best not have any cat allergies! ” David Walworth (A) has finally While Scott Fitzpatrick (A) does do freelance web design, as reported in the fall issue of The Reporter, he has also been the Principal Site Architect for Computer Sciences Corporation for several years. He has designed all the classified intranet sites for the Ballistic Mis­ sile Defense Organization and is now currently creating the web sites and the Director/Flash interactive CD ROM demo disks for CSC’s elec­ tronic knowledge management group. “In other words,” he writes, in reference to our omission, “I do have a full time job.” Darrel Moellendorf (A) writes: “Last year, in my 40th year, my wife - Bonnie Friedmann - and I became parents for the first time. Our son’s name is Marino Arnold Friedmann. I am still living in South Africa, and teaching philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand. My book. Cos­ mopolitan Justice, will be published this year. And I’d love to hear from old friends.My e-mail address is 103dar@muse.wits.ac.za.” A note from William Hill (A) says: “I’m alive and well, practicing busi­ St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } gotten his yacht design business up and running: Walworth Yacht Designs, P.O. Box 3792, KingshiU VI00851. Karen Tourian (A) completed her first Gentury (100 mile) bike ride on Labor Day. Peter Green (A) writes; “Still in Prague, though probably not for much longer. Spent a week in August sailing in Groatia with Jason Walsh (A85). Then found myself in Belgrade in October to cover the demise of Slobodan Milosevic. Arrived in New York in time to expe­ rience the unending madness of Election 2000.” Connie Bates (A) writes: “My hus­ band and I are proud to announce the birth of our first child. Dean Calvin Calloway, on November 16, 2000.” �{AlumniNotes} 3^ 1989 1985 1987 Bonnie Bishop Stark (SF) is finish­ ing her third year of a nurse-mid­ wifery program at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. She will complete the program next year. “In December I completed my first (and probably last) marathon,” writes Marjorie C. Kaplan (A). “My mother died of lymphoma in June 3000, and in her memory I joined Team in Training, a marathon training program that benefits the Leukemia and Lym­ phoma Society of America. After four months of training that required 30 to 45 miles a week of roadwork, I completed the Honolu­ lu Marathon the same day I started it, crossing the finish line smiling and under my own power, and NOT dead last - there were about a dozen elderly tourists behind me, but they may have strayed onto the course by accident.” 1986 “My life has completely changed in the past two years,” writes Lucy Duncan (SF). “My business partner and I closed the Story Monkey Bookstore in Dec. ’98. We were growing but not fast enough to war­ rant continuing. It was a sad loss for me and for the community (Omaha), but we were able to walk away without significant financial scars. I took a job in January of ’99 with the Friends General Confer­ ence of Religions of Friends (Quak­ ers) in Philadelphia as their book­ store manager. I really love the place and the work. FGC is by far the healthiest organization I’ve ever worked for. We do primarily a mail order and Web business (quakerbooks.org). In Oxfordshire, Eng­ land, in April of ’99 I met my fiance, Graham Grarner, at a conference of Quaker publishers and booksellers. We will be married in April of aooi at the London Grove Meeting House outside Philadelphia. Sheila Virgil (A88) will play flute at the wedding. We plan on settling in Philadelphia, though Grant is keeping his house in England so who knows about the future. I see Amy Murphy Bianco (SF86) regularly. She is an editor at McGraw Hill launching a science trade division. I’d love to hear from anyone else. My email address is: lucyd@fgquaker.org.” Erik Mueller-Harder (A) e-mails this report: “My wife Karen and I are extremely pleased to announce the birth of our daughter Clara Jean in October of 2,000. Our son Timo­ thy is about to turn four, and he’s promising to be a great older broth­ er for Clara. There’s lots of news and photos on our family web site, www.praxisworks.org. I’m stiU spending most of my time building Praxis News Digest, at pnd.praxisworks.com.” 1992 Susie Attar Antebi (A) is living in Michael Stevens (AGI) writes: Panama City, Fla. with her two kids, Daniela and Isaac, and husband Alberto. “Miss the Johnnies and would love to hear from long-lost friends,” she says. Her e-mail is danisa@sinfo.net. “We welcomed a daughter, Juba Linda, into our home on April 22, 2000. We tried a homebirth this time around - quite a wonderful way to have a baby. The midwife was a dynamo - no ‘windeggs’ such as beset Socrates! Julia joins brother Ethan, three.” Chris Tegeler (A) e-mails: “At the end of January, I moved to Athens, Greece to work in our land agent’s office in Piraeus, Arete Tours. A rather appropriate name for a com­ pany employing a Johnnie, I must say. My address: Xenokratous 42, 10676 Athens, Greece. My e-mail is StiU the same, ctegeler@yahoo.com. Looking forward to hearing from anyone passing through.” Mark Hentz, III (A) is attending Northeastern University School of Law while working full-time at Northeastern in the office of enroll­ ment management. “Jack Gunther and I were very happy to be in Ted Hanratty’s wedding party this past October,” he writes. Bryan Dorland (A) e-mails: “I Brett Heavner (A) writes: “My 1988 Kim Paffenroth (A) has just been hired as an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. His book yfz/gizjtine and Liberal Education (Ashgate Publishing, 2000) has just been favorably reviewed in The Heythrop Journal, and his next book, Judas through the Centuries, will be pub­ lished next year by Westminster John Knox Press. As a gratifying part of his last days teaching at Vil­ lanova University, one of his stu­ dents has again been honored with the highest writing award given to a first year student at ViUanova. John Lavery (A) is still in London and working in the commercial banking world, despite Leo’s advice. “Have developed a weak­ ness for skiing,” he writes, “and will take any invitation offered in that regard.” Erin Milnes (A) writes: “I’m still living happily in San Francisco (five years now - can you believe it?!) I continue to freelance edit and write, but I’ve added some video work to my repertory. In the past year I worked on a documentary shoot in Nepal and one in Death Valley (where temperatures soared to 120 degrees in the shade). I’ve also been sea kayaking a lot lately and heartily recommend it. Life is good.” {The College. wife Christine and I proudly announce the birth of our son, David Graham Heavner, on January 31, 2000.” Garfield Goodrum (A) writes: “We have adopted two thorough­ breds from an equine rescue group in Pennsylvania, and I just compet­ ed in my first horse show - dres­ sage, to my wife’s chagrin (she’s into jumpers!). We’re loving the horses, whose names are Turtle and Clem, and young Graham Heavner has even ridden them! Don’t forget to spay/neuter your companion animal!” ■ David (A) and Cherie (A90) Reese live in Vienna, Vir., with Sam and Lydia Reese, ten and three years old. Their St. John’s education, they write, allows them to live lives of total and constant bliss. 1990 David Marquez (SF) says that he “escaped the slavery of the Star­ bucks Corporation” and now works for Arch Wireless Corporation. “I look forward to receiving survival tips from any and all,” he says. Ken Turnbull (A) is now an associ­ ate at Piper, Marbury, Rudnick & Wolfe LLP in Baltimore, where he is in the litigation department. 5r. John’s College ■ Spring sooi } received a Master of Science in physics from the University of Maryland in August 2000. In Janu­ ary 2001,1 passed the PhD qualify­ ing exams in physics at Maryland, and I am set to begin thesis research this semester. Anyone who wants to contact me can reach me at dorland@physics.umd.edu. ” Leah Ankeny (SF) is enjoying a challenging new position as an admissions counselor for Cornish College of the Arts, a private, fouryear visual and performing arts col­ lege located in Seattle, Washington. “Despite the rumors of my impend­ ing marriage, I am living on my own and revisiting a more independent life.” she says. “I am thrilled at the arrival of my beautiful ‘niece,’ Ema (Cooney) Bargeron, daughter of my dear friend and fellow alumna Joanna (SF). I continue to study yoga and search for my path spiritual­ ly, setting aside performing and writ­ ing for a while. I look forward to see­ ing all the ’92 Santa Fe folks at our tenth reunion in Spring 2002.1 can be reached at: Lankeny@yahoo.com and I always welcome visitors to the Peaceful Pacific Northwest.” Judah M. Domke (SF) writes: “I just appeared as a lead actor in a movie called ‘Whipped’ that came out this past November. If you missed it on the big screen, John­ nies can rent it when it comes out on video in February 2001. It’s an R-rated sex comedy that isn’t for the faint of heart.” �{Alumni Profile} 33 Shopaholic by Profession Heather Moore (SFoo) landed a dream ofafirstjob: she getspaid to revel and shopfor the coolest circus around. BY SuS3AN Borden, A87 eather Moore’s been buying quite a lot these days, going from city to city, picking up an odd assortment of goods: nuts, bolts, earphone antennas, eye makeup remover, marine antifreeze, used CDs, a ping pong table, even mail-order sequins. But she’s no itinerant shopa­ holic. She’s hard at work - as the assis­ tant buyer on tour with the Cirque du Soleil, the avant-garde circus that’s much closer to The Matrix than it is to Dumbo. Moore lucked into the job this summer, after a post-graduation move to Denver with her boyfriend, Joey Chernila (SFoa). A temp agency sent the couple to Cirque du Soleil, where they worked as runners, acquiring the products purchased by the buyers. When a permanent job opened up, Moore applied, won the position, and head­ ed to Montreal for training. Since then, she’s been to Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Miami. New York, Chica­ go, Boston, and Philadelphia are slated for the coming months, and by the time the tour’s over in 2002, she’ll have hit Houston, Dallas, and Phoenix. She says the travel is a dream come true. “For the last four months of school I kept telling my roommate, ‘If I could just get a job where they would pay me to travel I would never complain.’ It’s exact­ ly what I wished for,” she says. Although Moore travels within the United States, her co-workers come from 52 coun­ tries and include Chinese acrobats, Russian jugglers, and all manner of Canadian col­ leagues. Most business is transacted in Heather Moore (above) is an assitant buyer ON TOUR WITH DrALION, WHOSE ACTS ARE ENHANCED BY HIGH-TECH EFFECTS (bELOw). French, which Moore says is difficult even after Phedre and Fleurs du Mai. “I’m working on speaking French, which is a big challenge, especially since it’s not really French, it’s Quebe­ cois,” she says. “Speaking French will be integral in my later career with Cirque.” Later career? How long can a first job last? Moore, who knows a good thing when she falls into it, says that while her job lasts until the end of the tour in another year and a half, she’s already exploring different departments and thinking about different opporutinites within Cirque, which has headquarters in Montreal, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Orlando. Her current fascination is the tech department. “Our show has a lot of effects - lighting and rigging - to facilitate some of the acts. There’s an aerial ballet with two dancers on a long silk rope doing a series of acrobatics in the air. The behindthe-scenes tech stuff helps make the show spectacular.” Moore is also considering working with Cirque’s development of a permanent com­ plex in London consisting of a hotel, a restaurant, a retail area, and a show. In the meantime, she’s enjoying the Cirque du Soleil life, which she says resembles her justbygone undergraduate days. “Who would ever think they could get a first job like this?” she asks. “It’s been so exciting, and it’s come at such a great time. I didn’t even get good and used to being out of college before I joined up with Cirque. You live with these people, you work with them, you eat with them. You the get chance to develop intense relationships with every­ body around you while you’re on a constant road trip. It’s like college on wheels.” 4" Michael Deutsch (SFGI) has been Jonathan Secora Pearl (A) writes Aaron Mason (SF) reports: “I am promoted to vice president of Wad­ dell & Associates, Inc., a provider of investment and financial counsel located in Memphis, Tenn. He earned his CFP (Certified Financial Planner) license in 1997 and served previously as assistant vice presi­ dent at the firm. that after leaving St. John’s in 1990 he studied music at Indiana Univer­ sity, then received a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from Rice in 1997. He is currently pursuing a PhD in musicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with an emphasis on the cognition of speech and song. alive and well, living in Manhat­ tan’s Upper West Side with my boyfriend of nearly five years. Still an aspiring actor, I have taken a ‘dayjob’ with a large architectural firm writing and editing for their marketing department. In March, I am acting in a ten-minute play that I wrote; it’s a dark comedy called ‘Mr. Oedipus.’ Looking forward to 1993 Alex Ellerman (AGI) is a flight instructor with Navy Training Squadron 29. VANESSA Ellerman (A) is practicing law with Hornblow­ er, Manning & Ward, and they’re both still celebrating the birth of their son Ian on April 20, 2000, (The College. St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } �{Alumni Notes} 34 JohnnyXpress 1994 An Unofficial Bulletin Board/E-mail List for the St. John's Community Hallie Leighton (SF92) has started a new yahoo “eGroup” to function as an unofficial hulletin hoard for the St. John’s commu­ nity. On johnnyXpress, members of the SJC community worldwide can post and read announcements and queries (e.g., “Moving to a new city - looking for area Johnnies/alumnae chapter/contacts” or “Whatever happened to Johnnie Doe, class of ‘__, A/SF?” or “Hey, I have a gallery opening...”). These announcements are received in the e-mail boxes of all Johnny subscribers. Subscribing is free and easy - just e-mail johnnyXpress-subscribe@egroups.com. For more information about johnnyXpress, e-mail johnnyXpressowner@egroups.com or go to http://www.charm.net/~bfant/ johnny/bulletin.html, part of the unofficial alumni site run by Bill Fant (A79). The purpose of johnnyXpress is to enable members of the St. John’s College community to get and/or share information with other Johnnies as quickly as possible. Thus it is for announce­ ments and brief queries. Though the list is not moderated, meta­ physical meanderings or idle banter will not be allowed. (The rea­ son for this draconian rule: there is already an e-mail list for conversation, “the Johnny List.” To subscribe to the high-volume Johnny list, send an e-mail to majordomo@charm.net with the words “subscribe johnny” or “subscribe johnny-digest” in the body of the e-mail message.) Why is this bulletin board “unofficial”? Because it’s not run by the college. The college is working on a new web site that will have more features for alumni but it won’t be online until next fall at the earliest. warmer weather and hearing from long lost Johnnies! Aaronious@earthlink.net. ” reads them, though upside-down, rather than eating them, we know she is headed for SJC class of 2030.” John Markos O’Neill (SF) reports that he is in his fourth happy year of “bicycling, singing (in Schola Cantorum, a local cho­ rus), dancing (swing), and coding in Silicon Valley. I would love to hear from Johnnies in the SF Bay area or elsewhere! E-mail me at Jmo@ipsmedia.com.” Jim and KRISTEN (Riddlespurger) Litsinger (A) happily celebrate the first twenty-four months with their daughter, Emily Golden Litsinger. “Born in April 1999, she is a true delight with curly (can’t explain that one!) blond hair. Her eyes always smile and she is quick to gig­ gle. Big brother Nathaniel (31/a), also adores his sister, particularly as long as she doesn’t play with the toys he might want to play with. Emily already shows a great love of books and now that she actually Ethan Schoonover (SF) is e-business director for Lowe Lintas and Partners (an international marketing/communications agency) in Southeast Asia, currently based in Bangkok. He oversees online mar­ keting, web site development, and internet strategy for multinational clients. “I get to travel frequently throughout the region, which is enjoyable as I continue to be a stu­ dent of the many cultures I encounter. I do miss the mountains and beauty of Santa Fe, but the year ’round tropical beaches in SE Asia go a long way towards assuaging my homesickness for the USA. And of course, ever true to St. John’s, I am obligated to occasionally quote Homer in meetings with clients. I’d love to hear from friends/enemies. Here is my e-mail address: ethan. schoonover@lowehntas .com.” {The College. A note from Emi Ima-Kohn and Colin Ray (both A94): “We met at St. John’s. Emi was living in the U.S. although she was Japanese. Colin had been hving in Nigeria although he was American. We both had Mrs. Maschler for Fresh­ man Greek. Although we were in the same Greek class, we did not really get to know one another until late in the spring of our Freshman year when we took a clowning class together. Cohn exceUed at jugghng; Emi excelled at falling-down. By the end of the year, we were very close friends. During the summer of 1991 Emi taught at a camp in Vermont and Colin returned to Nigeria to visit family and friends. “After spending part of sopho­ more year in Santa Fe, Emi moved to France and put herself through the French university system by being an au-pair for a French fami­ ly. After completing St. John’s, Colin went to Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer to teach math in French. For nine years, we kept in touch-sometimes more frequently, sometimes less, hut always as close friends. After completing a mas­ ter’s degree in Russian studies at the Sorbonne, Emi was accepted into the D.E.A. (a degree between a master’s and doctoral degree) pro­ gram at the Political Science Insti­ tute in Paris, where she focused her studies on the new Independent States of the former Soviet Union. After the Peace Corps, Colin returned to the U.S. to study law and business at Willamette Univer­ sity in Salem, Oregon. “In 1999 we started keeping in touch more and more. In March 3000 Colin traveled to Paris to see Emi. In May, Emi came to the U.S. for Colin’s graduation ceremony. On graduation day, we became engaged. After announcing our engagement, we hopped on Colin’s motorcycle and seven days and 3800 miles later we arrived in New York. In June, Emi then had to return to Paris to complete an internship at the OECD - Organiza­ tion for Economic Cooperation and Development. At the end of July, Colin took the New York bar exam. At the beginning of November, Colin happily accepted a position as an Associate Attorney with a smaU international law firm in Amster­ Sf. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } dam. He will primarily work in international corporate and inter­ national tax law. And ... at 11:00 on November ii, 3000, in Linlith­ gow, Scotland, we were married. The best way to reach us is by e-mail at: Emikocolin_ray@hotmail.com.” Johnny Metelsky (A) and Lydia Rolita (A96) were married on June 17th in their backyard in the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California. Johnnies in attendance were: Muneet Rakshi (A94), Hope DelCarlo (SF94), Jen Donnelly (A96), JOELLA KLINGHOFEER (A96), Aimee Lalone (A94), Sundance Metelsky (AGI90), Paul More (A94), John Williams (A96), and Ron Wingate (A94). Honorary Johnnies John Metelsky and Ethan Billotte were also in attendance. Lydia and Johnny plan to move back East in a couple of years when Lydia finishes medical school at Loma Linda University and Johnny finishes his masters in astrophysics atUC Riverside. E-mailjmetelsky@hotmail.com. Bill Kowalksi (SF) writes: “I am happy to announce that my second novel. Somewhere South ofHere, is finally finished and will be pub­ lished by HarperCollins in March of 3001. Most of the action takes place in Santa Fe, and readers of this pub­ lication will probably recognize a certain small liberal arts college which plays a minor but noticeable role in the story - though of course any similarities to colleges either living or dead are purely coinciden­ tal. In addition, Eddie’s Bastard, my first novel, is out in paperback, and is now being translated into 12 languages - including Finnish, Hebrew, Czech and my grandmoth­ er’s personal favorite, Polish. No word yet on Tagalog or Urdu. So far nobody has bought the film rights, either, but hope, as they say, springs eternal. Another piece of good news is that HarperCollins has also purchased the rights to my third novel, which is still in its very early stages, and my fourth, about which I have no clue. After two loud and smoggy years in Brooklyn I’ve moved to Toronto, where I live with my non-Johnny companion and freaky consort, Alexandra. I wel­ come email from friends and class­ mates, so please write to wilham. kowalski@CIMteration.com.” �{AlumniProfile} 35 La Vie Parisienne Phil Wood, owner ofParisfixture the San Francisco Book Co., is afrancophile success story. BY Sus3AN Borden, A87 or much of his adult life, Phil Wood (A67) knew he wanted to live in Paris. He had first visited the city when he was in the army in ighr, stationed in Ger­ many. The charm of the culture, the intellectual bent of the people, and the beauty of the country attracted him from the start. In 1986, he rented an apartment on the lie St.-Louis but ended up spending most of the year working at his job in California. Undaunted, he continued to study French. Ten years later, when he was working for Parallax Press in Berke­ ley as comptroller/computer systems administrator, he found himself in Paris for several weeks. “I had very little hope of extricating myself,” says Wood, who was at the time a devoted employee. “Then my boss, who knew I wanted to move and who’d been interviewing people to take his place, told me on the phone that someone he’d inter­ viewed was not suitable for his job but could do my job quite well. He said, Tf you’re ever thinking of leaving, now might be the time.’ I remember the moment when I came out of that phone booth on Rue Monge in the fifth arrondissement and realized that I might actually be able to move to France.” Wood decided to take the leap. He signed up for the Cours de Langue et Civilisation Frangaise at the Sorbonne, found an apart­ ment on the lie de la Cite, and began to investigate starting a business. Learning about the French educational system and about the French business world, he says, was an adventure in the French way of doing things. Having always admired the intellectual disposition of the French, Wood enjoyed learning how to write the French disserta­ tion, a composition with a strict form: the question, the thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis. “I realized, here is a very power­ ful cultural difference. They’ve gone through this process throughout their edu­ cation and they all know how to do this.’” But when it came to starting a business. Wood was not certain that the intellectual approach was best. Planning to open a book­ store on the left bank, he took a weeklong Phil Wood didn’t do a market survey, as his French business advisers dictated; he STARTED THE BOOKSTORE AND WAITED TO SEE IF ANYONE WOULD COME IN. workshop on French business practice and found that much emphasis was placed on the etude de marche, the market study. “Every­ one kept asking me if I had done one. I said no. My feeling was, the way I’m going to do my market study is by starting the store and seeing if anybody comes in,” says Wood. “The etude is an intellectual approach, but it can be counterproductive, at least for an American. You can think a lot and do studies and in the end never do anything.” As it turns out. Wood was not hampered by skipping the etude. His English-language bookstore, San Francisco Book Co., does a fine business, selling used books to a clien­ tele about half French-speaking and half Eng­ lish-speaking. Wood says that the French are careful about what they read and tend to buy serious books, especially history and good literature. “Books that are somewhat criti­ cal of America or a little offbeat sell well, books by Bill Bryson and Hunter Thomp­ son,” says Wood. “The French also like con­ spiracy-type works about JFK.” Wood’s Eng­ lish-speaking customers include a tourist trade with an appetite for paperback edi­ tions of literature and modern fiction. Although Wood deals with the business rather than the retail side of the store, he is not deprived of encounters with the public. {The College. Sf. John’s College • Spring 2001 } He and his principal book buyer, Dick Toney, spend many afternoons looking through books, often in private collec­ tions. The advantages of such excur­ sions, says Wood, go beyond the com­ mercial: “You get to meet interesting people and see their apartments in Paris, go to parts of town you’ve never been to and see how people live.” Wood remembers one picture-perfect afternoon when he and Toney visited two sisters, “respectable old ladies,” at their house near Fontainebleu. “It was like something out of a movie: a beauti­ ful village, nothing moving, no cars, a little river. The house was right across from the church. Two elderly women answered the bell and the first thing they wanted was not to talk about the books, but to sit down and have drinks in the garden. There we were, Dick and I, two old guys from California sitting with two elderly spinsters, drinking apple juice. The sun was out and the birds were singing and the church bell was ringing and finally we had to say, ‘what about the books?’ ” But it’s not just respectable old ladies that Wood has met. In 1999, he married Anouk Malaquin, whom he met through mutual friends. “Our first ‘date’ was actually the result of a misunderstanding on my part about the time I was supposed to show up to help some friends,” he says. “When they said to come at ‘six-thirty,’ it never occurred to me they meant 6:30 a.m., so when I arrived at 6:30 p.m. - i8h3o French time Anouk was there and my help was no longer needed. I said, ‘I guess I’ll go to the movies,’ and she said ‘What a good idea! ’ and off we went. We saw Breaking the Waves, which I had been intending to see but probably wouldn’t have chosen for a first date! ” Today, Wood’s vie Parisienne is complete. He lives in an apartment in Montmartre, has married into an old bourgeois family, and runs a bookstore on the left bank. And he’s enough of a Paris fixture that the guide­ book Paris Access published a list of his city favorites, including the Jardin du Luxem­ bourg, the market in the Rue Mouffetard, the city lit up at Christmas with concerts in the churches, watching the boulistes around Montmartre, and - appropriately enough for a bookstore-owning Johnnie - the reading room of the Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve. �{AlumniNotes} 3® Amanda Dulin (A) writes that she is happy in Charlottesville with Dominic. Delsen) Flynn (A). “We are scuba diving and changing lots of dia­ pers!” Nathan Humphrey (A) has a piece Alice Brown (A) writes: “Greg and in the Fall 2000 issue of re:generation quarterly about how sophomore year at St. John’s - in particular his reading of the Confessions - led to his spending the summer at a Catholic Benedictine monastery. As the son of an Evangehcal Christian minister, Humphrey was taught to file “Cathohcism” under “cults,” along with Mormonism and Scien­ tology. But at the monastery “the false dichotemy between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’ disap­ peared.” His piece is a plea for understanding among the various Christian denominations. I are in Columbus, Ohio, where Greg is earning a PhD in classics at OSU and I am teaching at a charter school. Life is grand. Best wishes to all.” 1995 October 29, 2000 saw the wedding of China Williams (A) and Matt Baum (A). The ceremony was held at Sigmund Stern Grove in San Fran­ cisco, Calif. A report from Carrie Sager (A): “In the fall, I spent three great months in China studying acupunc­ ture and traditional Chinese medi­ cine. The experience was fantastic. Surprisingly, I grew to really love China and was sad to leave. After China, I visited Hong Kong - a nice return to civilization. Then it was six weeks of travelling around Thai­ land. One of the funniest things on my trip - there I am standing on a pier in the middle of Bangkok and who do I run into... a fellow John­ nie, Diedre O’Shea (A97). In all, an awesome trip although my body was really ready to come home and eat good old North American food by the end. I would love to offer what little advice I can to anyone travelling to those countries. For now, I will keep my e-mail address at carrie_china@yahoo.com. My other news is that I am getting married. My boyfriend proposed the week before I left - guess he wanted to make sure I came backNow I have just nine months to get ready for the big day - Sept. 28, 2001. Knowing my timing, it will conflict with Annapolis homecoming again!” “My husband, Ethan, and I are doing a two-year tour of duty in Guam,” writes Sarah (Van Cheryl Heneveld (AGI) is still in 1996 Adrienne Jakowski Rukensiein married Peter Rubenstein (both A) in July of 1998. They are currently living in Arlington, Vir. After gradu­ ating, Adrienne got an MA in Teach­ ing Secondary English, taught for two years with Denver Public Schools, and is now getting another MA in Deaf Education at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. She was recently offered a job teaching English to high school seniors at a deaf school in D.C. Peter has been exploring technical jobs with USwest and an Internet company in DC called Covad. He enjoys eating a bowl of Lucky Charms while watch­ ing the Powerpuff Girls or Dexter’s Laboratory on Cartoon Network. His favorite philosopher is still Leibniz and his favorite color is green. James Cromer (AGI) is going back to school - to Skidmore College - to learn how to design web pages while he completes his ninth year of teach­ ing. Joy Pope (AGI) and Miguel Alandete have welcomed a daughter into their lives. Maya Lucia Pope Alandete was born on October 3, weigh­ ing in at an astonishing 9 lbs., ii oz. Sid Ranck (AGI) has accepted the role of godfather. The new family is doing beautifully in Eugene, Ore. their home now - and they’d love to hear from classmates or Johnnies in the area. Alandete@oregon.uoregon.edu. Melissa Cate (A) and Darcy Christ (A94) were married on October 7, 2000. Douglis Beck (AGI) and Susan Allen are thrilled to announce the birth of a beautiful daughter named Veronica Vandenberghe Beck on December 22, 2000. Says Douglis, “She has brought not only joy to our {The College - world, but also a good number of sleepless nights, a small amount of chaos, and general mayhem for all concerned. I continue to work as an architect at Cannon Design in St. Louis, while Susan is a manager for Borders Books & Music. Veronica is currently unemployed and search­ ing for a position in waste manage­ ment.” New Delhi. “I have not found any Johnnies here yet, and I miss the Washington, D.C., alumni discus­ sions,” she says. Her e-mail address is cheryls@vsnl.com. 1997 John Carle (SF) reports that he and Cheryl are alive and well in metro Atlanta. After a short stint with CNN, he’s working as a web developer with a consulting firm. E-mail is welcome at jcarle@newtousbaby.com. Juan Villasenor (A) will graduate from Vanderbilt Law School in May 2001 and has accepted a clerkship with a federal judge in Nashville, Tenn., for one year beginning in September. 1998 my husband Chris and I just had our first child on November i6th, 2000. Her name is Rosalyn Ophelia.” Kathleen (Tinning) Connelly (A) writes: “Patrick Connelly and I were married June 12,1999, and have been living in Vicenza, Italy, ever since. Italy is beautiful.” Susie Lorenzini (AGI) and Jason Salinas (AGIoo) were married in June 2000, in San Diego. In the summer 1999 issue of The Reporter, an unknown perpetrator sent in a false report about Eve Gib­ son (A) and Todd Pytel (A). Here’s a correction from Eve: “Todd will not be ‘working closely with the Warner Brothers Network in the upcoming months’ because he is too busy teaching high school math at Senh, a Chicago public school, nor am I teaching fifth graders science at a Catholic school in New York. I have been playing rugby for the Chicago Women’s Rugby Football Club and tutoring at Literacy Chica­ go, and toiling in an office.” 2000 Valerie Whiting (A) reports that she got her Peace Corps assignment: She headed to Panama in January to be an environmental educator. Max R. Fink (SF) reports: “Work­ ing in Chicago as a corporate recruiter (probably for something I did in a past life!). Just returned from a vacation to the rainforests of Costa Rica. Thinking of becoming a tour guide in South America.” Heather (Miller) and Nate Greenslit (both A) are the proud parents of Emily Ruth, born March 25. Heather taught middle school math and science in a private school outside Baltimore until Emily’s arrival. She’s now a stay-at-home mom and a private tutor. Nate got his master’s degree in cognative sci­ ence at Johns Hopkins and will begin a program in the history and sociology of technology at MIT. The Greenslits now live in Worcester, Mass. 1999 Erin Gage Bates (A) writes: “I was married February 5th, 2000, and St. John’s College • Spring 2001 } Calling All Alumni The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue tvill be published in July; copy deadline is May 20. In Annapolis: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404; b-goyette@sjca.edu. In Santa Fe: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Public Relations Office, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599; classics@maiLsjcsf.edu. Alumni Notes on the Web: Read Alumni Notes and contact The College on the web at: www.sjca.edu - click on “Alumni.” �{Student Voices} Through a Photographer’s Eye The Transfer Experience A Imost 30% of St. John’s students have spent a year or more as transfers, making them true hi-campus members of the / college community. Whether their “year abroad” is spent in Santa Fe, after some time in the brick-clad East, or in / Annapolis, after a year or two in the mountain air, transfer students almost universally enjoy the experience. Sylvaine Rameckers, Aoi, spent last year in Santa Fe. An avid photogra­ pher, she fell in love with the landscape of the southwest. Although St. John’s students generally rate the location of the campuses low on their list of why they chose the college, Santa Fe and Annapolis are nevertheless both beauti­ ful places-each in its own way. Here are some of Sylvaine’s favorite photos that capture the flavor of each location. {The Colleges?. John’s College • Spring 2001 } 37 �38 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Greetings! Thanks to you all for giving me the opportunity to lead the Association as its new president. You have a dedicated and creative Board of Directors, who will he focused on maintaining tradition and building new opportunities for alumni to connect with each other and the College. For example... I wish you could all have joined us for a delightful evening on January ay. Eighteen groups of alumni and current St. John’s seniors met at Santa Fe restaurants for Senior Dinners. The dinners, which have become tradition on both campuses, are designed to wel­ come soon-to-he alumni into the Association. As you can imagine, the conversations are lively and varied, ranging Electing Alumni Representatives to the St. John’s and Alumni Association Boards Election ofAlumni Representatives to the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors In accordance with Article VIII, Section II of the By-Laws of the St. John’s College Alumni Association, notice is hereby given that the following alumni have been nomi­ nated by the Alumni Association Board of Directors for election to the St. John’s Col­ lege Board of Visitors and Governors. from essay topics, to career possibilities, to current pic­ tures of student life, to news of tutors and mutual friends, to life after St. John’s, to activities of the Association. Mem­ Glenda Eoyang ories, hopes, and fears are traded and relished across time and geography. This is one of my personal favorites among the many Association activities. It is Notice is also given that nominations may be made by petition. The rules governing submission of nomi­ nations by petition are as follows: I. Petitions must be signed by at least fifty members of the Alumni Association in good standing. a pleasure to revisit that invigorating time in my life. I am always surprised to see how similar the experience of today is to that of the mid-yos, when I made my transition from student to alumna-and also how different it is. The current crop of seniors are so bright and curious and verbal and excited as they come to terms with integrating their Johnny experience with the rest of their lives. If you live in the Santa Fe or Annapolis area and would be interested in hosting a dinner, let the Alumni Directors know. Usually, two alumni co-host eight seniors at a local restaurant. The college Alumni Directors select the sites, but they also take suggestions. The cost is shared by the hosts, the college, and the Alumni Association. You’ll be asked to distribute some information about the Association and explain the benefits of staying in touch with other alumni. It is a wonderful opportunity to connect and see what’s happening in the world of St. John’s! For the past, the present, and the future. ST. JOHN’S college alumni association Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, undergraduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program or New, graduated or not, all alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The Board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the Association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates Alumni Association news and events of interest. President - Glenda Eoyang, SFy6 Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary -Barbara Lauer, SFy6 Treasurer - Bill Fant, Ayg Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team ChairTom Geyer, A68 Glenda Holladay Eoyang, SFy6 Eoyang@chaos-limited.com Web site -www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501. {The College- St. John’s College • Spring 2001 } �39 {Alumni Association News} 2. Nominations must be accompanied by a biographical sketch of the nominee. 3. The consent of all persons nominated must be obtained. 4. The petitions must reach the Directors of Alumni Activities NO LATER THAN DECEMBER i, 2001. c/o Alumni Office St. John’s College P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404 If nominations by petition are received, there will be an election conducted by mail ballot. If there are no such nominations, the nominees listed below will be consid­ ered elected. Terms will begin in July of 2002. Eor his second term: Jason Todd Walsh, A85 New York, N.Y. MBA, Harvard Business School, 1989; entrepreneur-in-residence, McKin­ sey & Company, 2000present; executive vice president/ start-up gener­ al manager, Oncology.com, 19992000; vice president of business develop­ ment of Quest Diagnostics, Incorporated, 1998-1999; vice president/general manager. Long Island Region of Quest Diagnostics, 1996-1998; associate director for strategy and development for the Opto-Electronics Group of Corning Inc., 1993-1995; business manag­ er, television components. Corning Asahi Video Products Company, 1990-1993; mem­ ber of the St. John’s College Alumni Associa­ tion Board of Directors, 1990-1996; Treasurer of that Board, 1998-2000; Vice- President of that Board, 2001-; Lady Liberty Regatta chairman. New York Harbor Sailing Founda­ tion, 1998 & 2001; member, St. John’s Col­ lege Board of Visitors and Governors, 1999-. For his first term: Mark Middlebrook, A83 Oakland, Calif. Mark is a rabid liberal artist in sheepish techno-geek clothing. After earning his BA from St. John’s in 1983, he completed a Master’s degree in structural engineering at the Uni­ versity of California, Berkeley. Since 1988, Mark has been the sole proprietor of Daedalus Consulting in Oakland, Calif. In this guise, he fools around with computer aided drafting (CAD) software for money. Seeking moderation in all things-especially time spent with computers-Mark remains active in the liberal arts and the St. John’s College community. He has participated for many years in the Northern California alumni chapter and the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors. Since 1999, he has taught St. John’s-style seminars at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif. Mark’s other avocations include music, languages, and cooking. He currently is working on perfecting his tortilla espanola, Andalusian Spanish, and flamenco bulerias. For his second term: Clinton Dale Lively, A78 Princeton Junction, N.J. MS, Mathematics, University of Virginia; MBA, Finance, University of Chicago. Man­ aging Director and Head of Portfolio Risk Management, Merrill Lynch, NY; directing firmwide event analysis, process risk manage­ ment, country risk assessments, internal risk capital allocation, and oversight of market risk taken within the Private Client, Asset Management and Merrill Lynch Treasury divisions. Managing Director and Partner in charge of the Corporate Risk Management Group for the Bankers Trust Company, 199799; previously for Bankers Trust: joined the bank in r984 in Sales, Trading and Funding Department; in 1987 a member of the team that developed the Global Market Risk Man­ agement function; in 1989 transferred to Tokyo to set up the Global Market Risk group for Asia, Australia, and New Zealand; in 1992 returned to New York as head of the Global Risk Analytic group and was appointed head of market risk globally in 1995; in spring of 1997 chosen to manage the Corporate Risk Management function overall. A member of Bankers Trust Asset Liability Committee (ALCO) and Management Committee on Controls. On the Board of Directors of Bankers International Corporation and LongTail Risk Insurance, Ltd. Election ofOjftcers and Directors ofthe St. John ’a College Alumni Association In accordance with Article VII, Sections I and II of the By-Laws of the St. John’s Col­ lege Alumni Association, notice is hereby given that the following alumni have been nominated to serve as officers and direc­ tors on the St. John’s College Alumni Asso­ ciation Board of Directors. Notice is also given that nominations for the positions as officers and directors of the Association may be made by petition. {The College- St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } The rules governing submission of nom­ inations by petition are as follows: 1. Petitions must be signed by at least thirty members of the Alumni Association in good standing. 2. Petitions must be presented to the Sec­ retary of the Alumni Association prior to the Annual Meeting at which the election is to be held. Petitions should be sent to Barbara Lauer, c/o Alumni Office, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. 3. The election will be held at the Annual Meeting on Saturday, July 7 at 1:30 p.m. in Santa Fe. 4. The candidates for Officers and Direc­ tors receiving the highest number of votes for those offices shall be declared elected. Terms will begin on January i, 2002. For his first term: William Tilles, A59 Rockville, Md. William R. (Bill) Tilles is an Organization Develop­ ment consultant specializ­ ing in the planning and facilitation of processes that enhance organiza­ tional performance. Before he retired from IBM in r992, he held man­ agement and staff positions working with government and commercial clients. He was a principal in Collaborative Decisions, Inc., a small, women-owned business focusing on decision support technology. Currently, as an associate of CI International, based in Den­ ver, Colorado and Washington, D.C., he pro­ vides facilitation and planning services to government and commercial clients. He is also an active participant in the DC Cultural Alliance Business Volunteers for the Arts pro­ gram, where he was honored as Business Vol­ unteer of the Year in 1999. Tilles is in his third term on the Board of Visitors and Gov­ ernors, where he is the Chair of the Visiting Committee and member of the Executive Committee. For her first term: Valerie Pawlewicz, A89 Annapolis, Md. Currently designs educa­ tional trips for the Smithsonian-the largest, most diverse, museum-based travel program in the world (1998-). She organ­ izes performing arts, fine arts, culinary, history and �40 {Alumni Association News} literature seminars, working directly with such organizations as the Santa Fe Opera, Toronto International Film Festival, and the Spoleto Festival USA, and with such individu­ als as Ken Burns, Holly Mondavi and Gian Carlo Menotti. Prior to the Smithsonian (1996-98), she worked as an independent folklorist on community oral history projects, including a St. John’s College oral history project (over ao interviews were collected from faculty, alumni, staff at both campuses). She was the Senior Resident for Student Activities at St. John’s College, Annapolis, Md. (1994-96), at the same time serving as in­ house substitute teacher at the Key School in Annapolis. From 1992-94, she completed graduate work at UNC Chapel Hill in folk­ lore, taking on oral history projects as diverse as furniture factory workers and Southern funeral directors. She served as a class leader for The Campaign for Our Fourth Century (1993-95). She is married to Leo Pickens (A78), Director of Athletics on the Annapolis campus. For her first term: Martha Black Jordan, SFGI86 Mexico City, Mexico Jordan was born in Mexico City and educated in the U.S. She holds a BA from Sweet Briar College, an MA from St. John’s, and an MFA from Vermont Col­ lege. She is the founder of the Tramontane Poets of Mexico City, a collective dedicated to being a bridge between the poet­ ry worlds of Mexico and North America, which has sponsored visits to Mexico City and readings by Reginald Gibbons, Joe Somoza, William Merwin, Grace Schulman, Mark Strand, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Snod­ grass, and others. She has read her own work, as well as translations, on National Public Radio and at various organizations around the country. Her poems have appeared in IfI Had My Life to Live Over, Latitudes, The Tree is Older Than You Are, California Quar­ terly, The Texas Observer, the eleventh MUSE, Grand Street, and Tameme. She has also published many translations from Span­ ish to English, some from English to Spanish, and has edited two bilingual books. She has served on the board of the Junior League of Mexico City; Christ Church Episcopal, Mexi­ co City; National Board Medical College of Pennsylvania/Hahnemann University, Philadelphia; Women’s Auxiliary American British Cowdray Hospital, Mexico City. For his first term: Rohert A. George, A85 Brooklyn, N.Y. Currently Associate Edito­ rial Page Editor for the New York Post. He is also a columnist for National Review Online. Previously, George served as Director of Coalitions for the Republican National Com­ mittee. Reporting to the RNC Co-chairman, he acted as party liaison to diverse business, eth­ nic and interest groups. From January 1995 through May 1998, George served as Special Assistant & Senior Writer to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1994, he was a Legislative Assistant to former Con­ gressman Michael Huffington (R-CA). From 1988 to 1993, he served as Communications Director for the Republican National Finance Committee. Contemporaneous with his pro­ fessional full-time career, George has held sideline occupations as a researcher, disk jockey and free-lance writer. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wash­ ington Times, National Review, New Repub­ lic, Billboard, Diversity & Division, The Weekly Standard, CRISIS, San Francisco Chronicle, Intellectual Capital, com. Salon', and he was a contributor to Generations Apart: Xers vs. Boomers vs. the Elderly and Black & Right: The Bold New Voice ofBlack Conservatives in America. He is an Adjunct Fellow with the Center For New Black Lead­ ership, a national African-American advocacy group exploring entrepreneurial and freemarket issues, and Third Millennium, an organization dedicated to multi-generational public policy issues. George was born on the Caribbean island­ country of Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Great Britain and the United States. His interests include reading, jogging, cultural analysis, and a proclivity for withering puns. as the Director of College Placement for the school, the only college preparatory school for Native Americans in the country. Origi­ nally from Boulder, Col., Boydstun chose to attend St. John’s instead of going to a per­ forming arts school to pursue her love of act­ ing. She remained active in theatre at St. John’s, however, and since her gradua­ tion has performed with Shakespeare in Santa Fe (Measurefor Measure and A Mid­ summer Night’s Dream) and as the title role in Queen Elizabeth I at Santa Fe Stages. She recently auditioned for several graduate act­ ing programs around the country, and she hopes to spend the next three years pursuing an MFA. CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-880-^134 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 315-465-0344 ANNAPOLIS Roberta Gable PORTLAND 410-295-6936 360-883-9058 AUSTIN Jennifer Chenoweth 513-483-0747 SACRAMENTO Helen Hobart 916-453-1083 BALTIMORE David Kidd SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 410-738-4136 619-433-4353 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 CHICAGO Dale Mortimer SAN FRANCISCO/ NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Jon Hodapp 831-393-9496 Lorna Anderson SANTA FE For her first term; 847-467-3069 John Pollak Amber Boydstln, SF99 DENVER Santa Fe, N.M. Elizabeth Pollard Jenny SEATTLE Amber Boydstun has spent the two years since she graduated from St. John’s teach­ ing at the Native American Preparatory School (NAPS) in Rowe, N.M. Last year she taught Advanced PreCalculus and Geometry at NAPS, and this year she serves 303-530-3373 Jon Bever {The College- St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } LOS ANGELES Elizabeth Eastman 563-436-1934 MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 613-833-3316 NEW YORK Fielding Dupuy 313-974-3933 NORTH CAROLINA Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 505-983-^^144 306-739-1163 WASHINGTON, DC Bill Ross 301-330-4594 ISRAEL Emi Geiger Leslau 15 Aminadav Street Jerusalem 93549 Israel 973-3-6717608 boazl@cc.huji.ac.il �{Connections} How Can Alumni Stay Connected TO THE College? Let us count the ways. For alumni from lacrosse-loving days of the r93os to the most recent of the 1990s, St. John’s occupies a special place in their consciousness. There are many ways alumni can be involved in the life of the college, or stay involved with the college from afar. Indeed, the proliferation of new kinds of activities has some alumni confused. Here’s a short version of the activities of different alumni groups. The St. John’s College Alumni Offices College staff and resources devoted to encouraging alumni connections to the col­ lege. The Offices of Alumni Activities plan and carry out Homecomings, Summer Alum­ ni Programs, and Croquet Weekend; take care of the database of alumni names and addresses; coordinate the Alumni Register; staff Alumni Association projects; work with current students to foster continued relation­ ships with the college; serve as touchpoints for all alumni dealings with the college. Contacts: Annapolis: Roberta Gable, Director and Dolores Strissel, Assistant. 410-626-2531. alumni@sjca.edu Web site: www.sjca.edu, click on “Alumni” Santa Fe: Tahmina Shalizi, Director. 505-984-6103; tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu Web site: www.sjcsf.edu, click on “Alumni” St. John’s College Alumni Association Non-profit association independent of St. John’s College; Alumni Association dues help support Association projects-dues are not a contribution to St. John’s College. All alumni are automatically members of the Alumni Association. The Alumni Association mission is: To provide an active place for alumni in the life of the college; to promote the continuing association of alumni with one another; and to serve, preserve, and advance St. John’s College as one community of and for liberal education. Usually held the last Saturday in April, the St. John’s-Navy Croquet Match draws HUNDREDS OF ALUMNI BACK TO AnNAPOLIS. ThIS YEAr’s DATE: ApRIL 28. The Alumni Association, through its Board of Directors, helps plan and sponsor Homecomings and Summer Alumni Programs in cooperation with the college offices of Alumni Activities; helps sponsor the Alum­ ni Register; awards Honorary Alumni status and presents Alumni Association Awards of Merit; coordinates Alumni Association chapters in cities around the country; pub­ lishes the Alumni Association News (a pages in The College, formerly The Reporter). Contacts: Glenda Eoyang, SF76, President Web site: www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml Philanthropia A subcommittee of the Development Com­ mittee of the Board of Visitors and Gover­ nors, comprised of alumni volunteers inter­ ested in encouraging financial support of the college by alumni. Philanthropia’s main efforts are centered on the Alumni Annual Fund, direct contributions to the college which provide the campuses with operating expenses. Philanthropia volunteers help plan fundraising strategies in cooperation with the college development staff; build aware­ ness of the college’s financial needs and alumni’s responsibilities for support through publications like the “Founders and Foundations” calendar; encourage class reunion organization for the purposes of fundraising; help plan phonathons, “meet the president” receptions, and other activi­ ties in various cities. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } Contacts: Leslie Jump, A84, President; Alex Fotos or Mary Simmons in the Annapolis Advancement Office, 410-626-2507; Ginger Roherty in the Santa Fe Advancement Office, 505-984-6109. Web site: www.sjca.edu/advance/philan. phtml Alumni Admissions Representatives Alumni who volunteer to help the Admis­ sions Offices with various recruiting proj­ ects, such as hosting prospective student receptions; interviewing or answering ques­ tions from prospective students, parents, and high school counselors; answering e-mail questions from prospective students; helping to represent the college at college fairs. Contacts: Annapolis: Dorcey Rose, Associate Director of Admissions, 410-626-2527; d-rose@sjca.edu. Web site: www.sjca.edu/admissions/representative.phtml Santa Fe: Ana Alvernaz, Associate Director of Admis­ sions, 505-984-6003; aalvernaz@mail.sjcsf.edu Alumni Placement Office Contacts Alumni who volunteer to help the Place­ ment Offices on each campus. Placement Office contacts provide information and networking advice to current students look­ ing into graduate programs and career fields. Contacts: Annapolis - Karen Krieger, Director of Place­ ment, 410-626-2500; k-krieger@sjca.edu Web site: www.sjca.edu/placement/office. phtml Santa Fe - Margaret OdeU, Director of Place­ ment, 505-984-6066 Web site: www.sjcsf.edu/placement/ �{Obituaries} Albert Patterson Close Class of tgsS Retired Judge Albert Patterson Close, Sr., an administrative judge of the Circuit Court for Harford Coun­ ty (Md.) for many years, died in December. Judge Close served for more than two decades on the local bench, where he presided over some of the highest profile criminal and civil cases in Harford County history. Born near Bel Air, Md., and the youngest of seven children, he grad­ uated from St. John’s in 1938 and received a degree from the Universi­ ty of Maryland School of Law. Dur­ ing World War II, he served in the Marine Corps in China, attaining the rank of major. After the war, he practiced law for many years in Bel Air, served as People’s Court judge for eight years, and was appointed to the Circuit Court bench in 1967. The following year he was elected for a 15-year term. Rather than retire in 1984, he sought a second 15-year term, which he won. Judge Close was active in the Republican Party, volunteered with the Boy Scouts, and was a member of the Susquehanna Law Club, the Jar­ rettsville Lions Club, and the board of directors of Upper Chesapeake Health System. He is survived by his wife, five sons, three daughters, two sisters, and six grandchildren. Patrick D. Davis, Class oftgs^ Patrick D. Davis, a member of the class of 1950, died January 32 in Seattle. He was born in Dewey, Okla., and grew up in Washington, D.C., where he often worked as a child actor. He served three years in the Navy in World War IL After St. John’s, he attended the University of Maine, Orono, and Canterbury Col­ lege in New Zealand. He lived, trav­ eled, and worked for 13 years over­ seas, mostly in England, France, and Turkey. He was employed as a civilian with the U.S. Air Force as an educa­ tion officer and regional director of adult eduction affiliated with the University of Maryland. He subse­ quently was a federal employee and regional administrator in Washing­ ton, D.C., and Seattle, both with the Office of Economic Opportunity and Health & Human Services’ Head Start Program, working to improve opportunities for disadvantaged chil­ dren and mothers. His love of traveling, history, for­ eign affairs, theater, archeology, politics, art, music, and great books led many to call him a Renaissance Man. He will be remembered for his love and caring for people, his gen­ erosity and sense of humor, and his devotion to social justice and envi­ ronmental causes. He is survived by his wife, Verrelle “Susie” Davis and son, Justinian A. Davis. Beach, and Vermont College. Gifts in Michael’s memory may be made to The Vermont Respite House, 99 Allen Brook Lane, Williston, VT 05495. —Sapna Gandhi, Agi Michael Kraemer, A93 In his short life, Michael Kraemer touched and influenced more than most people do in their entire lives. He spent most of his free time volun­ teering at animal shelters, tutoring students of all ages in their school­ work, and helping new immigrants adjust to life in America. It was his approach that made him special: he approached every task and every per­ son with love and kindness. And at the young age of 19, Michael knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life serving humanity and protecting ani­ mals. Michael was one of those peo­ ple who truly had no enemy. After leaving St. John’s in 1991 after his sophomore year, Michael moved back home to Miami to five with his family. Still a Johnnie, Michael loved learning so he contin­ ued to study on his own-learning Spanish and Portuguese, before set­ tling on holistic studies. He was inspired after treating his own health with alternative medicine. He began a correspondence course at Vermont College’s School of Holistic Studies. After several trips to Vermont to complete his coursework, Michael and his sister eventually moved there. Michael had always loved good music and over the last several years had acquired quite a collection of reggae, bossanova, funk, African, salsa, and other groovy music. One of his gifts was making music tapes for his friends. So it was not a sur­ prise that Michael taught himself rocar and drums and became part of a performing samba group. Michael was diagnosed with can­ cer in early April 3000. He had a very shm chance of treating the cancer successfully with Western medicine. Instead of compromising his faith in Eastern healing arts, Michael chose to try acupuncture and Chinese herbs to heal. For a while, it seemed to be working and making him stronger. The last two months of his life were spent in a hospice, where he was surrounded by family and close friends. For the first time, Michael let himself be loved and nurtured, instead of always being the strong and generous one. Michael passed away on Novem­ ber 25. He will be loved and remem­ bered by his friends from St. John’s, the Annapolis Society for the Pre­ vention of Cruelty to Animals, the Jewish Community Center in Miami {The College- William Allen Ruhl, Jr. Class oftg44 William A. Ruhl, Jr., a bank execu­ tive in Salisbury, Md., died in December. He was a member of the St. John’s class of 1944 and served in the 83nd Airborne Division during World War IL Mr. Ruhl was the first managing officer of First Shore Fed­ eral Savings and Loan Association when it was founded in 1953, and was named executive vice president in 1964, the position he held until retirement in 1984. He served as a member of the board of First Shore Federal from 1969 to 1998, when he was named director emeritus. Mr. Ruhl was active with the Salisbury Chamber of Commerce, the Mary­ land League of Financial Institu­ tions, scouting, the Salisbury Rotary Club, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, and the American Field Service exchange student program. He is survived by his present wife, a son and three daughters, five grand­ children, a brother, and a sister. Adolph W. Schmidt Member ofthe Board Adolph W. Schmidt, a longtime sup­ porter of the college who served on the Board of Visitors and Governors since 1949, died December 17 in Pittsburgh. He was 96. Mr. Schmidt was active in many spheres during his life: in the busi­ ness world as a banker and financier for various Mellon family business­ es, in the city of Pittsburgh as founder of the Pittsburgh Playhouse and the Pittsburgh Symphony, in the international sphere as a diplomat who served as ambassador to Cana­ da from 1969 to 1974 and also found­ ed organizations dedicated to stabi­ lizing the world’s population and resources, and at St. John’s-which he once called “the finest under­ graduate liberal arts program in the United States today, barring none.” A native of McKeesport, Pennsyl­ vania, Mr. Schmidt graduated from Princeton and the Harvard Gradu­ ate School of Business Administra­ tion. He served as an intelligence officer in the Army during World War II, and after the war he was active in developing political unity among the countries that eventually formed NATO. Professionally, he worked with the Mellon National Bank and its St. John^s College - Spring 2001 } affiliated institutions and organiza­ tions beginning in 1929 until his retirement in 1969. He was a presi­ dent and trustee of the A. A. W. Mel­ lon Educational and Charitable Trust, and a trustee of the Old Dominion Foundation. Mr. Schmidt’s interest in St. John’s began when he read the February 1940 article about the college in Life magazine while on a flight from Pitts­ burgh to Washington. He felt the St. John’s curriculum represented much that was lacking in his own educa­ tion. He called the college and spoke with Stringfellow Barr, who invited him to come for a visit. After attend­ ing a seminar and then a mathemat­ ics tutorial the next day, Mr. Schmidt began to think about taking the year off to enroll. Back in Pittsburgh, he showed a copy of the Life article to Paul Mellon; about a week later, the two discussed the college and Mr. Mellon told Mr. Schmidt that he should remain in Pittsburgh since there was so much work to be done. In fact, Mr. Mellon had decided to enroll at St. John’s himself. Mr. Schmidt was elected to the St. John’s Board of Visitors and Gov­ ernors in 1950; he became chair in 1954 and again in 1962. From r969 to 1974, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Canada and did not participate on the Board, but upon his return he again joined. In 1980 he was made a member emeritus. The Adolph W. Schmidt Endowed Thtorships were estabhshed with a gift from Mr. Schmidt in r985. Alter­ nating between the campuses, the tutorship enables a faculty member to take release time from teaching for further study and the leading of a fac­ ulty study group, either in the areas of pohtics and economic and mone­ tary theory, or in some other area of importance to the program. Mr. Schmidt was named an hon­ orary alumnus of St. John’s in 1987, and was given the Alumni Associa­ tion Award of Merit in 1989. ALSO NOTED... Gretchen L. Berg, A75, died in June 3000 Patrick D. Davis, A50, died in January 3001 John D. Edinger, A34 Vincent W. McKay, A46 Ben Moskowitz, A50, died in June 2000 Col. Frederick L. Smith, Aa7, died in November 1999 Robert Arne, SFG83, died in November 2000 Theodore A. Buder, SF94, died in August 2000 �{Obituaries} In Memory of Robert Bart Remarks delivered by Nancy Buchenauer at a memorial servicefor Robert Bart, tutor in Annapolisfrom ig4Q to ty~7 and in Santa Fe from to 2000. Robert was my friend. And he was a great and terrible friend. I first met him in 1979 when I went down the hill from Los Alamos to apply to be a tutor. He was the Dean in Santa Fe in those days, and for me he embodied what a dean had to be. Really, he embodied the col­ lege. When I was appointed he told me that he had serious reservations about whether any­ one who lived 40 miles away could be a tutor. My response was to form the determination then and there that I would never miss a class or Friday lecture, and I would never let my students down in any way. I would show him what I could and could not do. He had planted in me an expectation that made me demand more of myself than I ever had before. That was the beginning of my education from him in what the college was. He made me desire to show him that I too was capable of giving myself completely to something that was valuable and difficult. In effect he was asking me to be more than myself. I didn’t know then what I later came to know from watching what he did as well as hearing what he said, that only in giving oneself to some­ thing greater, outside oneself does one have a chance to find out who one really is and so really to be something. From his love of art he taught me to see. From childhood my mother had taken me to museums and said, “Look, isn’t that beauti­ ful?” But when Robert took me to Michelan­ gelo’s statue of Moses he asked me a question. Pointing out the curl of the upper lip, he asked, “Is he feeling contempt?” Robert taught me intelligent looking. He showed me that the best paintings and statues demand a response from our innermost selves. Just like poets, artists use the tricks of their trade-per­ spective, rounding, color, light, shape-to express a meaning, to show us what is impor­ tant about their subjects for human beings. Painting technique is a language as much as written words or musical notes, and one can learn to read and understand from it the truth of being a human being. A building in the hands of a great architect becomes an organic whole designed to satisfy our craving for wholeness: our lives are elevated by it and made more orderly and purposeful. If one looks at Manet’s painting, “Le balcon,” one sees the artist Berthe Morrisot looking out Robert Bart and down, with ferocious intensity: perhaps above all, artists by looking are teaching us that it requires effort to look and that no part of the world we inhabit is just present for us without our labor. Nick Maistrellis, by mentioning to me what he was thinking about saying here today, helped me to understand that the key to what came to be my friendship with Robert is learn­ ing, that is, my learning. That was an inevitable consequence of how Robert did everything and of who he was. He was posi­ tively unable to keep anything at a “safe” dis­ tance, from which one might think or talk about it as if one were not involved. To every­ thing and everyone he had an immediate, vis­ ceral response. Never for him was the life of the mind divorced from our personal relation­ ships to one another, and the one always importantly informed the other. He taught me that taste is absolute and that people of integrity have to judge. His judg­ ments often made me terribly uncomfortable, but I also learned from them that to stay alive and awake and questioning, to encounter peo­ ple and ideas genuinely, one has to make judg­ ments. Part of why Robert was such a holy ter­ ror to many students and colleagues was because in his presence everything one said and did was constantly and relentlessly judged. There could be no off-hand, unthinking remarks, because he was thinking all the time, and he was unscrupulously honest about what he thought. At times he would take enormous offense at a chance remark, unable himself to believe that the words were not intended, because for him everything was intentional. But he suffered also from staircase self-hon­ esty. He would go through paroxysms of remorse over what he had said to people. He also had the peculiar quality of frequently {The College -Sr. John’s College ■ Spring 2001 } 43 doing more justice to people behind their backs than he could do to their faces. It was not uncommon in Instruction Committee meetings for him to speak in praise of people whom he only bristled at face to face, and at such times nothing of what one might call per­ sonal feeling clouded his ability to evaluate. This intellectual generosity was accompa­ nied by a truly remarkable generosity in other ways. AU his life he lived by a standard of extreme ascetic economy while giving prodi­ gious amounts of money to the college and to his friends. In the last years of his life he became friends with a young woman he hoped would help him to remain in his home a little longer, but when he learned of her desire to go to graduate school in Washington, he made up the difference between her scholarship and what she needed to be able to attend. When he had first come home from the hospital after his second heart attack, I was spending seminar nights staying in his house, and I woke up one morning finding him sweeping the snow off my car with a broom, hardly able to walk. For him it was easy to give to and to spend on oth­ ers and next to impossible to spend on himself. He was terribly lonely and often agonized by a sense that he had driven away some of the finest friends he had had. He told me once on one of the rare occasions that he spoke of his past and his childhood that in school he had never had a friend. I came to see how coming to the college meant so much to him personal­ ly as well as intellectually. At the college he made the first real friendships of his life. He needed others around him constantly, and his life was best for him when he could spend two meals a day in conversations with one other of those he cared about. Once someone became his friend they were a part of him forever, even though there were few with whom this did not take the form of a constant struggle. Bill O’Grady once said of St. Paul that just exactly a man who found it hard to love would have to struggle to come to know (and to say) what love is. Those words could just as well have been said about Robert, for because love, the most intense and close relationship of one human being to another, was so hard for him, he devoted his life to trying to see it, to learn it, to say it, to do it, and to give it to others. Such was Robert. I think he was a great man. 4" The college has established the Robert Bart Endowment Fund, to be usedforfinancial aid for students. Contributions can be sent c/o Advancement Office, St. John's College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599 �{St. John’s Forever} he King William Players “girl trouble” as a result of his effort. Al staged the American pre­ Sugg (A54) played the Skeleton, a mysteri­ miere of Thomas Cranmer of ous spirit figure who offered counsel to the Canterbury, a verse drama embattled Cranmer. Jo Thoms, wife of about Henry VIII’s archbish­ tutor Bert Thoms, played Anne Boleyn op who suffered martyrdom (third from left in the photo) and also as a result of his stance on the kingdesigned ’s the set and the costumes, which divorce from Catherine of Aragon.included Two a medallion necklace for the king productions took place-February 9 and 10, that was fashioned from tin can lids. 1951-in the Great Hall. A group of students Richard Edelman (A51) produced and had read and discussed Charles Williams’ directed. In his quest for authenticity, difficult, disturbing work the previous Edelman tried to rent furniture appropri­ spring and vowed to put on the play. Talk ate to the period but was unable to find it. about a production: this one took nine When he spotted some pieces that looked months of preparation and involved a hun­ like they ’d work in the lobby of Lowe’s dred students and townspeople. Valencia Theater in Baltimore, he wrote Tutor Hugh McGrath played Cranmer; the owners, who allowed the KWP to bor­ his dramatic bearing and resonant English row the furniture. Always avant garde, the accent must have been perfect for the part. King William Players employed unusual Paul Rickolt (A52) was Henry VIII (second three-leveled staging and at times they from the left in the photo). According to played their roles standing-or racingnews accounts from the Annapolis paper. among members of the audience. And, in The Evening Capital, Mr. Rickolt spent the St. John’s spirit of trying to get to the months growing a beard so that his looks would be authentic. 1951 was not a big year root of every issue, tutor Winfree Smith for the popularity of facial hair, and he gave a lecture before the play on the reported being stared at and experiencing British Reformation period. T {The College - St. John’s College . Spring 2001 } From the college archives COMES THIS 1951 photo OF AN elaborate King William Players production. V ► ■' �{Alumni Events Calendar} Croquet Match St. John'’s vs. U.S. Naval Academy Saturday atj, 1 p.m., (Rain date; April 29) CLASS OF Summer Alumni Program, Week 1 Section I - The Art ofLiving Well Readings from Montaigne’s Essays and Chuang-Tzu Led by Mark Rollins and Krishnan Venkatesh If to philosophize is to learn how to die, by” what can we learn how to live? These semi­ nars will constitute an imagined conversa­ tion between one of the greatest Taoist sages and the i6th century Frenchman who first wrote the personal essay. Although the cultural roots of these two men are quite dif­ ferent, both share a deep suspicion of human claims to know, and both draw from huge treasuries of story and anecdote in their nimble interrogations of life. They engage many of the same issues-among others: dying, illness, disability, ambition, thought itself, and even the value of doing nothing-and introduce us to some surpris­ ing teachers. Lord Wen-Hui said, “That’s good indeed! Ting the cook has shown me how to find the Way to nurture life.” Section II- Two Dialogues With God Readings from The Bhagavadgita and The Book of Job Led by Phil LeCuyer and Michael Wolfe Participants will explore two conversations with God, one from the Hebrew scriptures and the other from an Indian epic. Morning seminars will revolve around Job’s encounter with the Lord in the Book of Job. Afternoon seminars will be devoted to Arju­ na’s exchange with Krishna in The Bha­ gavadgita. 7 A , Informal mini-reunions happen at the Croquet Match. Last year, the class of ’89 MET on the lawn; they brought new <*• All-Alumni Art Show in Santa Fe BABIES, SPOUSES, FRIENDS, AND LOTS OF FOOD AND WINE. lecoming aooi - Annapolis o' tiuii lecoming aoor ■ ® ' it' - Santa Fe Frid! Reunion classes: 71, 76, 81, 86, 91, and 96 September 30 Reunion Classes: 36, 41, 51, 56, 61, 66, 71, 76, 81, 86, 91, and 96 JT Summer Alumni Program, Week ^unudy) JLLiy xo j?ixuHy, j fflta Fe Mysteries and the Law: The Nature ofEvidence Led by Eva Brann, Grant Franks, and Barbara Lauer Who done it? How do you know who done it? How does the polity justly deal with he or she who done it? This week of mixed media and conversa­ tion addresses questions of crime, investiga­ tion, and punishment. Through the eyes of modern filmmakers and both contemporary and ancient playwrights and authors, we will examine the influences of perception and judgment in relation to mysteries. Texts include Billy Budd, Eumenides, Twelve Angry Men, and Pirandello’s So It Is (IfYou Think So). {The College - St John's College • Spring 2001 } For information on events, contact the Offices of Alumni Activities: Tahmina Shalizi, Director of Alumni and Parent Activities Santa Fe - 505-984-6103; tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu Roberta Gable, Director of Alumni Activities Annapolis - 410-626-2531; alumni@sjca.edu �STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS > SANTA PE Published by the Public Relations Office Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED Periodicals Postage Paid � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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. 44 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Spring 2001 Description An account of the resource Volume 27, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2001. Misnumbered as issue 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 2001 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 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Goyette, Barbara (editor) Borden, Sus3an (assistant editor) Behrens, Jennifer (graphic designer) Mulry, Laura J. (Santa Fe editor) Johnson, David Hanlon, Erin Wolff, Peter Balkcom, John Eoyang, Glenda H. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol. 27, Issue 3 Spring 2001 The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dd24ae3bd6c019815f5181b0f1954519.pdf 8c058faee2abd867715f369dea0659bb PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis s p r i n g • 2 0 0 3 Santa Fe Montaigne On the Education of Children �On Montaigne “Good God, how I would hate to be thought a pretty fellow with my pen, but an ass at everything else!” M ichel de Montaigne’s essays provide rich insight into 16th century life in Europe. His reports on the civil wars of France, the terror of the plague, and the wonder of new discoveries are engaging firsthand accounts of life in the Renaissance. His keen observations of daily life—education, child-rearing, marriage, and money management— still ring with good sense. There is also the sheer delight of listening to someone who loves to talk and has interesting things to say. “If you like my essays,” Montaigne told Henri III, “you must like me, for my book and I are one.” Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born in 1533, the eldest son and heir of Pierre Eyquem. The family money had been made generations before in the trade of herring. A fourth-generation gentleman, Montaigne dropped his original surname and assumed the more elegant name of the family estate. His father, who guided Michel’s education so conscientiously by dictating only Latin be spoken to him in childhood, purchased a magistrate’s seat for his son to assume at the age of 21. With his charm and his connections, Montaigne could have pursued a political career had he more ambition and energy. Instead, when his father’s death left him wealthy enough to leave business and politics behind, Montaigne sold his magistrate’s post, retired to the third-story tower of his country estate, and took up his pen. He was very frank in his assessment of himself and his vices. He was bald and short. He had a “quick and firm” walk, a “loud and strong voice,” and was “slow and late at everything.” He claimed no great talent for anything but the ability to write about what he observed: “I look upon myself as ordinary in every respect, except in the fact that I look upon myself as ordinary.” Montaigne’s retreat was not absolute. He served two terms as the mayor of Bordeaux, traveled extensively, and played a role in negotiations between Henri III and Henri Navarre. He suffered greatly from kidney stones and died of the ailments that plagued his later years on September 15, 1592. Montaigne’s essay on education is a favorite of St. John’s in part because his words resonate with the philosophy of the Program. He defined education as a self-guided process that didn’t involve memorizing facts or repeating the opinions of others. He believed true education allowed a man to choose for himself what is right. The ultimate goal of education, he wrote, was to prepare a man to do some good as a citizen of the world: “This vast world—which some men now think is but one among many of its kind—is the mirror in which we must look in order to know ourselves in our true scale. And this world, in short, is the book my young scholar must study.” —RH The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, md and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, md 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, md postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, md 21404-2800. Annapolis 410-626-2539 reharty@sjca.edu Rosemary Harty, editor Sus3an Borden, managing editor Phoebe Gilbert, art director Advisory Board John Christensen Harvey Flaumenhaft Roberta Gable Barbara Goyette Kathryn Heines Pamela Kraus Joseph Macfarland Jo Ann Mattson Eric Salem Brother Robert Smith Santa Fe 505-984-6104 tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor Advisory Board David Levine Ginger Roherty Tahmina Shalizi Mark St. John Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �The spring 2003 volume 29, issue 2 College • The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 12 Brave New World page d e p a r t m e n t s 2 • • • • • • • • 18 Montaigne and Education page Accreditation in Annapolis Santa Fe Copes with Drought Marshall Scholar Heads to Oxford Summer Classics Art Deco in Denmark Philanthropia Meets Aristotle Announcements Letters 28 Medical advances raise intriguing ethical issues for four doctors in very different roles. from the bell towers bibliofile page 12 Annapolis GI Director Bill Pastille discusses intellectual freedom and St. John’s College. • Eva Brann on Homeric delights • Charlotte Fletcher’s life of an early founder of St. John’s College • Alumni Books 20 A Formula for Success page 31 alumni voices St. John’s remembers Douglas Allanbrook. A glimpse into the classrooms of two Johnnie teachers—one in Annapolis and one in Santa Fe. 44 Reading the Signs 32 alumni notes A LU M N I page page 20 Photographer Sara White Wilson (A03) finds Hegel and graffiti have something in common. P RO F I L E S 32 Jacob Keller (SF98) authors a paper for Structure on his way to medical school. 35 An ACLU fellowship puts Juan Villaseñor (A97) on the case for free speech. 40 Logophile Hallie Leighton (SF92) writes a book about unusual words. 43 obituaries Martin Miller, A81 alumni association news 48 st. john’s forever 46 page 44 on the cover Michel de Montaigne Illustration by David Johnson �2 {From the Bell Towers} Annapolis Self-Study: A Probing Look in the Mirror quality general education programs in the liberal arts that meet its stringent educational, administrative, and financial criteria. The AALE is the only accrediting agency that focuses exclusively on the quality of undergraduate liberal arts and general education curricula. “We trust AALE to have good judgment about liberal arts colleges in general and St. John’s in particular,” says Kalkavage. “They have known Tutor Peter Kalkavage chaired the Self-Study Committee. about us for many years and understand our goals and habits.” Bud Billups, and President Membership is small: Christopher Nelson. Dozens of so far only Baylor University, subcommittees met to analyze the James Madison College of and discuss the major areas of Michigan State, the University the self-study. “Accreditation of Dallas, Thomas Aquinas and self-study are labor-intenCollege, and Thomas More sive and time-consuming,” says College of Liberal Arts have Kalkavage. “We have gone into met the standards. it in the spirit of hoping to Middle States accreditation learn from the experience and renders the college eligible by telling the truth about ourfor state and federal grants, selves, come up with a report provides a measure of proof that will be useful both for the that the college meets stanpurposes of formal review and dards of quality education, and for the education of our college gives St. John’s the opportunity community.” to see how outsiders view the Middle States is the regional college. But at the same time, accrediting body for the submitting the college to Annapolis campus. Santa Fe is outside review is fraught with accredited by the North Central difficulties: the college’s Association Commission on unique approach to educaAccreditation and School tion—no grades, no formal Improvement. tests beyond the freshman Middle States reviews the music quiz and algebra college every 10 years. After exam, no electives, no the self-study is complete, the endowed chairs, no report is sent to the accreditaacademic hierarchy—can tion team, which will spend be difficult to explain.“It three days on campus this is very important for the November visiting classes and college to guard its radical interviewing faculty, students, educational mission, its and college officers. devotion to genuine learnThe inclusion of AALE in ing,” explains Kalkavage. accreditation is new this year. “We urge our students to be Based in Washington, AALE responsible for their opinions by is a national association that giving reasons for them and accredits institutions offering being open to critical examina{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } tion. The whole—at times, tedious—process of accreditation is an opportunity for the college as a whole to do something similar: to give itself a keen, critical looking over; to take pains in presenting its selfreview in a formal way; and to submit ourselves to the scrutiny of outside reviewers, who, we hope, are able to understand who we are and why we are not like other schools.” In no way does the self-study reflect a perfect institution, he says.“What we aspire to as a community of learning is both stunning and formidable, and the extent to which we succeed in being a community of learners is truly remarkable,” Kalkavage says. Ultimately, accreditation leads to a stronger institution, says Dean Flaumenhaft. The process of self-study “forces us to articulate what it means to be a community of learning: what it requires, the ways in which we need to improve ourselves to live up to our aspirations. We can’t just mutter a few slogans. We have to try to say exactly what we mean.” x jo ann mattson The self-study that preceded the Annapolis 2003 accreditation review by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE) was an exhaustive 18-month process that yielded a report entitled Liberal Education in a Community of Learning. The document embraces questions, observations, and recommendations on everything from Hegel’s place in the senior seminar to how to discourage students from smoking. Completed early in the spring, the report touched on almost every aspect of college life and involved all faculty, many staff members, and nearly every campus office. Students, associates, staff, and board members also were involved. While the joint visit from Middle States and the AALE isn’t scheduled until November, the process that precedes it is perhaps the most valuable—and in some ways painful—aspect of accreditation. It requires the college community to take a probing look in the mirror and acknowledge flaws as well as assets. Middle States defines accreditation as “a means of self-regulation and peer review adopted by the educational community…intended to strengthen and sustain the quality and integrity of higher education, making it worthy of public confidence.” In Annapolis, the responsibilities of accreditation were taken very seriously, says tutor Peter Kalkavage, who has devoted hundreds of hours to accreditation over the past year. Kalkavage chaired the steering committee, whose members are tutors Marilyn Higuera and Joe Macfarland, Assistant Dean Judy Seeger, Graduate Institute Director Bill Pastille, Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft, Treasurer �3 {From the Bell Towers} Community Building in Santa Fe by Michael DiMezza (SF98, EC99) The recently completed greenhouse in Santa Fe is a forceful argument against contemporary building construction. Typically, a few people with powerful tools and foreign materials construct new buildings, an aggressive approach that produces quick results. But consider just one piece of pressure-treated lumber. Not only are carcinogenic agents applied to it to [The greenhouse] radiate[s] like a well-arranged fire that draws deeply, burns brilliantly, and calls people to it. ensure its longevity, but it also represents a significant expense of petroleum in the course of its harvest, transport, milling, delivery, and installation. These steps accelerate production at the cost of future health and energy problems. There is an alternative: community building. The new greenhouse represents three years of cooperation between visionary students, the Buildings and Grounds office, and college The Santa Fe greenhouse team: Josh Paverud (SFGI03), Pat McCue (SFGI82, EC97), Zephyr Renner (SF03)(kneeling), Zusha Elinson (SF03)(standing), Matt Aronoff (SF03)(kneeling), Michael DiMezza (SF98, EC99)(kneeling) administration. Its construction was not a matter of plans or materials, but of people willing to heft 30-pound bricks or tolerate frigid Saturday and Sunday mornings. Community labor and a mere $4,000 produced this thermally intelligent, non-toxic and flat-out beautiful building. Our earthen walls, locally harvested timber, and recycled plate glass and lumber radiate like a well-arranged fire that draws deeply, burns brilliantly, and calls people to it. Without all the Buildings and Grounds work-study students and volunteers who gave their time and effort, this project would have remained a concept. Matt Aronoff, Zephyr Renner, Zusha Elinson, and Josh Paverud, all of this year’s graduating class, deserve special recognition. We laid the foundation with some of these students when they were freshmen; it’s fitting that we have completed it together in their final year. Also, St. John’s has been fortunate to have the talent of Pat McCue, the college’s head gardener, and David Perrigo, our architect and friend. Their architecture and landscaping visions of a living campus are directly responsible for its present beauty. The class of 2000, Student Polity, and the Graduate Student Council generously provided funding for raw materials. The greenhouse went up behind the Fine Arts Building, a perfect site for a building designed to work with the sun’s radiant cycles. Its footprint is a familiar rectangle roughly 14' x 23'. The pitched roof has three large skylights. Seven floor-to-ceiling windows span 19 feet of its façade and allow direct winter sunlight to warm the growing area. The three other sides are adobe brick with doors on the east and west and a window on the north. At spring equinox the sun tracks a higher course in the sky and { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } the eaves partially shade its rays. By summer, only indirect light will enter, leaving the adobe’s thermal mass to keep the building cool. Passive solar structures such as this harvest the sun’s mild, direct radiation for cool-season heat and use thermal inertia for warmseason cooling. We hope this project can offer a fundamental lesson: All ecosystems, especially this desert ecosystem, though rich, are fragile. When our designs function in concert with these ecosystems, buildings like this greenhouse can provide food, shelter, beauty, and community, effortlessly, for years to come. x Michael DiMezza was project manager on the St. John’s College greenhouse construction. He works as a gardener and ecological designer for the college. �4 {From the Bell Towers} High and Dry in Santa Fe by Pat McCue (SFGI83) The drought in and around Santa Fe has been severe for the last few years. Although at various times the surrounding forest has been extremely dry and dangerously vulnerable to wildfires, we have not seen the massive die-off of trees that is plaguing the lowlands. Because we’re closer to the mountains, we’re a little wetter. It has occurred to me that the concept of drought is anthropomorphic. Apparently, dry periods are typical of this region and the last 30 years have been comparatively wet. I have asked some of the residents if they remember the drought of the 1950s. I was told that although it was very dry, there was still plenty of water because there were fewer people in need of it. Also, their need was so much less in comparison with today’s requirements. As for the dying trees, a local permaculturist told me that the forest is being stressed because the many new wells that have been drilled have lowered the water table. So “the drought” would seem to be largely a function of population growth, and therefore we can look forward to a permanent scarcity of water even if the annual rainfall returns to its previous level. I came to St. John’s after having worked for many years for Plants of the Southwest, an organization that specializes in native landscapes and holds a strong sense of mission regarding the fragility of our environment and the importance of conserving water. It was evident that the growing water shortage was inevitable, so from the outset I initiated gardening practices aimed at lessening our dependence on irrigation. The key is encouraging the formation of a deep layer of topsoil that will act like a sponge in holding whatever water does fall. Without this measure, the degraded landscapes of the West simply shed the majority of rainfall from their bare crusts. We have used three main strategies to do this: First, we cover bare ground with organic matter. By composting kitchen garbage, manure, and garden waste, all of which are in large supply, each year we produce an impressive amount of rich organic matter to spread on the grounds. We also mulch whatever branches we come across and this material is also spread. In conjunction with this practice, we have been continuously planting native trees and shrubs that are able to survive more readily in this environment, among them, piñon and ponderosa pine, black locust, Russian olive trees, and Rocky Mountain junipers. These plants’ roots play a critical, subsurface role in the development of healthy soil. Finally, we harvest water by putting basins around the trees and bushes and by building berms where water is running. Obstructing the water gives it time to sink into the ground and nurture the life in the soil. Snow Bound in Annapolis In Annapolis, the Presidents Day storm canceled classes for two days. Buildings and Grounds staff worked long hours to clear two feet of snow from parking lots, walkways, and rooftops. The storm also wreaked havoc with the Senior Oral schedule and ripped new gutters off Iglehart Hall. The good news: water restrictions have been lifted in the state, and the drought declared over. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } These simple procedures have changed the environment of the campus. Pat McCue While we may have little influence over how much rain falls, these simple procedures—the very same processes at work in our forests—have significantly changed the environment of the campus. The diversity of plant and animal life has greatly increased. Much of what we have planted provides food for the birds (robins, house finches, common bush tits, and scrubjays) and the insects, which attract larger animals such as rabbits and squirrels. Rachel Balkcom (SFGI00) donated several birdhouses built by the students in her class at Santa Fe Prep. Since coming here, I have instituted a policy of not mowing many of the areas that were previously cut whenever they became shaggy. This has allowed wildflowers and grasses to mature and spread their seeds throughout the campus, providing for periodic displays of seasonal wildflowers. The result is a landscape that may not please those accustomed to the more traditional landscapes. But the Santa Fe campus is beautiful in the way that untrammeled nature is beautiful and is preeminently sensible where water is so precious. x Pat McCue is head gardener on the Santa Fe Campus. �5 {From the Bell Towers} Oxford Bound The night before his November interview for the Marshall Scholarship, Annapolis senior Aaron MacLean (A03) was calm, mentally ready, and carefully prepped by tutors who conducted several practice interviews with him. At 4 a.m., his tranquility vanished. MacLean woke up terrified. He managed to drive himself through a pouring rain to his interview at the British Embassy in Washington, arrived an hour early, and waited in the car until his interview time. But when he couldn’t find the front door of the embassy, the panic rose again—and he was getting wet. After that, it was easy. MacLean enjoyed the interview and the committee seemed impressed by him. One question MacLean tackled with zeal touched on Theodore Kaczynski, the Unibomber, and his studies at Harvard. The moral principle Kaczynski had come across more than any other was to pursue freedom at all costs, the interviewer explained, adding that some suggested Harvard could be sued for contributing to the Unibomber’s acts. “Do you think Harvard should be brought before the courts for this?” MacLean was asked. In typical Johnnie fashion, MacLean responded that first one would have to define freedom and discussed how hard it is to understand what being d av i d t ro z z o Annapolis Graduate Plans International Career Aaron MacLean heads to Oxford this fall to prepare for a career in international relations. free means. He brought up Plato’s Republic in his thoughtful answer, which ultimately let Harvard off the hook. Along with rich perspective gleaned from reading great books and keen observation of the modern world, MacLean remembered his mock interviewers’ instructions to sit up straight, not talk so fast, and curb his “ums.” Within a few days, he received the phone call he hoped for: He was selected as one of 40 Marshall Scholars, talented young Americans viewed as potential “leaders, opinion-formers and decisionmakers” in the U.S. The scholarship program was established to foster “an understanding and appreciation of British values and the British way of life” and to strengthen ties between the people of both nations. In the fall, MacLean begins studies for a master’s in Medieval Arabic Thought at Oxford University. MacLean was interested in the Arab world, foreign affairs, and dialogue between cultures before the terrorist attacks of September 11. He had studied Arabic in Egypt one summer and at Middlebury College the next. The attacks, coming right after his summer in Cairo, strengthened his resolve to pursue a career in international relations. The knowledge he will pursue in his graduate studies is more urgently needed in the world, he says. “It is my belief that the danger the West now faces from Islamic terrorism is made vastly greater by a deep and abiding ignorance on its part about the civilization of the Middle East,” he wrote in his application. “Further- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } more, it is clear that these foundations cannot merely be divined by perusal of the newspapers. Studies of the contemporary situation must be supported by thorough knowledge of the thousand-plus years of history that led up to it, knowledge that can only be attained with study of the languages involved, and of the founding texts written in those languages.” MacLean, of Burke, Va., says his parents’ work influenced his choice of public service. His father, Angus, who died in 2001, followed an Army career with many years as chief of the Washington, D.C. Metro Transit Police. His mother, Sally, who worked in civil service in Vietnam and later for the FBI, is an assistant principal in an elementary school in Northern Virginia.x �6 {From the Bell Towers} Great Books Getaway: Summer Classics 2003 Combine a high desert setting, a city rich in cultural offerings including one of the country’s finest operas, and the chance to study great works by Plato, Tolstoy, and Flannery O’Connor (among others), and you get a vacation opportunity unlike any other. Each year, Summer Classics draws several hundred people who prefer to use their leisure time expanding the mind and edifying the soul, engaging in thoughtful conversations of great books, and enjoying Santa Fe. Participants choose one seminar per morning or afternoon each week for one to three weeks. Seminars of up to 17 are led by two members of the St. John’s College faculty, guests from other institutions, and alumni. Call 505-984-6104 or e-mail classics@sjcsf.edu. x Tutor Michael Bybee (right) leads a seminar. This year’s line-up of seminars and tutors: Week 1, July 13-18 Afternoon Session: Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil, Victoria Mora and Kent Taylor Morning Session: Hanna Arendt: The Human Condition, Michael Golluber and Jay Smith Charles Saunders Pierce: Various works, Michael Bybee and David Carl Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, John Cornell and Richard McCombs Shakespeare’s sonnets, William Alba and Krishnan Venkatesh Physics Before the Footlights—Five Plays, Robert Richardson and Gino Thomas All-participant seminar: Isak Dinesen: “Sorrow-Acre” Afternoon Session: Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Mark Rollins and Caleb Thompson Flannery O’Connor: short stories, Jan Arsenaul and Elizabeth Engel Tolstoy: short stories, James Carey and David Starr All-participant seminar: Francis Bacon: “Of Truth,” “Of Friendship,” and “Of Studies” Week 2, July 20-25 Week 3, July 27-August 1 Morning Session: Mozart and Offenbach: Opera, William Fulton and Robert Glick Plato: Five short dialogues, James Carey and Frank Pagano Shakespeare: Henry V, Judith Adam and Warren Winiarski (A52) Afternoon Session: Archimedes, James Forkin and Brendon Lasell Morning Session: The Upanishads, Patricia Greer and Claudia Honeywell Strauss: Opera, William Fulton and Timothy Miller George Eliot: Middlemarch, Eva Brann and Janet Dougherty Henry James: The Ambassadors, Victoria Mora and Peter Pesic Selected works of classic French drama, Michael Bybee and David Carr All-participant seminar: Joseph Conrad: The Secret Sharer { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �{From the Bell Towers} 7 Art Deco in Denmark by Beth Schulman All the members of the court of Denmark wore shades of red, evoking blood and passion. Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan. His roommate, Tom Jacobs, composed a score for piano, which he played backstage during performances. “Tobin and I agreed that American nightlife following the Volstead Act was the embodiment of a glossy exterior covering a rotten interior that Hamlet viewed with such disdain in the Danish court,” says Jacobs, also a sophomore. “Also,” he said, “the women looked great then.” Costume designer Megan Graff (A02), last year’s theater archon, was responsible for outfitting the cast of 19, many of whom had multiple roles. She dressed the audience for the play-within-a-play in evening clothes, creating some herself and borrowing several from the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va. (where she is currently an intern), and some from the Annapolis Opera. Day clothes were principally composed of 1920s-style suits and trench coats for the men and sleek dresses for the women. All the members of the court of Denmark wore shades of red (the color of the Danish flag), evoking blood and passion. Jacobs incorporated music into the play in several ways. He composed a musical theme for each important character, which played during scene changes and functioned as a subtle soundtrack for the performance. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had a A prince with an attitude problem: Joseph Hyde, A03, played a bright ragtime melody, Jazz-age Hamlet in The King William Players spring production. while Ophelia’s was classical and beautiful,” says Graff. While not a musical, the play had part about it, thinking it breakthrough where suddenly other heightened musical he was the creepiest and funni- through.” elements as well. The playIncorporating music into est Polonius I’d ever seen, and within-a-play was set as an the tale was an additional our ghost has this voice that opera, and Ophelia’s songs were challenge, says Jacobs. “Aristotle just took us over.” more songlike than usual. said, ‘melody is the greatest The hardest thing about the Herringshaw and Jacobs of the pleasurable accessories play was “thinking through cast the spring production last of tragedy.’ We put him to fall and spent extra time working Hamlet and respecting the the test.” x on the music and meeting with script and the audience by not giving a simple and uncast members to discuss their thoughtful performance,” says roles. “We had an amazing Herringshaw, who wrote his cast,” says Herringshaw. “I’m sophomore essay on “Reversal really pleased with the freshand Recognition in Hamlet.” men, they showed such strong “But that was also the best leadership. Polonius had a sara white wilson This spring, The King William Players in Annapolis gave a fresh spin to Shakespeare’s Hamlet by setting it during Prohibition, adding a jazzy musical score, crafting an Art Deco set, and outfitting Ophelia and the court to look like characters from the cast of Chicago. The production was directed by sophomore Tobin Herringshaw, a graduate of the American { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �{From the Bell Towers} 8 Phonathon volunteer Kathleen Campbell Kelley (A03) is all smiles. Philanthropia Meets Aristotle Here are two facts on the minds of Philanthropia volunteers: G Over the past five years, 40 percent of alumni made a gift to the Annual Fund. G The participation rate for any one year is less than 30 percent. The question then becomes: How can all 40 percent of alumni who already support the college be encouraged to make a gift every year? In any one year, St. John’s alumni support the college at a lower rate than alumni of other colleges. The goal for this year is 32 percent—which would put St. John’s in the same range as its peers. “ Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit.” Aristotle “The participation number is not important because we want to compete with Haverford or Colorado College,” says Jeff Bishop, vice president for college-wide advancement. “It’s important because it leverages gifts from foundations and other large donors, for whom alumni support is an indicator.” And the percentage of alumni who make gifts is a good sign of the college’s future financial health—it’s much more likely that someone will give a second, third, or fourth gift once they’ve made the commitment to support St. John’s. So how can Philanthropia volunteers encourage all 40 percent of Johnnies to give to the Annual Fund every year? One strategy is to begin by encouraging people to remember their college connection during their reunion years. “Five years, ten years, twenty-five years... these markers serve as reminders about the place of the college in our growth,” says Barbara Goyette (A73), vice president for advancement who will celebrate her 30-year reunion. “We’re hoping for an extra fund-raising effort during the reunion years that will bring the participation rate up for those classes. ” Reunion Class Leaders, volunteers from each class, work with college staff on special letters, web pages, fundraising challenges, and other ways to boost giving during reunion years. The idea seems to be working. Among Santa Fe alumni, the number of donors has increased by ten percent over last year, about the same as Annapolis. What’s the key to this success? Ginger Roherty, director of annual giving in Santa Fe attributes it to “devoted, dedicated alumni working in concert with reunion class leaders, as well as special events, improved communi- cations, and the efforts of young alumni and the senior classes.” A further step has its inspiration in Aristotle’s Ethics: “Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit.” With that in mind, the Philanthropia volunteers are working to instill the habit of giving in alumni. Gary Edwards (SF79) is working on a Philanthropia program to continue the momentum developed by class leaders in reunion years. “There are many ways we can do this,” he says. “We can send postcards, write letters soliciting alumni notes from our classmates, and continue to build class web pages.” Philanthropia volunteers are banking on Aristotle’s understanding of habit—and their sense of responsibility to the college—to boost the allimportant participation level permanently.x Alumni Help with State Funding Effort St. John’s has a long history of funding support from the state of Maryland, dating back to 1784, when the college was chartered. Although there have been some periods when the college has gone without money from the state, for the most part the relationship has been positive. Since the { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } mid-1970s, Maryland has been allocating a small percentage of the state’s higher education budget to independent colleges—including St. John’s— under the argument that the colleges contribute to the state’s economic and cultural well-being and are worth the investment. In 2002, for example, the college’s portion came to about $750,000, or 3 percent of the Annapolis campus annual operating budget. This year Maryland, like many other states, is going through a budget crisis. In an effort to find the money to balance the state budget, the funding for Maryland’s independent colleges came under scrutiny. Several proposals were floated: tie the funding to the number of in-state students (this would have meant an 85 percent cut for St. John’s); cut the funding by 20 percent; cut the funding by 51 percent. Alumni, faculty, and trustees from schools in Maryland (St. John’s, Loyola, Johns Hopkins, Maryland Institute College of Art, Goucher, and others) wrote letters, e-mails, and faxes to their state representatives stressing the importance of the schools to the state and laying out the consequences of the proposed cuts. St. John’s President Christopher Nelson spoke with legislators daily. The effort, coordinated by the Maryland Independent College and University Association (MICUA), was successful in reaching legislators and educating them about the importance of the funding. However, the final outcome of the lobbying efforts is still in doubt at press time. It is likely that the independent colleges will still take a significant hit in the Maryland budget. x �{From the Bell Towers} Announcements New Endowments Two new endowments have been established at the college. The Nancy Gannon Gearing Student Endowment will support students at the Annapolis campus through loans, prizes, or scholarships. The Victor and Mimi Zuckerkandl Faculty Endowment will benefit faculty at the Annapolis campus with loans, salary, or employment benefits. The college’s endowment funds can honor or memorialize alumni, faculty, and friends of the college and match a donor’s wishes with needs at Career Services the college. For a complete list of all such funds for both campuses, request the Presidents’ Report, 1999-2001 from the Advancement Office, SJC, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. New Faces In Santa Fe: Susan Patten, director of the National Friends program, based in Santa Fe; Jennifer Sprague, director of the Meem Library; Susan Kaplan, director of Corporate and Foundation Relations. In Annapolis: Andrea Lamb, director of the Greenfield Library. Name change: At St. John’s College, the Placement Office is no more. The Board of Visitors and Governors approved an amendment to the Polity that changes the name of the office to Career Services. Dropping “placement” from the title is intended to better reflect the mission of the office. “We were often confused with the admissions office, or expected to somehow place students in classes,” says Roberta Gable (A78), director in Annapolis. Instead the office helps students prepare applications for graduate school, scholarships, and fellowships; arranges internships and 9 part-time jobs; and provides counseling for students attempting to match their talents and interests with a paying job. In general, Gable says, she’s called upon to “help students achieve escape velocity.” Gable mulled over several potential names: “Exit Strategy office,” “The Ministry of Potentiality,” and “Department of Free Will” were among her favorites. Whatever the name, Gable—who has managed the bookstore, served as athletic director, and headed the alumni office—loves her new job. “I have the best job,” she says. “I get to talk with students and listen to them talk about their dreams and their hopes.” {Letters} Perspective on Ptolemy It has been a long while since I read the “Statistics vs. Ptolemy” article (Summer 2002), but I do want to add to Jessica Gambill’s letter as to whether anything is “lacking” in the mathematics curriculum at St. John’s. A handful of specific observations may be helpful. First of all, those college students who are best at mathematics often do not have a complete background in the pragmatics of the language. My first exposure to many tools used in high school and college algebra came when I was a teaching assistant. Some of those tools turned out to be very useful in my own graduate course in complex analysis. At the same time, I was quickly able to identify the usefulness of the tool within the context of the work I was doing. In the same way, working as a TA for everything from remedial mathe- matics courses to tutoring students in differential equations basically filled a lot of gaps. Like Esther in The Bell Jar discovering that her honors course “failed” to give her the prerequisites needed to major in English at a community college, graduate and the most talented undergraduate students are always discovering that freshman college algebra students have mastered something they themselves had never heard of. This seems in no way to prevent access to the core. There are, for instance, dozens of tricks used for matrix operations linear algebra. Most of them I have never learned (but marvel when I watch an undergraduate engineering student whip through them) and most of the rest I don’t bother to remember. This is really not a problem. In the same way, teaching undergraduates to solve definite integration problems shores up the same skills when the TA is also taking graduate probability theory (as long as you remember that in the undergraduate calculus course, the result of integrating over the entire domain does not have to be 1, as would be expected in the probability course). Sometimes you have to remember which classroom you happen to be in. Before attending St. John’s, I spent a year at a liberal arts college where I took calculus with no “precalculus” preparation. Our calculus course was unlike the “fat” curriculum typically assigned to college students. Those curricula tend to be loaded with specific applications that are later forgotten. “Exercises” are not only repetitive, but they also seem to reflect a compulsion to demonstrate every possible situation to which a theorem might apply. Meaning easily gets lost in calisthenics. The { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } course I had taken was, well, sparse–and got to the point. It was far more useful, ultimately, than those fat calculus courses. The curious thing is that what is taught as “advanced” coursework to college students is often the easiest work to do. “Abstract algebra” is the college student’s first real introduction to mathematics as conceptual language (college algebra courses do some stuff “translating” equations into English, but that is not the same thing). Pragmatically, abstract algebra is easier than the logic puzzle books in drugstore magazine aisles. Yet modern algebra coursework is typically left until senior year for many college mathematics majors. (The effort to introduce a structural, conceptual approach to early math education in the 1960s—what was called “new math”—is ridiculed to this day, but many real live continued on p. 10 �10 mathematicians remember it fondly.) My years at St. John’s prepared me far more than the typical college undergraduate mathematics program to participate in graduate mathematics studies (yes, I did have to take undergraduate coursework away from St. John’s. So do St. John’s graduates who become doctors). In my first year of graduate school, I immediately appreciated the links between probability and algebraic theory—and, later, quickly what is called measure theory. In fact, I felt that graduate mathematics was more “just like St. John’s” than any other environment in the “real world”—sometimes more “just like St. John’s” than was the college itself. If the Program were infinitely expandable (or maybe as a preceptorial suggestion) I would suggest some algebraic theory. Johnnies would like to know the story of Galois. The Axiom of Choice—which becomes practically sacred ground in the graduate mathematics environment—is also prime Johnnie territory: it is terribly important to mathematics over the past century or two, it has a terrific name, and it casts an interesting conceptual light on probability (which has way more eidos than most people realize). Sheri (Anderson) McMahon (SF78) A Flawed Justice System I have just read, with fascination, “Crime and Punishment” (Summer 2002). In light of the article’s undoubtedly factual statement that “Johnnies in justice veer to the idealistic,” I find it surprising that the article also reports, evidently with confident approval, that: “However common...scenes of injustice are in fiction and drama, front-line professionals say they are rare in real life. From arrest through sentencing, those involved in the U.S. {Letters} criminal justice system say that, despite its flaws, it’s a system that works.” My practice is mainly in civil law. My own experiences with the criminal justice system, however, and those of lawyers with much more experience whose integrity and judgment I trust, persuade me that this optimistic assessment greatly minimizes the extent to which our criminal justice system operates without regard for justice....It is a common “Justice in the abstract is the refuge of hypocrites and scoundrels.” William Blake experience of criminal defense lawyers to see policemen lie in court to help prosecutors obtain convictions when they “know” the defendant is guilty, believing that the law affords criminal defendants too much protection; that prosecutorial caseloads are so heavy that prosecutors often have little time or incentive to focus on the justice of the particular case; that bureaucratic D.A.s are often more interested in winning impressive conviction statistics than assuring that justice is done in their cases; and that the “policies” of some D.A.s often preclude a concern for justice....Moreover, it is common knowledge that, throughout the United States, racial and other discriminatory biases are often present at every stage of the criminal process from identification of suspects to sentencing—including administration of the death penalty. All things considered, I share the view that our criminal justice system is among the best in the world. But we blind ourselves to reality if we do not acknowledge that its “flaws” are sufficiently great to warrant deep concern among those of us who still cherish the ideal of law as an instrument of justice. “For real justice to be done,” wrote William Blake, “it must be done in minute particulars. Justice in the abstract is the refuge of hypocrites and scoundrels.” This truth remains, sadly, too commonly ignored by the administrators of our criminal justice system—both prosecution and defense. Harrison Sheppard (A61) In Search of Phil Gold I am interested in the whereabouts of Phil Gold (A51). He, like me, came over to Israel as a volunteer to the Israel Army in our War of Independence. He visited me in the South Negev where we fought the Egyptians and said he was in the unit in the North facing the Iraqis and Syrian Armies. That was the last I saw of him. Raphael ben-Yosef (A48) aravati@netvision.net.il Fax: 972-3-5325581 Phone: 972-3-532554 Calendar Mysteries Revealed Each year, alumni help us identify the faces and circumstances of archival photographs we publish in the Philanthropia calendar. This year was no different. I just received a copy of the SJC 2003 calendar. I really like it— the pictures take me back. The February 2003 photo was taken in 1973 or 1974. The girl on the right wearing knee socks is Judy Paine, of the class of 1976. I am not sure about the others in the photo. The September 2003 photo shows students in the class of 1976 also, from left { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } to right they are: Janet Adams, unknown, Brad Wronski (with elbows on the table), Nancy Garrow, Bridget Houston, David Friedman (with head down), and tutor Sam Brown. This photo was probably taken in 1973. The people I have identified were all classmates of mine in the January freshman class. We were the first January Freshman class in Santa Fe, I think. They were great people. Thanks for the wonderful calendar. Gregg McReynolds (SF76) I can tell you the story of the [Philanthropia] calendar cover. The woman on the left in the August photo is Ms. Monique Wentzel (SF02). The picture was taken in the spring of 2001, not 2002, as noted in the credits, on the Santa Fe campus. In the foreground the students, left to right: Adrian Bowles (SF02), me (SF02), and Brett Esaki (SF02). Over my shoulder, left to right, are Peter Boyce (SF01), Ms. Ashley Scott (SF01), Ms. Laura Vitale (SF01) and Mr. Christopher Howe (SF01). [Photographer Howard] Korn asked to take a picture of Mr. Bowles, Mr. Esaki, and me while we were engaged in a discussion about the Maxwell. In our Junior Lab tutorial with Mr. Cohn, we had some major problems with the conversion from electromagnetic units (EMU) to electrostatic units (ESU). The equation given us by Mr. Cohn was a bit much for my brain to handle, but with Mr. Esaki’s ample quantitative skills and Mr. Bowles’ tendency for mathematical exhibitionism at hand, we headed outside to give it a try on the concrete. Mr. Korn approached some five or ten minutes later when, exhausted, we had decided to give up. But still, we knew we looked pretty cool out there, so Brett said we should give it another shot for the photogra- �11 {Letters} pher. In any case, Mr. Cohn’s lab class was the best thing I ever did at St. John’s. Thanks for publishing the picture. Joey Chernila (SF02) I received the new calendar and was delighted to see two of my classmates pictured for the month of October. The woman is Erin Murphy (SF73) from Malibu, Calif. We were friends and have stayed in touch all these years. She still lives in Malibu and has raised seven children. One of her daughters attends the University of San Francisco with my younger daughter. (Interesting coincidence.) Four members of our family have graduated from St. John’s. My father, John L. Williams, graduated in 1950 from Annapolis. I believe it was the first graduating class for Dr. [Richard] Weigle. Dr. Weigle was still president when I graduated from Santa Fe in 1973. My sister, Andrea, graduated in 1977, and my oldest daughter, India Clarke, in 2001. The tutor in the September picture is dear, dear Sam Brown. How I loved that man. We used to play four-hand piano pieces together for fun. What a stitch that was! He liked to egg students on, and it looks like he was succeeding with the young man in the picture. Thanks for a great calendar. Be Hussander (SF79) Thanks for the calendar— I’m quite sure that the female student in the October 2003 photo is Erin Murphy. She was a classmate of mine, which puts the date at either 1969 or 1970— possibly ’71. Can’t remember the guy’s name. I love this historical detection—but that’s probably because I’m an historian! Margaret Creighton (SF73) Department of History Bates College “On the back cover of the calendar, the students pictured are, left to right: Amanda Mayer (me, now Amanda Mayer Stinchecum), Steve Bernstein, Judy Jones, and Lon Gore. We belonged to the class of ’61, so the photo was certainly taken before then. From the appearance of the seminar room, and the fact that I am sure Lon Gore and I were in the same freshman seminar, I would venture that the photo was taken during the academic year 1957-58.” Amanda Mayer Stinchecum (A61) Given the fact that the February 2003 photo was taken by Marion Warren, who also took the picture of Connie Weigle in the sophomore language tutorial (November), I would date February’s photo as being taken at the same time and probably the same morning. The woman with the long, dark hair, checkered blouse and boots or knee socks is Carol Ryder (SF68). The man she is talking to, with the socks-in-sandals, is David Moss (SF68). The hand-in-pocket stance was also characteristically his. The man to the left with the sharp looking chin— actually a goatee—is Robin who was from Chattanooga, Tenn. I forget his surname, as I also forget the name of the woman with the two bob-tails. My suspicion is that the head between David and Carol belongs to Vida Kazemi (SF68). I just received the calendar and need to correct the attribution of a photo which appeared on the inside back cover. The fine young fellow in the photo is Bob Vincent, my classmate and freshman core group colleague. He looks so young and has so much hair this photo had to have been snapped during our first year at SJC. Thomas G. Smith (A84) Mr. July is Joel Greenberg, class of 1962. Wonderful photographs, as always. Thanks to those who assemble this calendar. Linda McConnell (A61) Correction Anna Canning (SF02) was misidentified in the summer 2002 issue of The College. Kieran D.C. Manjarrez (SF68) { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis MD 21404 or The College Magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: reharty@sjca.edu, or via the form for letters on the web site at www.sjca.edu. Click on “Alumni,” then on “Contact The College Magazine.” �{Bioethics} 12 BIOETHICS I N A B R AV E N E W W O R L D What’s right and wrong in life and death? by Sus3an Borden (A87) Shaping Public Policy A philosopher and a physician, former St. John’s tutor Leon Kass is in a position to shape government policy on critical and controversial issues such as human cloning and stem cell research. In the desire to treat diseases and ease suffering, Kass asks, can we lose sight of the intrinsic value of human life? Leon Kass (tutor, 1972-1976) discovered the hard way just how controversial a seminar can be. As chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, he opened the group’s first meeting with a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark,” the story of a scientist who, in an attempt to remove his near-perfect wife’s sole blemish, ends up killing her. The media criticized Kass for his choice of reading. At best, it was called a clumsy approach; at worst, an attack on science. A column in the online magazine Slate saw the story as predictive of Kass’ tenure on the council: “Given the flatness of Hawthorne’s moral universe in ‘The Birthmark’ and his other mad scientist stories, it’s hard not to conclude that Kass will similarly work hard to reduce complex issues to their starkest antinomies.” To the contrary, says Kass. “My real goal is what we in the office call ‘toward a richer bioethics.’ We try to put contemporary discussions and controversies into a larger philosophical, social, and political context. The discussion of ‘The Birthmark’ was widely misunderstood as antiscience and a cautionary tale, but it’s a profound story. The press failed to appreciate that the birthmark, being a mark of birth, is not merely some superficial blemish but stands altogether for what it means to be a perishable being, marked imperfect in terms of being mortal.” The imperfections of mortality—and science’s quest to remedy them—define the council’s purview. Working papers the council has produced include “ ‘Better’ Memories? The Promise and Perils of Pharmacological Interventions”; “Age Retardation: Scientific Possibilities and Moral Challenges”; and “Patenting Human Organisms.” “These are extremely complicated matters,” Kass says of the council’s work. “There are questions of the sufficiency and desirability of the ends we pursue and questions about the appropriateness of the means. There are questions of the proper balance between modesty and humility on one hand and, on the other hand, a vigorous attempt to repair the defects of the world and of our own nature.” When confronting such matters, Kass advises that we think first about human life and then consider the new technologies. Placing an emphasis on technologies distorts the picture. Take, for example, the possibility of paying potential organ donors. “We could treat this as a technological problem to be solved, and work on determining the best incentives and finding ways to avoid placing undue coercion and pressures upon the poor,” Kass explains. “But what we first should do is step back and start with questions about the meaning of embodiment, what it means to shuttle body parts from { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �{Bioethics} 13 “There are questions of the proper balance between modesty and humility on one hand and, on the other hand, a vigorous attempt to repair the defects of the world and of our own nature.” Leon Kass one person to another, what it means to put the body into commerce. We must make sure that in the desire to improve health by increasing the supply of lifesaving organs, we don’t forget about the dignity of human life.” While the progressive nature of technology means that we tend to look at issues case by case, Kass says that we only begin to see their full ethical dimensions when we look in the aggregate at the various powers now gathering for intervention into the human body and mind. “These can be used not just in ways that heal the sick and succor the suffering, but could in principle make major changes in what up until now was considered the natural way of being human. Part of the difficulty when you ask questions case by case, technique by technique, is that it’s always in isolation and always justified by the last innovation. “Sometimes the slippery slope is the right metaphor for this approach, but sometimes one just jumps off a cliff,” Kass says. “To begin to treat nascent human life as a resource to be mined for the sake of benefits for the living— that’s not a slippery slope, that’s a major leap. This year it will be stem cells from five-day-old blastocycsts and ten years from now it’s going to be organs from two-month-old fetuses. We are agreeing right now that, precisely because human development is a continuum, we are now saying yes to a kind of exploitive human attitude for the sake of the living. It will be hard to stop when more benefits are available because we have already said yes to the claims of the living. Treatments for people with diabetes and Parkinson’s will far outweigh any kind of reverence for nascent human life.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �14 {Bioethics} Right now, Congress is saying no to the first steps down this path. In February, the House of Representatives voted to ban all human cloning, both for reproductive and research purposes. The vote followed the majority recommendation of the council’s 2002 report, “Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry.” Kass was among the majority. “On some matters I have very definite opinions and will argue for them. I’m opposed to human cloning and I don’t think we should be killing patients in acts of euthanasia or assisted suicide. Still, as chairman of the council, I’ve had to set some of my own views aside and preside over the kind of conversation that will ensure that the best arguments on multiple sides are developed. So many ethical issues are not simply choices between good and evil but choices in which the evil is deeply entangled with the good. “If one is offering counsel to the president, what one owes is a full account of what’s at stake and what’s to be said for doing A rather than B or B rather than A. The report on cloning we wrote was close to 300 pages, but the recommendation on the vote was only two sentences. The report says that, wherever we come out in our thinking, people on the other side have something vital to defend, not for themselves, but for all of us. No one can be cavalier about the need to treat human suffering, no one can be casual about nascent human life, and no one can afford to be indifferent.” Facing Matters of Life and Death I s it ethical to conceive a child to save the life of another, even if that child will be loved and welcomed? In 1991, Dr. Stephen Forman (A70) was at the center of a controversy raised by that question. But as a physician treating cancer patients, he faces difficult ethical questions every day. More than 4,000 people made it to the April 11 reunion in Duarte, Calif. Amid balloons and picnic lunches they laughed with old friends, exchanged tales of triumph, and hugged the people who saved their lives. The reunion, at the City of Hope National Medical Center, was for bone marrow transplant recipients and donors, and their families, doctors, and nurses. Among the guests was Stephen Forman, director of City of Hope’s Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation Program. City of Hope is a leader in the fight against cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and other devastating diseases. At least $2 million is invested in research each week at the center. Approximately 30 to 40 percent of eligible patients participate in clinical trials and studies, compared to the national average of 3 to 4 percent. Hand-in-hand with the center’s cutting-edge science is its commitment to compassionate care. “There is no profit in curing the body, if in the process, we destroy the soul,” wrote a former executive director of the center. City of Hope has adopted these words as its philosophy. In 1988 the Ayala family came to City of Hope in need of this very combination of compassion and science. Their 16-yearold daughter, Anissa, had leukemia, and bone marrow transplantation was her only chance for survival. Unable to find a match after testing family members, searching the National Marrow Donor Program registry, and staging several marrow drives, Anissa’s parents approached Forman and his team about trying to have a baby who might be a match for Anissa. “We sat down and talked with the family quite a bit. We wanted to understand better what they were thinking so we could think about it ourselves,” Forman recalls. The father had had a vasectomy, which would have to be reversed. The mother was in her 40s, an age when conception is difficult. And the baby would have only a one-in-four chance of being a match. “It was pretty clear to us in talking with the family that if the potential baby was not a match they would want the new child anyway. In that context we felt we could help them with the medical, emotional, psychological, and ethical rationale for all of this.” Despite the odds against it, the father’s vasectomy was reversed, a baby was conceived, and when Marissa-Eve Ayala was born, she turned out to be a perfect match for her older sister. Anissa underwent a successful transplantation when Marissa-Eve was 14 months old. While Forman was delighted by the outcome of the case, he wasn’t exactly crazy about the media frenzy that surrounded it. “I had to respond to the media and deal with the selfappointed ethicists who became a cottage industry around that time. I had the best discussions with science writers and the worst with—you know, that big conservative guy on the radio,” he says, unable to recall the name of Rush Limbaugh. Forman received hate mail, death threats, and even a threat to kidnap the Ayala baby. “Newspapers raised questions about breeding children for their parts; one accused us of being a Jewish hospital experimenting on Christian babies.” Time magazine’s June 17, 1991 cover featured the Ayala sisters. The accompanying article presented a balanced discussion of the case, exploring its medical, social, psychological, and ethical dimensions. It included a provocative question from Rudolf Brutoco, the donor’s pediatrician: “Does it make sense,” Brutoco asked, “to conceive a child so that little Johnny can have a sister, while it is not acceptable to conceive the same child so that Johnny can live?” The article concluded that the “family’s act of lifesaving conception was on the side of the angels.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �{Bioethics} 15 “The ethical issues I face every day have to do with the end of life...” Stephen Forman Although the Ayala case brought him national attention, Forman says that the real ethical dilemmas in his work don’t grab headlines. “The ethical issues I face every day have to do with the end of life, the means of preserving dignity at a time when people find themselves in an undignified setting,” he says. “People seek help with their thoughts and feelings about what they want done or not done as the end may be coming. They need to decide how to manage pain. They need to make decisions about heroic measures to be taken or not, as well as assisted suicide.” In the course of helping his patients, Forman guides them through the most complex issues that human beings must address. “I’ve always felt that oncology is the most philosophical of the specialties,” he says. “It’s concerned with how one lives one’s life, with confronting its meaning and its temporality.” While Forman helps his patients wrestle with the mechanics and meaning of death, he is also at work discovering new ways to prolong and improve their lives. He is the principal investi- gator for a $15.3 million, five-year National Cancer Institute bone marrow transplantation program project grant and co-principal investigator for a Strategic Program for Innovative Research on AIDS Treatment grant to study gene therapy for the treatment of AIDS patients. He is also co-editor of Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, a definitive textbook for scientists and health-care professionals. Being at the forefront of medical research means that Forman is often in the public eye—a situation, he explains, that can have its benefits for the advancement of medicine and the health of many patients. One significant byproduct of the Ayala publicity was a growing understanding of the need for bone marrow donors. Today, Anissa is a healthy 30-year-old who is the assistant director for the Red Cross Bone Marrow Donor Program in Southern California. On the 10-year anniversary of her transplant, City of Hope rechecked the bone marrow donor registry that had yielded no match for her. After a decade of debate and its attendant public awareness, 21 matches were found. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �16 {Bioethics} Looking Behind the Shadows M ichael Victoroff (A71) has seen medicine from three perspectives: as a physician in private practice, as a medical director of an HMO, and as a university researcher providing toxicology evidence for environmental lawsuits. Each new vista has raised troubling questions about patient care, efficacy, and economics. “Illusion, Plato’s cave, has been the theme, the continuous thread throughout my whole career,” says Michael Victoroff, doctor and medical ethicist. “In almost every subject that’s been fascinating to me, there has been some aspect where the general public does not see what’s really behind the shadows.” The biggest shadow on the cave wall is the lack of science and common sense in health care, says Victoroff. “Today more than ever, with herbal medicine on the Internet and hundreds of fringe healing professions, a lot of people are rightfully nervous about medical practice. They see the critical combination of financial motivation and junk science.” Even practitioners of orthodox medicine are suspect, he adds. “They’re no different, just more subtle. People accept the good will and good intentions of doctors as evidence of good skill.” Victoroff took a yearlong fellowship in bioethics following medical school, and throughout his career he has spent at least a quarter of his time consulting, teaching, writing, and lecturing in bioethics, from prenatal care through geriatrics. In 1997, after 19 years in medical practice, he became a medical director for Aetna. He says that he once thought HMOs could save the medical profession. “The managed care movement was, to those of us who were believers, kind of like the peace movement. Managed care was going to make medicine a scientific and reason-driven social phenomenon rather than simply a cottage industry of independent practitioners improvising treatments from which they derived a living. “I saw that I could not improve health care in America as one private practice doctor in Colorado, but I thought, ‘give me a few million people and maybe from there my lever will be long enough to affect something.’” As medical director of a health plan, Victoroff had the opportunity to look at tens of thousands of medical records. But he wasn’t impressed with what he saw. For one thing, too few doctors keep electronic records of patient care at a time when the computer is a basic and critical tool in an efficient practice. “When you see four specialists and they run a bunch of tests and write several prescriptions, that’s a job for a computer. That’s when you need the integrated health care delivery system that America, and the doctors of America, have vigorously rejected.” Victoroff continues the cave metaphor in a discussion of assisted suicide, which he says is a social, not medical, issue. He’s sympathetic to the most compelling reasons for assisted suicide. “Let’s say we have a person in such pain from cancer that his life is total misery. He’s lying in bed yelling, he’s got no quality of life and is expected to die within a matter of weeks. He’s already getting lethal doses of morphine and he says, ‘this is unbearable, can’t you just give me some cyanide?’ ” Society may decide an individual can make the choice to die, but Victoroff asks why a physician must assist in the act of killing him: “It is a terribly bad idea for physicians to be killing people, even as a gesture of kindness. I think that it permanently contaminates the role of physician. Separating the role of healer and killer is a very smart social practice.” Victoroff has his own candidate for the assistant: judges. “We have a group among us that already puts people to death, has the liberty to do it, has immunity from liability, and the power to order up a dose of hemlock. We can have what amounts to a probate process: a court process as diligent as you like and physicians can testify along with everyone else. If you truly wish to die and we’re satisfied that you’re competent, then we’ll kill you. We don’t need any doctors, just a judge and dispensing pharmacist.” Victoroff left Aetna in 2002 and has been working at the toxicology department of the University of Colorado, where he provides support research for toxic environmental torts, evaluating issues surrounding environmental safety. Because of the sheer number of threats to human health posed by toxicity issues in the air, groundwater and even medical treatment, Victoroff isn’t hopeful he can make an impact on health care in this area. “It’s like the Dark Ages, surrounded by mythology and religious beliefs; there’s almost a complete lack of attention to science. A lot of people are making a lot of money on Bioethics Reading List Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Linda T. Kohn, Janet Corrigan, Molla S. Donaldson, and William C. Richardson, eds., To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man; That Hideous Strength Gilbert Meilaender, Body, Soul, and Bioethics Ed Pellegrino, Beneficence in Trust Suggested by Michael Victoroff, Leon Kass, and Nick Capozzoli { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �17 {Bioethics} something that is based on folklore. That’s not to say that there aren’t some dangerous chemicals out there, but here’s the pattern I see: You have a team of lawyers that goes down to a little town that has a smokestack. They go to the people who have illnesses who live around the smokestack and offer them money to participate in a lawsuit, then they offer to settle with the smokestack’s owners. That’s a particularly malignant pattern.” Although cynical about the tort field, Victoroff concedes half-jokingly that it may contribute to quality control. “Doctors make huge numbers of errors and this has been almost the only social mechanism we’ve used to improve quality in medicine,” he says. Victoroff tells of teaching a course that brought senior law students and senior med students together to discuss bioethics. “I learned that by the time these kids had spent a couple years in their professional schools they had already become accustomed to a mode of argument and proof that was unique “I saw that I could not improve health care in America as one private practice doctor in Colorado.” Michael Victoroff to their professions. When they were confronted with an alternate mode of asking and answering questions, they almost couldn’t follow it. “It’s hard to get people to solve problems constructively without first asking them to step outside of the habits of their own profession. In essence, that’s what Plato was telling us to do when he said you ought to get outside the cave once in a while. What my career has been, in one respect, is me shouting from outside the door of the cave at all the people in there staring at the wall, and I don’t even know that I’m outside the cave. I’m probably in another cave. “I love illusions, but I see that they’re illusions. I don’t know what’s behind them, but I can tell when I don’t see the whole picture. Over a career of fooling with these things, I have found something every day to make me roll my eyes and shake my head. That’s been the main medical risk of my career—from shaking my head in wonder.” x Acting in a Patient’s Best Interest F orget cloning babies. Forget assisted suicide. Neurologist and tutor Nick Capozzoli (AGI81) says that an ethical drama can unfold in his office any time he writes a prescription. “I sometimes have to balance what the patient should know about the medication against what I want the patient to do with the medication,” explains Capozzoli. “There are some patients who say the same thing no matter what I tell them: ‘Whatever you think is best.’ Others live in a world of great anxiety. If they hear about a single side effect, they’re probably not going to take the medicine.” “What, then, is the best approach?” Capozzoli asks. “Do you lay out all the facts the same way for every patient? Do you say different things based on what you know about each patient?” He compares his quandary to that of a legislator: “When a vote comes up, do you take a referendum or vote based on your informed knowledge?” Capozzoli has managed to find a path that draws these alternatives closer together: “I believe there’s something about the nature of what a physician is that says you ought to have an opinion about the right thing to do, and you should say to the patient, ‘this is what you ought to do.’ You should be clear { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } about your own opinion but also be good about understanding the patient’s concerns: Are they due to a different world view or to their being fraught with anxiety?” His approach sounds moderate, reasoned, sensitive—ethical. But Capozzoli (a tutor for 20 years, a doctor for nearly 35) is so finely attuned to the intricacies of ethics that he questions the validity of his questions: “Who is the best custodian of the patient’s best interest?” he asks. “Do I even understand fully what it means to act in a patient’s best interest?” x �18 {Essays} MONTAIGNE A N D T H E E D U C AT I O N O F C H I L D R E N by William Pastille S ince the inception of the New Program, and no doubt before as well, St. John’s College has been devoted to the education of children. The Preamble to the Polity of the college states that the purpose of the institution is to “make adults out of children.” The college’s motto— composed, as Stringfellow Barr tells us, by an admiring professor at Harvard, but instantly adopted by the founders of the New Program because of its aptness—declares that St. John’s “makes free persons out of children.” Both formulations imply that the college’s role is to transform dependent beings into free, independent beings. The kind of freedom that the college wishes for its students is intellectual freedom: the ability to fashion one’s own judgments without the hindrance of unexamined assumptions, inherited prejudices, and cherished pronouncements of alleged authorities. One of the finest descriptions of intellectual freedom is found in Montaigne’s essay “On the Education of Children” where the author discusses the temper that a teacher should try to produce in a student with regard to the influence of authority: Let the principles of Aristotle not be principles of him any more than those of the Stoics or Epicureans. Let this diversity of opinions be set before him; if he can, he will make a choice: if he cannot then he will remain in doubt. Only fools have made up their minds and are certain: Che non men che saper dubbiar m’aggrada. [For doubting pleases me no less than knowing. (Dante, Inferno, XI, 93.)] For if it is by his own reasoning that he adopts the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, they are no longer theirs: they are his. To follow another is to follow nothing: Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet. [We are not under a king; let each preserve himself. (Seneca, Epistulae Morales, XXXIII, 4.)] Let him at least know what he does not know. He should not be learning their precepts but drinking in their humours. If he wants to, let him not be afraid to remember where he got them from, but let him be sure that he knows how to appropriate them. Truth and reason are common to all: they no more belong to the man who first put them into words than to him who last did so. It is no more secundum Platonem than secundum me: Plato and I see and understand it in the same way. Bees ransack flowers here and flowers there: but then they make their own honey, which is entirely theirs and no longer thyme or marjoram. Similarly, [he] will transform his borrowings; he will confound their forms so that the end-product is entirely his: namely, his judgement, the forming of which is the only aim of his toil, his study, and his education. But the college does not want to cultivate intellectual freedom in its students while at the same time weighing down their souls with the burden of hubris. Montaigne’s sage counsel concerning self-reliance in one’s thinking might be a recipe for the most appalling intellectual arrogance if it were not coupled with another bit of advice later in the essay: “Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether that truth is born at his rival’s doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.” This guidance provides the humility that is necessary to counterbalance the egocentrism of a mind that is always striving to live by its own lights. Subservience to the truth wherever and whenever it appears—even if it contradicts longstanding personal beliefs and preferences—is the earmark of a truly independent intellect that is encumbered neither by external influences nor by inner defects like excessive pride, sentimental attachment, or intellectual possessiveness. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �{Essays} 19 “Truth and reason are common to all.” h owa r d ko r n Michel de Montaigne One might wonder whether the intellectual freedom of forming one’s own judgments really is the only aim of education, as Montaigne seems to say in the first quotation above. It may be that education can cultivate other sorts of freedom that might be in some sense superior to intellectual freedom. For instance: What if the Self, in which Montaigne encourages us to trust, is inherently unreliable, or illusory, or merely an artifact of a deeper source of being—a source that might be hidden from the Self by the Self, as a person looking at himself in a mirror blocks his own sight of a light source behind him? If this were the case, wouldn’t it mean that we ought to become free from the Self instead of relying upon it as the true guarantor of our freedom? Wouldn’t it mean that we should regard the intellectual autonomy recommended by Montaigne as an obstacle, not an aid, to freedom? Perhaps St. John’s, in so far as it aims to make its students intellectually independent and self-reliant, is actually harming them. But even if the Self is ultimately unreliable and true freedom is not to be found within its ambit, it hardly seems likely that the step of coming to rely upon the Self can be skipped in the progress toward freedom. Since self-reliance helps us to break free of external influences, it clearly removes at least some of the chains that bind us. The resulting intellectual autonomy is at any rate less constrained than the prior state, even if it is not the highest possible freedom. Intellectual freedom may not be the Good, but it is certainly a good worth possessing. x Tutor William Pastille is director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �{Johnnies in the Classroom} 20 SEEKING A FORMUL A FOR SUCCESS by Sus3an Borden (A87) and Rosemary Harty T wo math teachers, two cities, two nontraditional paths to the classroom. Steve Travis, a 2002 Annapolis graduate, tutored students at a middle school in Annapolis for three years beginning in his sophomore year. After graduation, he sought provisional certification and a classroom of his own. In Santa Fe, Carisa Armendariz Petrie (SF99) entered a certification program right after graduating in 1999 and now heads the math department at a large high school. With one in five alumni in the teaching profession, The College takes a look at what continues to draw young alumni to teaching. It’s 7:10 on a January morning when math teacher Steve Travis walks through the front door of Bates Middle School. He spends the next hour photocopying sample equations, writing homework and outcome charts on his classroom blackboards, patrolling sixth-graders gathering at the front of the school, welcoming students inside the building, and serving hall duty. The door to his class has a sign above it: “Enter with Pride.” About a dozen students pass beneath it before the bell rings. At 8:11 a voice comes over the public address system, leads the homerooms in the Pledge of Allegiance, announces birthdays, recognizes visitors, and congratulates the school’s current crop of “Shining Stars.” The Stars are asked to drop by the guidance office to pick up certificates of merit. The announcements end with an exhortation to “have a focused and respectful day.” Travis entered the teaching profession in the fall of 2002 with a provisional teaching certificate and what he now sees as a touch of hubris. He had tutored part time during his sophomore, junior, and senior years at St. John’s and, seeing how much progress he had made in fairly short sessions, he was looking forward to the impact he could have in a classroom of his own. He set his sights on the Maryland Functional Math Test, which each student { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } is required to pass before entering ninth grade. The test covers basic arithmetic, problem-solving, fractions, decimals, and using formulas. At Bates, the pass rate is low. The test seemed a worthy goal, something to work toward that would give him clear feedback. His insider’s view of the school led him to believe that improving results would be simple. “There were three teachers who held my job last year. That’s a lot of failure for one position. I thought I could come in and really do things right and make an effective change. There was a lot of room for improvement and I thought I could build on that,” he says. “I am, slowly, but not like I wanted.” *** At 8:17 the bell for first period rings and Travis raises the projection screen that hangs in front of his blackboard to reveal the day’s warm-up equations—four problems involving the multiplication and division of simple integers, both positive and negative. While others set to work, a girl in the third row carefully applies gloss to her lips. At 8:20 Travis closes the door to his classroom and asks the students to be quiet while they work. Three minutes later he welcomes them back from their weekend break. “I’m getting a dog,” a student blurts out. “Sean, don’t you already have a dog?” another responds. Several shout back in unison: “The dog died.” Travis announces that in the previous week’s quiz there were no As and only �{Johnnies in the Classroom} d av i d t ro z z o 21 Steve Travis at Bates Middle School three Bs. A girl who will do no work during the entire period claims a failing grade and sets to guessing who got the Bs. Travis turns out the lights and uses a transparency and overhead projector to review the day’s work. When the room darkens, the noise level immediately diminishes. Travis will review the same 18 equations 5 times this day, to 5 groups of students of varying interests and abilities. “I’ve learned that having a template like this helps them pay attention. It keeps them quiet and involved,” Travis says, somewhat apologetic about this simple approach to teaching. He points to a timeline of world mathematics he’d posted on the back wall of his classroom in August. “I thought I’d be so creative, but you have to manage the class before you can be “It takes real imagination, real perseverance, and hard work to reach an entire classroom.” Steve Travis creative and some of the kids really can’t handle creativity,” he says. “Some of the most successful teachers in this school stand at the front of the class and speak in a calm monotone for the entire period.” Above the classroom clock a handlettered sign reads: “Time is passing. Are you?” Travis isn’t sure. His success with the Maryland Functional Math Test was well below his expectations. Only 40 of his 100 seventh-graders passed. *** Travis has posted a sign to remind students of the order of operations for equation-solving (parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �22 {Johnnies in the Classroom} d av i d t ro z z o subtraction). But the order of operations is not so clear when teaching students with a wide range of skills. If you don’t have multiplication mastered, does it make sense to move on to fractions? If your grasp of decimals is still fuzzy, is it possible to learn percentages? Travis’ experience tells him that moving ahead only leaves more kids behind. But his obligation to the county’s curriculum requires him to stay on schedule. “At the beginning I thought it would be easier to get these students on track and target areas where they needed help, but I found out that when you’re dealing with so many kids at once you have to teach the curriculum. As the lone teacher in the classroom, it’s hard to address the particular needs of every student. I’m almost Annapolis graduate Steve Travis tutors a student. forced to use generic lesson plans, which might be good but don’t always work for every student.” Fortunately, Travis is not completely alone in the classroom. Three St. John’s students—Bryson Finklea, Elizabeth Laughlin, and Joseph Method— tutor in his class. “Sometimes what a kid needs will be cleared up in 10 or 20 minutes,” he says. “I can see in the class that they’re lost but I don’t have the time to work with them. When they come back after a tutoring session, the difference is obvious. They’re enthusiastic, they pay attention, they raise their hands.” *** Fifth period starts at 11:30 a.m. and from the beginning things are not looking good. The students pass around a moreor-less contraband magazine and when Travis reaches for it, a keep-away game begins. Travis is in a precarious position. He can’t stop his quest for the magazine because he’s already committed to seizing it. Yet he can’t jump in and whole-heartedly try to grab it because a failure will make him look foolish—not a good thing for a first-year teacher. In the end, Travis is successful. He quietly walks toward the moving target “I’m always trying new strategies, new techniques to make it work. Sometimes it feels like I’m rethinking my approach every single day.” Steve Travis and only reaches for it when it is clearly within his grasp. He puts it into a file cabinet and tries to turn the students’ attention to mathematics. The equation of the moment: 3 1/3 x = 4 1/6. A girl solves the problem and then explains how: after converting the numbers to improper fractions, she flipped the fraction on the left and then multiplied. Travis informs the class that her method is called the multiplicative { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } inverse and then demonstrates an alternative method that he learned when he was in school. “What year was that?” a student asks. “1945,” he answers. “No, you’d be like, 63,” she says. “No I wouldn’t. You added wrong,” teases the 23-year-old Travis. And now the class is awake, shouting out how old they think he’d be if he were born in 1945. Later, Travis says he regrets his tendency to joke around: “They tell you not to even smile until after Christmas. The students don’t need you as a friend and they don’t want you as a friend. They need to respect you, they need to know your boundaries. Some of these kids have no boundaries. They live in a world that can be very insecure. Some don’t even have food in the morning—that’s insecurity. “If I could start the year all over again, I would never let anyone speak without raising a hand. At St. John’s, of course, you want discourse, but with a class of 30 you need order.” As the class makes its way through the equations, a student amuses himself by singing the Chia Pet jingle: “ch-ch-chchia.” Travis pretends he doesn’t hear. A sign beneath the classroom clock reads: “It’s time to do our best.” But teaching is complicated and it’s not always clear what’s best. “I’m always trying new strategies, new techniques to make it work. Sometimes it feels like I’m rethinking my approach every single day,” Travis says. It’s 2 p.m. and the anticipation of the final bell is raising the class’ chaos level. The ongoing chatter of two girls grows too loud. Travis asks one of them to move to the front of the class. “I’ll be lonely,” she whines. “I don’t care if you’re lonely,” he answers. “I do,” she says as she picks up her books and heads for her new seat. The class is getting out of hand and Travis makes a final push to assert his authority. “When the bell rings, do not get up. I will dismiss you,” he announces. �23 {Johnnies in the Classroom} A girl in the back pouts. “The bell dismisses me,” she says. But in the end, she waits for Travis to tell her it’s time to go. *** Travis’ daily planning calendar is opened to a quote from B.F. Skinner: “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” What will survive from Travis’ first year as a teacher? “I now know how difficult it is to reach certain students,” he says. “Coming in, I thought, ‘I know each kid is different and it might take a couple of strategies, but I’ll find a way to reach each one.’ I’ve come to realize that it’s not easy to get through to everyone. It’s like getting an orchestra to play—an orchestra that doesn’t want to play and doesn’t know their instruments very well. It takes real imagination, real perseverance, and hard work to reach an entire classroom.” What will survive for his students? Travis hopes they’ll retain the importance of effort and perseverance. “I’ve always stressed to them that more important than the things I teach is the effort they give. In an introductory letter I sent at the beginning of the year, I wrote that I didn’t care how much they knew, but how much they were willing to learn. I told them I was looking for students who are willing to learn something that’s difficult, students who will do their best.” Travis says that this emphasis comes from his own experience as a student at St. John’s. “I remember how difficult that first year was. I kept telling myself just to try and do my best. When I read the books, I remembered that the ideas in the books were difficult even for the people who wrote them. If it wasn’t difficult, it probably wasn’t worth thinking about.” Now in his first year of teaching, Travis finds himself being offered very similar advice. “When I get frustrated, I talk to a friend of mine, Walter Mattson (A87), who’s also a teacher. He says, ‘Sure it’s difficult. But if it weren’t difficult, it probably wouldn’t be worth doing.’ ” A t 12:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, Carisa Armendariz Petrie emerges from the sanctuary of the math department office into a sea of raging hormones, teenage angst and overall indifference to the uplifting benefits of algebra. She comes bearing the quadratic formula like a rare gift to recipients who will—one day—become convinced of its value. With a student body approaching 2,000, Santa Fe High School seems more like a small community college than a secondary school. Its 100-acre campus comprises some buildings halfway through renovation, older structures slated for demolition, and new buildings going up. When the bell sounds, students drift toward the gleaming new Academic Center where Petrie teaches and fill the hallways and staircases. Her third-floor classroom is decorated with posters of Albert Einstein, for Petrie, “the patron saint of mathematics.” This is the second of Petrie’s three 90minute classes, and the after-lunch crowd can be tough. But Petrie takes control of Algebra III with a warm-up problem that quashes non-math chatter among the 28 students. She turns her attention to the stack of math papers before her. There were, she reports, careless mistakes. Some folks need to read the directions. And if you need help, she urges, sign up for tutoring. “You can gain back 20 of your points if you correct your mistakes on this test,” she says. “But I need you to write a sentence explaining how you made your mistake. And not just, ‘I messed up.’ I need you to know where you went wrong.” She hands out the tests, then moves on briskly to tackle each of the objectives in her carefully planned lesson. Her classroom is orderly, her explanations simple, and her confidence in the students evident. Frustration among the students emerges only once, when a tall girl sitting in the back tries to evade the question { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } Petrie has asked. Pressed again, the student becomes angry. “I told you I don’t know,” she says again. *** As she explains later, Petrie believes her high expectations for her students factor in their success, whether or not students hold such expectations for themselves. Their socioeconomic level, their race, their parents’ education—all are reasons educational experts say that some of her students may be “at risk.” Petrie knows that all students haven’t been prepared equally—there’s a big disparity between her economically disadvantaged and better-off students—but she sees potential in all of them regardless. “My students do what they’re expected to do,” she says. “These students are as bright and competent and hardworking as anyone, anywhere. And if you teach them to be good students, they will be.” She remembers a conversation she had with a parent who was upset about a low grade her daughter earned in Algebra II. “She was afraid her daughter’s confidence would be blown,” Petrie explains. “But if this student doesn’t experience that now, when she goes to college it’s going to be really hard for her.” Petrie remembers what it’s like to struggle. She arrived at St. John’s at age 17, an early high school graduate, and felt overwhelmed almost immediately. She wasn’t used to such rigorous demands, and the intensity of seminar took some getting used to. Supportive tutors and a network of friends— along with lots of encouragement from �24 {Johnnies in the Classroom} home—helped her adjust to the Program and overcome her initial feeling of being out of place. “I remember really struggling that first year,” she says. But among the most valuable aspects of her St. John’s education, she says, is that she was required to take on difficult material in mathematics and physics that she might never have encountered were they not required by the Program. When she sees her freshmen in Algebra 1A frustrated and seemingly overwhelmed by the new material they’re being asked to master, she just gives them more—more practice, more encouragement, more personal and smallgroup tutoring. “At St. John’s, you’re not taking classes just because they’re easy and interesting,” Petrie believes her high expectations for her students factor in their success, whether or not students hold such expectations for themselves. teri thomson randall she says. “They’re hard. But you getthrough them and then you know you really accomplished something.” In her mathematics classroom, Petrie can’t use the Socratic method. But she has taken the simple step of asking students to carefully read the chapter and think about it before she begins demonstrating problems. She frequently asks students to write and talk about mathematical concepts. Seated on her stool next to the overhead projector, she prepares one example after another of problems demonstrating the day’s objectives. She stops frequently to make sure everybody’s still with her. *** Carisa Armendariz Petrie outside Santa Fe High { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } “I’m not a performing teacher, I’m not a dancing-around kind of teacher,” she says. “I like to get stuff done.” �{Johnnies in the Classroom} 25 “Being a first-year teacher, you have to learn everything from the ground up.” Algebra is in good hands with Carisa Armendariz Petrie. But teaching wasn’t her first career choice. She initially considered publishing or journalism, in part because she had seen how hard her mother had to work as a third-grade teacher in one of El Paso’s poorest communities. “She really is a terrific teacher who makes a difference in the lives of her students,” Petrie says. “But I could also see how much it took out of her, how tired she would be at the end of the day. I couldn’t imagine a more stressful job.” Nevertheless, three weeks after graduating from St. John’s, Petrie found herself in an intensive teacher certification program offered through the University of New Mexico/Santa Fe Public Schools Intern Program. The program included two summers of coursework and a year of practice teaching. Petrie had won her place in a competitive selection process that included interviews with 14 people. She knew right away that she wanted to be a math teacher, even though she hadn’t been enthusiastic about math when she first arrived at St. John’s. “I’m not a math genius, but I really like it and I really like the logic—it’s meaningful to me,” she says. She became licensed after a year of teaching math at Capshaw Middle School and passing a comprehensive state exam. “Being a first-year teacher, you have to learn everything from the ground up. And it’s very hard to be a new teacher. I’d get to work at 7 in the morning, leave the school at 6, eat dinner, and fall asleep. I’ve never been so tired.” After completing the UNM program, teri thomson randall Carisa Armendariz Petrie Petrie found her Santa Fe High position at a job fair. Her math and science background at St. John’s—as well as her success in a rigorous undergraduate program— was attractive to recruiters. Measured by indicators such as student achievement, dropout rate, and community involvement, Santa Fe is a good high school—the state Department of Education recently gave it an “exemplary” rating—and Petrie is happy to be there. Petrie has done so well at the high school that she was chosen to be math department chairperson this year. She’s also serving on a state committee developing standards for statewide testing in mathematics. Although she’s not a great fan of standardized testing, “if that’s what we have to do, we’ll do it.” Petrie’s mother is still her role model. The children in her mother’s class have to pass a standardized test to move on; Petrie’s mother teaches school on Saturday mornings to help them prepare. “She wants her kids to be successful,” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } Carisa Armendariz Petrie sets high expectations for her students. Petrie says of her mother. “And because of her, they are.” If teaching isn’t lucrative or prestigious, its rewards transcend those of other careers. Petrie’s husband, Geoffrey Petrie (SF00), is an environmentalist who works for a nonprofit group called Nuclear Watch, an organization that keeps tabs on Los Alamos and Sandia laboratories. “We both feel the same way. If you don’t have a job that’s important, that’s meaningful, then why do it? Sometimes I find myself saying, ‘I’m so lucky I don’t have to work.’ But of course, I work very hard. What I mean is that I get to work at a job I actually care about.” x �26 {Outreach} TECOLOTE GREAT BOOKS FOR GREAT T E AC H E R S Stephen Van Luchene Believes in Inspiring Teachers by Rosemary Harty A fter a week of preparing lesson plans, teaching, grading papers, and dealing with classroom discipline problems, how many teachers would volunteer to spend four Saturdays in a room with other teachers, discussing the Declaration of Independence and other seminal works of America’s political foundation? In New Mexico, at least 66 of them. Give Stephen Van Luchene, Santa Fe tutor, the credit for knowing that teachers—no matter how overworked or undervalued—are hungry for genuine conversation and an opportunity to recharge their intellectual fire at the seminar table. Beginning last fall, teachers in Van Luchene’s Tecolote Group have been reading works related to the theme “Reflections on Democracy in America” and discussing them with their peers. Some of them travel from far corners of the state to attend, and the group comprises teachers of all disciplines and grade levels, public school and private school teachers, and administrators including the superintendent of Santa Fe public schools. Van Luchene envisioned Tecolote as a way to bring to teachers the St. John’s approach of inquiry and dialogue centered on an important text. The name was chosen to reflect the program’s classical roots and also for symbolic effect. Tecolote means owl in colloquial Spanish, and the owl is an emblem of Athena. The “group” in the name suggests that this effort can contribute to a collective force, one united by ideas and imagination, which Van Luchene believes must be tapped to improve K-12 education. A major inspiration for Tecolote was the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, an educational reform initiative that requires states to establish educational standards and mandates testing to make sure schools meet these standards. “A lot of attention goes into determining which schools get rewarded and which schools get punished based on standardized test scores,” he says. “But nobody was looking to the teachers as people we could trust and ask to really help to improve our schools.” Van Luchene, whose wife is a former high school teacher, has a history of asking how public education can be improved and looking for ways to help. In 1982, he { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } helped launch a new teacher cooperative and teacher certification project through the University of New Mexico, the New Mexico State Department of Education, and Santa Fe public schools. Many St. John’s students have been among those who take this accelerated path to state certification. Van Luchene later worked with several National Endowment for the Humanities projects at St. John’s, including the NEH Classics Project, created to bring teachers to attend the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe or Annapolis, and Summer Seminar that gave teachers the opportunity to study Plato’s Republic or Euclid’s Elements. After developing his plan for Tecolote, Van Luchene went looking for funding (although supported in several ways by St. John’s in Santa Fe, Tecolote operates independently). He wrote grant proposals and approached foundations, eventually securing support from the McCune Foundation, the Bay Foundation, the LANL Foundation, and Blaugrund Foundation. Individuals including Tom Krause and Ray Cave, members of the St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors, and another donor who wishes to remain anonymous also provided funding. Several Santa Fe tutors and GI alumni participate as discussion leaders, and Carol Balkcom, wife of Santa Fe President John Balkcom, signed on as a volunteer project manager. Tecolote brings teachers to campus four times a year for colloquia. The programs start at 8 a.m. with coffee and donuts; tutorials of about eight teachers follow �{Outreach} 27 s c o t t c a r away Christopher Garwood, an elementary school teacher from Albuquerque, makes a point in a Tecolote seminar. Below, Stephen Van Luchene, tutor, Santa Fe from 8:45 to 10:30, then groups of 16 meet for seminars with two discussion leaders. Luncheons include guest speakers who address issues of liberal education in New Mexico. In addition to the U.S. Constitution, readings include Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, The Federalist, and the speeches and papers of Lincoln and Madison. Planning for next year’s theme is under way. In keeping with the St. John’s philosophy, “We aren’t telling teachers what we think they should know,” Van Luchene explains. “We’re giving them an approach.” And teachers—many used to one-way communication in the classroom—thrive on the give and take of dialogue and the thoughtful responses their colleagues offer. They return to their schools with new ideas on how to deliver their curriculum. “It’s also a great opportunity for good teachers to meet other good teachers,” he adds. The programs and books are free, and Tecolote participants are paid an honorarium of $150 for each session. While the amount isn’t luxurious, it does recognize that their time is valuable and helps defray travel or lodging costs. Van Luchene also made sure the luncheons were a cut above ordinary lunchroom fare—complete with tablecloths and service—as a small but important way to let teachers know they’re appreciated, he says. Charles Olivea, a 35-year veteran of the classroom, says teachers need programs like Tecolote to fill “a major gap” in their education—that is, a program geared to nurturing intellectual curiosity instead of delivering pedagogy. Olivea has taught in public and private schools in New York and Connecticut, as well as in New York prisons. He now teaches history at Santa Fe’s Academy for Technology and the Classics, a charter school serving grades 7 to 12. “From my experience, the majority of public school teachers limit, and are expected to limit, their intellectual horizon to so many conventional and mandatory graduate school courses,” he says. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } “The notion of participating in an intelligent discussion grounded on a common set of texts is virtually alien within our public school culture.” In addition to seeing teachers thrive, Van Luchene believes that St. John’s College should share its intellectual resources for the greater good. He hopes to double the number of participants in the program in a year or two and also expects Tecolote to spawn new opportunities, such as a recent seminar for Santa Fe high school students on Plato’s Republic, organized with their philosophy teacher, a participant in Tecolote, and led by St. John’s students. “Tecolote is just the right thing for us to do,” he says. “It’s complementary to the central work of St. John’s.” By returning to their schools with the renewed insight that teachers are lifelong learners, “these teachers will go back and make a real difference in the lives of their schools.” x �28 {Bibliofile} Rediscovering Homer Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad, by Eva Brann. Paul Dry Books, Philadelphia by Barbara Goyette (A73) A fter the six seminars on Homer my freshman year, I was sad because I thought we were finished with the Iliad and the Odyssey. I had read the books, listened intently in the seminars, talked a little, learned a few things. But the kind of understanding I had hoped for from the St. John’s experience was far, far from realized. What I didn’t know then, but soon learned, is that we all have a lifetime with the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the program they serve as reference points—the beginning of the great themes of war, peace, misery, elation, self-awareness, fate, compassion, studied for four years. And beyond St. John’s, for Johnnies and I bet for many others, every war is the Iliad, every difficult journey the Odyssey, every soul-in-progress an Odysseus, every larger-than-life, full-of-feeling person an Achilles. Within the past year I read both books again, for the third time (maybe the fourth for the Odyssey), because I wanted to check out the newish translations by Robert Fagles (very direct and unadorned, not forced into unnatural rhymes or rhythms). Now comes this eminently readable book, Homeric Moments, from tutor Eva Brann. I can’t do an honest review of this book. First of all, I know the author and admire her intellect and imagination; second, I work for the college—so whatever I say is an inside job, lacking in the objectivity necessary for an honest appraisal. But let me just make a few points about the book, from the point of view of someone who’s spent time with Homer and incorporated his poems into consciousness but is certainly no expert. Structure Brann shows a happy disregard for the conventions of literary criticism. She “Every war is the Iliad, every difficult journey the Odyssey, every soul-in-progress an Odysseus...” doesn’t offer a cohesive point of view for examining the epics; she doesn’t hog-tie the poems with the lasso of a single interpretation. Instead, she writes about “moments.” Her moments are akin to epiphanies—a clarity that shines from the text. The analogy Brann draws is to the images on a Greek vase. She cites an amphora image of Ajax preparing his spear by making it fast in a mound of earth just before impaling himself upon it, distraught that he was not awarded the wondrous shield of Achilles after the great { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } warrior’s death. “For just as the flowing Homeric narrative can produce in the attentive reader as a cumulative result a detailed mental image, so, reciprocally, a painted picture can be developed into a tableau vivant, a living image containing the gist of the whole story, a still, fraught, vibrating stasis,” she explains. The ancient potter’s vision of Ajax caught in the intensity of a moment exemplifies what can be found in Homer as well. This book makes us better readers of Homer. The series of moments described— like the images on the amphora—become moments for us, created by Homer. Brann’s interpretations are not barricades between the books and us but rather access points. This is not to say that she does not address the great questions: What are we to make of the gods and their interference in human affairs? Why does the Iliad end with the funeral of Hector (and not, for instance, the fall of Troy)? What is the source of Achilles’ wrath and how is it related to his knowledge of his impending death? What’s the deal with Odysseus and the ten-year return? How much fantasy should we recognize in Odysseus’ tale? There are more, and she takes them all on. The most endearing characteristic of Homeric Moments, to me, is how alive the poems are to Miss Brann. Achilles and Odysseus are somehow known to her— through an imagination that must be cinematic in its clarity. She knows the color of Odysseus’ eyes (brown) and sees into the psychology of Achilles’ wrath (“he expends himself youthfully, lives, even withdrawn from action, the intense, concentrated, single-minded, abbreviated life of the death-bound”). She also offers wonderful pictures of other Homeric characters. There’s Hephaestus, the only god who makes things. His house is “star-decked, bronzebuilt.” And Hector, breaker of horses, is “an altogether solid though very human being. He refuses to drink on duty, stays to save his men, is kind to Helen—and wisely keeps his distance; he is solicitous even of his morally slight brother’s feelings…[H]e has in him a strain of gentle civility.” �{Bibliofile} Brannian Insight Those who like to highlight sections that provide particular insight in books they are reading may find their entire copy of Homeric Moments awash in yellow. Here are two examples of Brannian observations: 1. What about the gods and the way they intervene in human lives for Homer? “…the pretence of an aiding god seems to impinge on the purity of people’s responsibility; every human accomplishment or failure has a divine signature on it. But the converse is also true: Every divine intervention duplicates a human intention and its execution…Such reciprocity…makes the origin of every human deed questionable, and Homer’s moral frame as ambivalent as any modern sensibility could recognize.” Later, commenting on how Athena transforms Odysseus at crucial times, she says the gods “ enhance the scenery of human action by making the looks of people and places adequate to their inner nature…” 2. A long and fruitful discussion of Homeric similes helps illuminate the power of the epics’ poetry. Especially in the gruesome Iliad, the images in the similes are beautiful, creating a double vision. “Similes, it is said, ‘defamiliarize’ the placidly normal world by reflecting it in estranging likenesses. Homeric similes, however, often do the reverse: They project the excruciating enormities of battle onto an integral world of peaceful and homely work as well as onto beautiful and boisterous nature, and so they transfigure the incessant abnormality of man-made war. In a flash they show the isolated siege world of Troy as not so hopelessly disconnected from the sound natural world of work and weather, but bonded to it by sudden visions of similarity.” Although it seems to me that any time is a good time to read Homer, and to take up Homeric Moments, now— when war is as real to us as “real-time” TV coverage and the Internet can make it—is an especially good time. Miss Brann’s insights on this ancient conflict and its aftermath help mitigate the bare impenetrability of the question: why does humankind make war? x 29 Cato’s Mirania: A Life of Provost Smith, by Charlotte Goldsborough Fletcher University of Pennsylvania), and ousted Smith, a founder and provost for 15 years. So long as they behaved themselves, Miss Fletcher writes, Loyalists were safe in Maryland: “The Provost was not a Loyalist, but the perception that he was lingered.” To avoid surveillance, Smith moved to Chestertown, which had been considering establishing a college for some time. Smith was the man to do that. He first opened a school for his two sons, which subsequently was absorbed into the Kent County Free School. Its board elected him chairman. Under his leadership, the trustees petitioned the Maryland Assembly to charter the Kent County Free School as a college. Already with years of fund raising behind him in Pennsylvania, Smith collected pledges worth 5,000 pounds. After the Revolution’s most famous leader’s permission was gained to name the college for him, Washington College was chartered in 1782 with Smith as its principal and chairman of the board of trustees. Not content to stop there, Smith was determined to charter a college on the Western Shore, which together with Washington College would form the first University of Maryland. He believed deeply in the proposals on education he had written for a college for his mythical province of Mirania in America, a plan originally formulated when New York was considering such an institution and a plan that so charmed Franklin he chose Smith as the first provost of the College of Philadelphia. “Liberty will not deign to swell but where her fair companion Knowledge flourishes by her side,” Smith wrote under the pseudonym of Cato. He joined with two other clergymen representing the three most prominent denominations in Maryland in preparing a charter for the future St. John’s. The so-called University Law was drafted by Smith, the Rev. Patrick Alison, representing the Presbyterians or Dissenters, and the Rev. John Carroll, the Roman Catholics. It was adopted in December 29, 1784, two days after the festival day of St. John the Evangelist, patron saint of the Free Masons, of which Smith, like Washington and Franklin, was a member. “The University Law, however, would not go into effect until a board of trustees was elected from the group of subscribers who together had pledged 1,000 pounds,” Miss Fletcher writes. University Press of America, Inc. Charlotte Fletcher served as the librarian of the Annapolis campus for 35 years, presiding over a lively, learned center of civility until her retirement in 1980. However, her lasting contribution to St. John’s College may be in the work she continued after leaving the college. In a series of scholarly articles, only one of which was written before her retirement, Fletcher made a tremendous contribution to the history of the college. Working with a zeal for getting it right, she was the first to authenticate the steps that led to King William’s School becoming St. John’s, a story which heretofore had the ring of legend. She wrote a convincing account of how the college may have been named; an article on the college’s first president, John McDowell, and a piece on King William School and the College of William and Mary, both founded the same year. All were published by the Maryland Historical Magazine and wrapped up in one 1991 issue of The St. John’s Review (regrettably out of print). Now comes a book about the foremost figure in St. John’s founding, William Smith, a remarkable Scotsman from Aberdeen and president pro tem of the college—for one day. A friend of Benjamin Franklin, with whom he had an ever-changing relationship, disagreeing as they did over Pennsylvania’s proprietary form of government, Smith was chosen by the American Philosophical Society to deliver the eulogy at the society’s memorial service for Franklin. Among other accomplishments, this Anglican clergyman wrote the charter for that distinguished society. Although turned down as the first bishop-elect of Maryland (rejected because he had been seen to stumble on a New York street, presumably from strong drink), Smith preached at the consecration of the first Maryland bishop and remained devoted to the church. He wrote the preface of the 1789 Book of Common Prayer, unchanged since then. Without William Smith, St. John’s College would never have been established. Smith arrived in Maryland after the Pennsylvania legislature dissolved the board of the College of Philadelphia (later the { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } continued on p. 30 �30 Rebecca Wilson served for many years as the college’s director of public relations in Annapolis. Calculus: The Elements by Michael Comenetz World Scientific Publishing Inc., 2003 This book by Annapolis tutor Michael Comenetz provides a full and clear account of the essentials of calculus, presented in an engaging style that is both readable and mathematically precise. Concepts and central ideas are emphasized throughout. Physical examples and interpretations play a leading role, and Charles Jones (A79) For Smith, there was much to do. “Smith traveled on horseback over 300 miles in the winter of 1785-86 to convene and supervise elections in the Western Shore counties to validate the St. John’s charter.” One can imagine what hardships were posed by wintry rides on Maryland’s primitive roads. His service was essential. Without his commitment, St. John’s would not have been able to begin classes five years after the University Law was adopted. After Smith returned to Philadelphia, Maryland withdrew its support for the first university, and St. John’s and Washington became, as they are today, independent colleges. “The Provost returned to Maryland in November 1789 to preside as the president pro tem at the opening of St. John’s College in Annapolis,” Miss Fletcher writes. “On that day Smith was president of three colleges: St. John’s College and Washington College in Maryland, and the College of Philadelphia. Miss Fletcher has written a valuable book about a figure of enormous energy, ambition, drive and intelligence. Outspoken, Smith was not a sentimentalist. He landed in jail as the result of his German translation of an article protesting the failure of Pennsylvania Assembly members to support a militia to protect the ScotsIrish from slaughter by Indians on the state’s western frontier. A businessman, he also acquired 70,000 acres of land, something of which St. Paul would have disapproved, a major factor in his not becoming bishop. Part of it became the site for the town of Huntingdon, Pa., which he also founded. Incidentally of interest is that Miss Fletcher is a descendant of Smith through his daughter, Willamina Smith, who married Charles Goldsborough. Her book about her distinguished ancestor has been extensively researched, documented by numerous notes, and tightly written. It beautifully rounds out her earlier impressive accounts of the history of St. John’s. –Rebbeca Wilson (HA83) {Bibliofile} is led to a consideration of the Lysis and Phaedrus. In the prologue to his work, Geier describes a moment of inspiration from the latter work: “One evening, late, after a class on Plato’s Phaedrus, I was sitting at one end of a living room. At the other end, a good distance away, was a fireplace. There was no fire in it at this time. As I gazed there, into that dark fireplace (were there ashes there? I don’t remember. There may have been. There probably were), I kept asking myself: just what is the ‘object’ of Eros. What is it? What can it be? After a while, as I kept gazing there, not a short while but not a very long one, I saw, with great excitement and delight, the ‘object’ of Eros. It was the very thing I was looking at and asking ‘what’ about. The very thing I was looking at and not seeing was the very thing I was looking for. Had the fireplace not been dark I would not have seen this. Then I realized that that ‘object’ was not not known, but that it was known as unknown; and therefore that it was not just something unknown, but that it was the Unknown. I saw in that fire-less fireplace the very thing that was not there. And precisely this was (and is) the ‘object’ of Eros.” Bookbinder’s Finishing Tools Makers 1780-1965 By Tom Conroy (SF77) Oak Knoll Press alternative approaches to fundamental ways of thinking help the student develop the intuitive understanding so important in science and engineering. Many questions and problems, with detailed solutions, encourage active reading and independent thought. Plato’s Erotic Thought: The Tree of the Unknown by Alfred Geier (A54) University of Rochester Press Alfred Geier’s book is presented as an attempt to understand the nature of the object of Eros in Plato’s writings. He considers first the Symposium, where he is led to a deeper understanding of the “nature of Love (Eros).” But then the problem manifests itself as related primarily to the “way in which Love arises,” and he { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } For anyone interested in the history of books, here’s a valuable resource compiled by Tom Conroy. Conroy, an independent book conservator, fine binder, toolmaker, and binding teacher in Berkeley, Calif., has published a directory listing hundreds of tool-cutters from 1780-1965 and their firms. The book includes brief biographies of each craftsman or firm, original trade marks, and advertisements. �{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s } 31 Remembering Douglas Allanbrook forward, can distinguish the two. In “Truth-Telling and The Iliad,” Douglas remarks out of the blue that if Homer ever tried to solve any Problems Zeus would strike him dead with a thunderbolt. Two years later he noted that some in preceptorial had concluded that Thucydides was a wise and perfect cynic. Douglas thought that wrong. “If no solution in human affairs is possible,” he wrote, “it is because nothing of heartfelt concern is a problem that can be solved. If no solution is possible, human excellence calls for courage and shrewdness to walk hand in hand with decency and compassion.” He then concluded with a snapshot of Prime Minister Indira Ghandi and saintly [In 1981] Douglas gave a lecture Mother Teresa, smiling at each other entitled “Truth-Telling and the in deadly fashion on TV, each needing Iliad,” which began: “The terrible something at that moment from the word truth implies a parity between other, struggling to defend something what we see and what we say.” He good against the grind. This, it seems, then suggested that the Iliad and The is as good as it gets. The good soldier Peloponnesian War are the only two Douglas Allanbrook is remembered as a teacher puts down his head and keeps walking. books that “consistently exhibit” this and friend. My first visit to the house on quality, that “reflect in their words Revell Street was to talk about my and accounts, speeches and stories, for reflecting, and for setting things precept paper (which erred on the the real that is in front of our eyes and straight. In both of them one feels the side not of cynicism but naiveté). Douglas that is so difficult to own up to, or ache for, and the absence of, an efficacious happily showed me his piano, recently to talk about.” good, and while Socrates may speak of installed in the renovated attic. The sight The following year Douglas offered a himself as the only true citizen of Athens, of his little workspace, filled with big preceptorial on Thucydides. Douglas Thucydides the Athenian has put into the sheets of music, prompted me to report persistently pointed to the way Pericles mouths of his Athenians words that fix that his recent recording of a Bach prelude encouraged Athenians to fight not for forever in our memory the inexorable and fugue (on the record with McDowell what might be gained by an enemy’s defeat, grind of power, time, and moral decline.” on the cover) had a meditative quality to but out of love for the beauties of Athens, In preceptorial we puzzled. Was Pericles my ears entirely new—something that which (as Pericles described at some length) naive to think love of law and similar beauopened not only Bach but the whole of had to do with law and habits of civilized ties might prevail? We also read speeches what we call baroque music to my soul. behavior. This appeal—to fall in love with of Lincoln, where again, law, government Douglas smiled in a now familiar, put-on Athens for the best of reasons—appealed to of the people, by the people, for the way—like a cartoonish wolf in a fedora—and Douglas’s own sense of patriotism. And that people, and now Equality, are held up as said, “Oh yes, Mr. Ney, nobody plays Bach the love proved inconstant, that the beauties high values, to be loved at highest cost. A the way I do!” It seems truer words were of Athens were neglected and so failed, sign of progress? Or is that naive? Douglas never spoken. On my shelf at home is a Douglas kept in our minds as we worked provoked us with the suggestion that the costly collection of CDs rarely touched, through the book, reading one case history preservation of the American union had representing a failed attempt over two of disaster after another. And a year later, not been worth its cost in blood—a provoca- decades to find someone who plays Bach in his lecture, “The Inefficacy of the Good,” tion rooted, it seems, in his experience as on the piano with anything like Douglas’ he finished his discussion of Pericles’ first a soldier, and his tendency to think that the humanism and perfection... speech by looking forward a few decades to foundations of political life are troubled How far from accidental that a brilliant the demise of democratic Athens: with termites. young composer who had been given the “It would be a shameless naiveté to A simple distinction pops up throughout secret of Logos for Fingers would give a conceive of any of Plato’s political works as his writing—between Problems, which can arising from any ground other than one of good part of his life to teaching in the be Solved, and Troubles, which cannot and the blackest pessimism regarding human Program. What a blessing to have known so must be endured, or perhaps slipped affairs….The war was an occasion, first for him, teacher and friend.x around. Happy the man who, looking Thucydides and then for Plato, for observing, Members of the St. John’s community came together with family and longtime friends of Annapolis Tutor Douglas Allanbrook for a memorial service March 29 in the Great Hall. Mr. Allanbrook, who had spent half a century at St. John’s, died in January of a heart attack at the age of 81. He had continued to perform at the college and to lead language tutorials after his retirement from fulltime teaching. This remembrance by William Ney, Class of 1982, was among the many offered during the memorial service, which also featured Mr. Allanbrook’s music. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �32 {Alumni Profile} Questioning the Blueprint of Human Life by Jason Bielagus (SF98) hat is the nature of life? Can we distill it into principles? How are humans different from all other forms of life? How do we know we know something?” Five years after leaving St. John’s, says Jacob Keller (SF98), questions like these continue to intrigue him. He carried his habit of questioning into the Ph.D./M.D. program he’s currently enrolled in at Northwestern University. And he found it particularly helpful as a researcher in Columbia University’s Department of Biological Sciences, where he worked in a laboratory under Dr. John Hunt. Keller went to Columbia to gain the prerequisites needed for medical school; he went to Hunt to gain research experience. Along the way he landed a credit as lead author of a paper published in the scientific journal Structure, saw his computer-generated model of a protein featured on the journal’s cover, and gained another notice of his work in the journal Science—notable accomplishments for any established researcher, highly unusual for a liberal arts graduate in a pre-med program. The research Keller conducted at the Hunt lab developed from a larger project involving dozens of labs working to complete the Human Genome Project. Although the human genome has been sequenced, scientists have yet to discover the exact function of every gene. By looking at the structures of proteins our genes make, researchers hope to discover what those proteins and the genes that make them do. Keller’s research centered on MT0146/CbiT, a protein required to synthesize vitamin B12. Previously, it was thought that MT0146/CbiT was a decarboxylase. Keller proved that it was, in fact, a methyltransferase. Nearly every biological function, both in sickness and in health, happens through proteins. Knowing how these proteins work will allow doctors to combat disease with great specificity. “The current method is much more trial-and-error, and therefore requires far more time and W money,” says Keller. “This inflates the cost of drugs and sometimes even prevents them from being developed.” Structural biology has led to new treatments for multiple sclerosis, for example. The disease strikes when a patient’s immune systems mistake the cells sheathing the nerves for foreign cells. The immune system then attacks and kills those cells, wreacking havoc on the patient’s nervous system. Recently, Dr. Jack Strominger of the Harvard Medical School found that a single protein on the membrane of the nerve-sheath cells was triggering the attack by the immune system. He then found a molecule that would bind to that problematic membrane protein, thereby covering it and blocking it from detection by the immune system. After taking this new drug, MS patients no longer have symptoms of the disease. The technique that Keller and others use to determine the structure of proteins is X-ray crystallography. The technique requires taking the DNA sequence that codes for the protein of interest and putting it into bacteria cells. Once inside the bacteria cells, the DNA produces a large quantity of the protein. After being isolated and purified, the protein is treated with a variety of chemicals and conditions to make the protein crystallize. “A good crystal is 1/10 — 1/5 of a millimeter and has about 1015 (a million billion) molecules in it,” Keller said. “Once the protein is crystallized, it is exposed to X-rays. By interpreting the diffraction patterns of the X-rays, the structure of the crystal can be determined. Based on the diffraction patterns, a researcher can create a computer model of the protein.” Examining the structure of the molecule then allows its function to be determined, adds Keller. “Wayne Hendrickson, a crystallographer and colleague at Columbia, described X-ray crystallography as a microscope that uses X-rays for light and a computer for a lens. In St. John’s terms, I would say that it’s like looking at the shadows on the wall of the cave to try to find out what the real forms are.” The technique owes a lot to Young and { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } his light-slit experiment. “That paper’s framework has great explaining power, even in terms of modern macromolecular crystallography. Young’s paper, actually, has given me a sort of reference point, or way of thinking, that shapes my understanding to this day.” Keller isn’t sure he’d be in science if he hadn’t chosen to come to St. John’s. He’s certain that he’ll be a better scientist because of the college. “I feel that I have not had the questioning principle squelched out of me by question-phobic lectures. Many people in science are not even all that excited by their research. Those who are often make the best scientists.” His path to medicine stems from a desire to help people, though he hasn’t settled on a specialty. As a scientist, he gains the opportunity to continue to ask questions and search for the answers. His Ph.D. research may focus on the structure of proteins. “My real dream would be to figure out how some system works from the atomic to the macroscopic scale. Like figuring out how the shape of some protein affects behavior or the macroscopic realm in some way. It has been done before, for example with muscles. They understand muscle contraction from atoms on up. “There are ways to use structural information to cure disease, but the big goal of structural biologists, and this is somehow more compelling to me, is the study of these fantastic forms, trying to understand how they work, and discovering what overall principles guide their behavior. These structures are really incredible, because they are right on the verge of coming to life, yet are made out of simple atoms. Their component atoms are more or less understandable as simple elements, yet the complexity of the relationships between these components is great. The single, isolated protein is only the beginning of the real complexity of life.” x �jim zir Jacob Keller at Northwestern University { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �{Alumni Notes} 34 REMEMBRANCE OF FRESHMAN YEARS PAST Have a favorite story from your first day, week, or month of Freshman year? Please e-mail it to Sus3an Borden at s-borden@sjca.edu for a nostalgia story we’re working on. 1942 J. HEINMULLER sent this note: “Homecoming was A-1. So glad I made it. Thanks.” 1951 GEORGE WEND recently traveled to Thailand and is “deep into digital photography.” 1955 CAROLYN BANKS AND HELGE LEEUWENBURGH: “We are still in the ‘Travel for Groups’ business and are still creative. If anyone is interested, get in touch. Our last St. John’s tour was in 1985 to Greece. That’s a long time ago, but the fun is still longremembered.” 1960 HILDRETH SMITH BECKER writes from Arizona: “Currently I volunteer at a Swedenborg Church’s library-bookstore. Busy also with my granddaughter, Adela, age 7, whose mother CHRISTINA PAIGE, graduated from St. John’s (Annapolis) in 1988. I continue with studies in philosophy and religion.” 1961 DAVE ROSENFIELD writes: “My truly aimless life continues in reasonably good health; for this I am thankful, although, as an atheist, I do not know to whom or what I am directing this thanks. After being unsuccessful at enabling, I moved on to the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree (B.S. in economics, major in finance) from the Wharton School in 1965—to whatever end I cannot imagine as I have never worked in the business world. In 1970, I consolidated several questionable enterprises into the WD&R Carpentry Co. (Who, Didditt & Rahn), which became immensely successful in highpriced architectural restoration (not repair) and light commercial construction. Whatever made me imagine I was an academic? My days are just filled! Since retiring from business in 1986, I never get a day off. I have a small business, Sanborn Shooters (www.sanbornshooters.com) that I operate from home. It is a federally licensed machine gun company with a gun range here on the ranch. Other interests include my vintage British Motorcycles, pyrotechnics, (my wife, Mary Ann [Sanborn] & I are both licensed professional display pyrotechnic operators) and reading junky detective novels. Mary Ann intends to sell her businesses soon. After that I will sell the machine gun business and we will devote more time to travel and our pyro work. I still have not decided what I want to do when I About that English Weather EONARD KAHN (SFGI96) spends about half of his time in the UK as a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Oxford and the other “in Southern California trying to recover from the collective onslaught of English weather and English food (so-called). My wife has decided to forgo the British experience and (quite wisely) only deigns to leave the West Coast of the U.S. for our brief forays to Europe proper. After bumming around Italy in the summer of ’02, we decided that if St. John’s establishes a third campus in Siena we would strongly consider making a repeat performance as senior residents! I would love to hear from old friends as well as from any Johnnies wandering through the city of dreaming spires (or considering study here). Drop me a line at leonard.kahn@magdalen.oxford.ac.uk.” x L grow up—but there is plenty of time for that sort of thing. Mercifully, I have never been jailed, produced issue, or voted Democrat. We welcome visitors on our ranch near Austin, Texas: Davinryder@hotmail.com” 1962 NEIL CHARLES POTASH spent an October day with classmate JOHN FRANKLIN MILLER at the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House. The tour was interesting to Potash, a retired historian, especially since it was conducted by the museum’s curator and president, Miller. After a delicious lunch—including much Johnnie reminiscence, Neil returned to Bowie, Md., where he continues to work on his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland. JOHN FRANKLIN MILLER, president of the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, has been appointed president of the Library of American Landscape History (LALH). Based in Amherst, Mass., LALH was founded on the belief that clear, informative books and exhibitions about North American landscape design would broaden support for enlightened landscape preservation. In recent years, LALH has produced a number of publications, such as Pioneers of American Landscape Design, The Spirit of the Garden, Landscape Gardening, and Landscape Architecture in the Midwest. According to Miller, the importance of landscape preservation is illustrated in many of the Ford family sites. “Landscape and landscape-garden preservation have come of age in the late 20th century, following upon earlier successes in architectural preservation,” said Miller. “The Ford family has had an important role in this, since their environmental stewardship began when Henry Ford commissioned the visionary designer Jen Jensen to create the landscapes for ‘Fair Lane,’ Greenfield Village, and the Henry Ford Hospital; and Edsel Ford commissioned Jensen to create landscapes for the Ford House in Grosse Pointe, ‘Skylands,’ in Maine and ‘Haven Hill’ near Clarkston.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } 1970 LES MARGULIS (A) sends news from Australia: “I have had an eclectic career. My first job out of school (B.A. in philosophy) was working at a porno movie house. Didn’t make my Jewish mother happy. Went back to school and got a master’s in advertising (had an appropriate background given that ad execs are sometimes called ‘whores’). Eventually, wound up at BBDO where I stayed for 25 years and ran one of their international divisions. Lived abroad for a while and traveled extensively, but was not getting rich. Left BBDO in 1999 to seek my fame and fortune during the Internet go-go years. Nine months and $100 million dollars of investors’ money later, the company went bust. I migrated back to advertising and worked as VP for a Hispanic agency. And now I am on my way to Australia to be president of the largest multicultural agency there. I am looking forward to kicking back and putting another shrimp on the barbie. If any Johnnies pass through Sydney, my e-mail is lesmargulis@hotmail.com.” 1973 MARY TARAIL (SF) is still working full time as a psychiatrist as part of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Her grandchild, Isabella, is 3 years old. She reports that she is finding time to read again and has been in touch with LIZZIE GOLDWIN, who is well. MOZELL LANG (MORRIS) (SFGI) retired from the Michigan Department of Education as a science consultant in October 2002. She now works as a science consultant for the Pontiac Schools. 1974 JON HUNNER (SF) continues to direct the Public History program at New Mexico State University, where he received tenure last year. His book, Inventing Los Alamos, will be published in 2003 by the University of Oklahoma Press. CRUGER JOHNSON PHILLIPS (A) is executive director of a small nonprofit called Hopeworks, which �35 {Alumni Profile} christopher huston Working to Safeguard Fundamental Rights Juan Villaseñor, at ACLU’s headquarters in New York by Rosemary Harty uan Villaseñor (A97) was alarmed by what followed in the wake of the September 11 attacks: expanded domestic spying programs, secret military tribunals, and similar government efforts to gather information and evidence on foreigners and citizens alike. From where he stood, fundamental American rights were under attack. “I saw what the government was doing to our civil liberties and rights in the name of national security, and it really kind of scared me,” he says. His first response was to join the American Civil Liberties Union. Then, while clerking for a federal judge in his first year out of Vanderbilt University’s law school, he applied for and won the ACLU’s prestigious J William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellowship. He began the yearlong fellowship in the organization’s national offices in New York last September and has gained experience working on several high-profile ACLU cases. Many involve free speech and the Internet. Villaseñor has also worked on cases that are part of the organization’s attempts to block antiterrorism measures it believes infringe on basic constitutional rights. In addition to a chance to work for something he believes in, the fellowship has provided an opportunity to work on a broad variety of important cases with skilled and dedicated lawyers. Among his first cases was Melvin v Doe, the first case of its kind to reach a state supreme court, and one expected to shape { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } laws governing free speech on the Internet. In joining the case, the ACLU seeks to protect anonymous speakers in cyberspace who face legal intimidation from public officials whom they criticize. The case involves a Pennsylvania Superior Court judge seeking to unmask the identity of an anonymous web master who criticized her for lobbying the governor to fill a judicial vacancy. The ACLU, in defending the web master, seeks to defend the basic American right to criticize public officials. Although the Internet has changed the delivery of the message, the basic rights are the same as those established in a landmark 1960 case, Talley v California, in which a man was fined for distributing anonymous handbills in violation of a Los Angeles continued on p. 36 �36 {Alumni Profile} municipal code that required such literature include a name and address. The Supreme Court found the code unconstitutional. In a later case, Reno v ACLU, the Supreme Court declared the Internet as a new and powerful democratic forum in which anyone “can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox.” “If the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finds against our client, then his identity will have to be revealed,” Villaseñor explains. “He will unnecessarily suffer embarrassment, and all because he engaged in political speech—the expression that lies at the very core of the First Amendment. “More broadly, however, other anonymous speakers will experience a chilling effect because they will be unwilling to engage in criticism of political or other public figures for fear that they be sued for defamation” So far on the Melvin case, the ACLU has lost in the lower courts; Villaseñor has been involved in several motions to quash subpoenas filed on behalf of the plaintiff and co-drafted the appeals to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The case should be heard by the state high court this spring. Another First Amendment case Villaseñor is working on involves the American Library Association, a case up for review in the U.S. Supreme Court. A three-judge court in Philadelphia ruled that libraries could not be required to install Internet filters as a condition of federal funding. The ACLU is co-counsel in that case. “Basically at issue is whether Congress could pass the Children Internet Protection Act (CIPA),” Villaseñor explains. “These filters underblock, they don’t catch the sites that they’re supposed to catch, and a lot of sites that have scientific information seeks community solutions for problems families face raising teens. DAVID MACLAINE (SF) had a successful reading at the Lupin Naturist Club of excerpts from his collection of poetic parody/transformation “The Naked Bard” in the summer of 2002. PAUL SZABO (A) recently joined Calfee, Halter & Griswold, LLP in Cleveland, as a senior attorney specializing in intellectual property law. He counsels publicly- and privately-held clients regarding may be blocked from view simply because of anatomical terms you might find within the site.” The ACLU is representing a public library in the case; Villaseñor is involved in researching and preparing briefs. A fascinating case Villaseñor has worked on centers on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and involves a number of historic firsts. Enacted in 1978, “Given our constitutional values, we simply are not a society that wants to block speech.” Juan Villaseñor FISA established a special court, composed of seven federal district court judges, to review the attorney general’s applications for authorization of electronic surveillance aimed at obtaining foreign intelligence information. Last May, this court took the unprecedented step of making public its unanimous decision rejecting the government’s bid to expand spying powers directed at American citizens. The attorney general then appealed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, a body convened for the first time and comprising three Court of Appeals judges selected by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. “The ACLU asked the court for permission to file an amicus brief on behalf of patent, copyright and trademark matters. A registered patent attorney, Szabo renders opinions as to patentability, right to use, patent infringement, and patent validity issues. 1976 BETSY DAVENPORT (SF) lives with her family in Portland, Ore. She has a private practice doing psychotherapy and parenting consultation, and is developing a specialty in adult ADHD and the challenges it presents to families. Her daughter is 10, what we represent. The court allowed us to file a brief, but ultimately rejected our arguments,” says Villaseñor. “The court of review reversed the trial courts and basically has foreclosed—at least on its face— any way that anyone can appeal the decision.” The Supreme Court recently refused an appeal of the decision. These developments are very disturbing to Villaseñor, especially since he believes most Americans aren’t aware of what’s at risk. “Any average, law-abiding citizen must be concerned about the FISA court powers. It circumvents the Fourth Amendment, allowing searches on less than the constitutionally required probable cause, and the target of the search would likely never know that he or she is a target at all. Any ‘evidence’ gathered against him or her may never be used against the person.” Working for the ACLU—which faces occasional attacks from mainstream America as well as conservative critics for some of its battles—is “definitely a conversation piece.” But misconceptions often cloud the ACLU’s image and purpose, Villaseñor believes. “If people think that we (ACLU staff) are for child porn or we are in favor of children viewing material that is harmful, that is completely and patently false. What we are in favor of is that the government cannot tell you what material you should be looking at. You as a parent can install a filter in your own private computer, but that doesn’t mean the government should require it in public libraries. “Given our constitutional values, we simply are not a society that wants to block speech. The answer for free speech is more speech, not less. That includes hateful, racist, and other kinds of controversial speech.” x the “big” kids are 34 and 36, and her grandsons are 2 and 6. Her husband will retire from university teaching in January 2003. After almost 20 years as a trial attorney in both public and private practice, WILLIAM W. NOOTER (A) is now a magistrate judge on the D.C. Superior Court, having been appointed in October 2000. Bill currently presides over cases in Family Court. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Elissa Free, and daughter, Amanda, age 11. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } ANNE NICOLE SCHLESS (SF) writes “I am living on a piece of ‘paradise found’—writing, carving, singing and building a workshop. I run a small company for a living and am really enjoying the people and the challenge—basically loving life, including the ups and downs. Greetings to all!” 1977 WILLIAM MALLOY (SF) writes: “My techno-addresses have changed. On the one hand, the new home phone number is �37 {Alumni Notes} 713-283-9444, and on the other hand, the new email address is ogopogo@sbcglobal.net On the other other hand, the mailing address remains P.O. Box 570822 in Houston, Texas 77257-0822. Let me hear from you, even if we’ve never met, particularly if you don’t recognize the palindrome ‘ogopogo.’ “Open question to anyone: In what ways does the Ethernet resemble phlogiston? In what ways does it not?” 1978 THOMAS WOOD (SF) has taken a new position as coordinator of the core curriculum at St. Mary’s College of Ave Maria University in Orchard Lake, Mich. 1979 JEFF MCELROY (SF) writes, “I have recently left my 14-year career in nonprofit fund-raising and reactivated my law license. I have opened a law office in my Hollywood guest house so that I can better parent my 7-yearold son. My practice is focused on tax-exempt organizations and adoption for lesbian and gay parents.” 1980 GERI GLOVER (SF) closed her private practice in Santa Fe in May 2002. She now splits her time between Santa Fe on the weekends and the Alamo Navajo Reservation near Magdalena, N.M., during the workweek. She is the Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health Services coordinator for Alamo. TOM G. PALMER (A) writes: “I greatly regret having missed the 20th reunion, but I had agreed long ago to participate in the international meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in London, which took place over the same week. I was nominated for membership and the nomination was accepted. (The society was founded in 1947 in Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, at an international meeting of liberal scholars called together by Friedrich A. Hayek to undertake the rehabilitation of classical liberal thought.) I’ve recently taken over editorship of the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. As a senior fellow of the Cato Institute, I’ve also published a number of essays on the economics of property, constitutional government after 9-11, globalization, and other topics. I’ve been on the road a lot, giving lectures at universities, speaking at conferences of newspaper editors, and speaking before business groups. My position at Cato keeps me busy—it’s pretty much my dream job. I may have the record for SJC alums in long-distance relationships, as it’s now been over seven years that my partner and I have lived in different countries. He’s British, we met at Oxford, and he lives in London. We do manage to see each other four or five times a year, in America or in Europe (we managed to spend nearly two weeks together in France this summer when I was lecturing at the University of Aix-en-Provence). Someday we’re hoping to be able to live together in some country, at least for some time.” 1981 SARA MARCY (SF) writes: “I am very sorry to inform the college community of the death, last April, of LANCE FORSYTHE (SF). After a short illness he passed away and was brought to the mountains in Montana, where, as those who knew him can attest, he will rest happily.” 1982 PETER FISK (SF) has a busy chiropractic office and teaches network spinal analysis. NATASHA (WALTER) FISK (SF84) is doing aura balancing from a perspective of drawing out some wisdom from energy blocks. Their daughter, Gioia, is 6 and is in the first grade at the San Francisco Waldorf School. REBECCA (COURSEY) KING (SF) writes: “During the last five years I have undergone a significant personal transformation, resulting in a divorce from my husband of 16 years and moving from Montana to Santa Cruz, Calif. I am completing my fourth and final year at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, where my senior project is on erotic transfer in the healer-client relationship. I work as a spiritual energy healer as well as a counselor/sex educator specializing in the fascinating field of relationships, intimacy, and sexuality. I’ve begun writing articles based on my field, and have found myself deeply involved with Tantric Buddhism as a base for my spiritual practice and reconnection with the feminine. I have also deeply explored Shadow Work, Jungian Dream Analysis, Depth Psychology, Tantra, a lot of workshops on sexuality, and a lot of truly unique relationship experiences. My daughter, Galen, is 8 1/2 and lives primarily with Dave in Montana. She spends about one week out of every five with me and loves the ocean and the redwoods. So after years of living a very sociably acceptable and financially secure life, with a friend and loving companion, I am finally returning to something which has been calling me, the soul’s longing to live something yet unexplored inside of me, for which I was still hungering when I left St. John’s. I continue to ponder existential questions of reality and devote a great percentage of my time to spiritual practices and meditation and inquiry and energy-healing work. I still love to dance and have trained in various movement therapies. This summer I reread Antigone and Oedipus Rex to regain insight into the underlying mythic level of sexual dysfunction. I read Jungian books for fun and scintillating intellectual intrigue, and wonder just what I will study next. Blessings and radiance to all my fellow Johnnies.” 1983 ARTHUR EDISON (SF) is an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Florida. He studies neurochemicals and spends most of his time at work thinking about worms (nematodes) and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance). He is happily married to his wife, Katherine (20+ years), and has two great kids, Emily, 17, and Maddy, 15. SUZAN M. PORTER (SF) will be teaching sixth-grade science and seventh-grade pre-algebra at the NOVA School in Olympia, Wash. “NOVA is a middle school which serves academically talented youngsters, and I’m very much looking forward to the challenges.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } 1987 LARRY DAVIS (SFGI) graduated with an M.A. from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas, in 2002, and was the first person to walk across the stage and get a diploma in the seminary’s centennial year. JOEY COXWELL (SFGI) and his wife, PATTI (SFGI92), have been on the move again! They are now in Meridian, Miss. Joey teaches AP chemistry and physics and sometimes astronomy, and Patti teaches elementary music to 1,050 students in grades K-6. Their daughter, Joanna, will be attending school with mom in the fall. She is the only student in her preschool class who knows all the planets, in order! Patty writes: “We are not accomplishing ‘great’ things compared to most of what I read in the alumni section, but we sure are enjoying being fouryear-olds again! We’ve lost touch with most everyone due to moves. Our e-mail address is Falala1701@aol.com. Just put your name in the subject line so I won’t dismiss it as spam.” 1988 JOHN MCLAUGHLIN (SFGI) writes, “After this update I will hold off for a decade or so! February and the first week of March the goal is to add 350-400 miles—somewhere around there—on to 900 miles previously skied in Scandanavia. Health and weather allowing, that will make for a continuous line from Oslo to Knivskjellodden. Living in Telluride, Colo., it will take a few days to get comfortable with the low elevation. Otherwise I am definitely ready to go.” SUKUMAR PERIWAL (A) writes from Canada: “Greetings to friends from St. John’s. Not having been in touch since graduation in 1988, it’s intimidating to catch up. While doing a D.Phil. at Oxford I lived in Prague for a few years doing research on nationalism and teaching at a new international university there, then traveled around, writing columns and a serialized novel for an Italian newspaper. Now I live in Victoria, British Columbia, where I work for �38 {Alumni Notes} the government of British Columbia in international relations. I got married last summer to Eleonora Babejova, ending the longest longdistance relationship in history. I’ve stopped smoking and completely changed personality type but would still love to hear from long-lost friends at:Periwal@gems5.gov.bc.ca. ” ELLEN SCHWINDT (A) writes: “After spending 13 years in Baltimore, mostly in education of one sort or another, I’ve recently moved to South Conway, N.H., and I married a Civil War historian named William Marvel. I’m running a tiny community music school, teaching violin, piano, and music theory, visiting a weekly peace vigil, and supplementing my own two children’s educations with snow experiments, more music, and general dragooning.” 1989 BEVERLY ANGEL (SFGI) graduated from the University of Texas Law School in May 2002 and joined a very small firm in a small town near Austin. “It’s a steep learning curve but I’m enjoying it immensely.” From JENNIE PACKARD (SF): “I’m delighted to report my engagement to Robert McGee. A former Army officer, Robert is now a computer systems engineer here in Santa Fe. We feel very blessed to have found one another, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.” 1990 KELLY KOEPKE (SF) writes: “My freelance writing business is going well, our fixer-up house is eating all our money, but we love it!” JIM KOLSKY (SF) reports that he and his wife have returned to California after a 10-year absence: “I am now directing the Information Intelligence Department at E&J Gallo Winery in Modesto. Lots of great perks for wine connoisseurs, of which I am not one…yet!” After leaving St. John’s, WILLIAM A. SCOTT (AGI) earned a law degree at the University of Maryland. He was recently appointed assistant commissioner of the Maryland Department of Public Safety, Division of Correction. He serves on the board of the Chesapeake Youth Symphony. 1991 LAKE (JAMES) PERRIGUEY (SF) is a lawyer representing people and small business in state and federal court. His clients include pornographers and churches, war protesters, mothers, fathers, and entrepreneurs. HEATHER NOONE (SF) and her husband, CHRIS LA BONTE (SF92), write that they are enjoying their time in Carbondale, Colo., where they moved after Chris finished school in Austin. Heather is in a master’s of counseling program at Pacifica, Calif., and they are thinking of moving to Southern California. 1992 JOHANN AND ANGELA KLAASSEN (SF), became the proud parents of twin boys, Abram George and Benjamin Thomas, on May 23, 2002. MICHAEL BROWN (SF) is living and working in San Francisco and would be delighted to hear from old friends. He can be reached at M100brown@yahoo.com or 415-734-9500. 1993 TOM LISCO (SFGI) was privileged to attend the 2001 Sino-American Educational Forum (co-sponsored by People to People Ambassadors and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards) in Beijing, China. JENNA PALMER (SF) and JAMES MICHEL (SF92) are happy to announce the birth of their first child, Luise Ruth Michel, born May 17, 2002. For pictures, visit http://photos.yahoo.com/luluruth. Jenna has been teaching English in colleges around the Bay Area, but will be taking time off to help Jim run his law office, which is in its sixth year in San Francisco. They can be reached at jenna_palmer@hotmail.com or jamichel@sbcglobal.net. 1994 THE REV. NATHAN J.A. HUMPHREY (A) has been busy uniting couples in wedlock, and some of them are Johnnies. “In October, I officiated at two Johnnie-related weddings: On the 5th for Jordan Asher Finch’s sister, Allison. Jordan was best man and his fiancée, QUINBY OWEN (A01), was a bridesmaid. On the 19th, I married fellow classmate YVONNE BELANGER (A94) to Jeff Pomerantz, friends of WILL GLUSMAN (A92) and AMY (HOFFMAN) GLUSMAN (A93), who were in attendance.” In February IVY TURKINTON (A) was named director of strategic planning, information technology, and government relations for United Way Services of Cleveland. Previously, she was director of organization development for the Tri-Counties Regional Center in Santa Barbara, Calif. 1995 LYNARRA FEATHERLY (SF) writes: “KATHLEEN EAMON (SF97) and I will celebrate our 10-year anniversary next year. How does she do it? MEGHAN JUDAY (SF) and Eric Savage are expecting their first baby in April 2003. SHARON A. MORRIS (A) now goes by her middle name, Alexa. She is the executive director of the MPLS Forum, an international industry organization driving worldwide deployment of multi-protocol label switching networks, applications, and services. Formed in 2000, the forum serves as a meeting ground for service providers, equipment manufacturers, component vendors, and testing companies to address the needs of the industry. “Hello class of ’95 and those who, like me, never made it to fruition,” writes ANDREW HECK (A). I look back to my short stay at St John’s with humor and awe, and wondered what has happened to those who made my stay so very bizarre and exciting. I’ve been spending my time in the service of fermentation (baking bread) and playing music (nothing like Iron Bladder.) Should anyone from second floor Randall, hippies on parade, those who sledded with the beer fairy, drank with me at the Immaculate Conception and Running of the Snake wish to reach me, my address is 1252 Highland Ave., Chattanooga TN 37405, { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } e-mail born2drinkus@ yahoo.com, phone: 423-266-1879.” 1996 SAM DILLEHAY (SF) and Katie Bradford, both living in Brooklyn, plan to be married in the middle of next year. Send your congratulations to sdillehay@yahoo.com. JOHN WHITFIELD POTTER (AGI) reports: “I’m in my senior year of the Master of Divinity program at Princeton Theological Seminary. I plan to be ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) sometime next year. I’d love to get back in touch with old friends. My address is SBN 314, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08543 and my e-mail address is john.potter@ptsem.edu” FRANCK ROARK (A96) and his business partner, Colin Brotherton, have formed a limited liability corporation in New York. Writes Frank: “One part of the company is a retail store in Potsdam, N.Y., called Woodland Gardens. The store (the name of which was inspired by Wordsworth) specializes in three areas of design retail: first, providing fine home accessories that are uncommon to the region and searching out extraordinary pieces that are unique to the region. Next, creation of custom´ designed interiors. Third (and most definitely not last), delivering its highly acclaimed “garden-style” floral designs of superlative quality and style. All Johnnies who happen to find themselves in-or-around the Clarkson University area are welcome to stop in and contemplate beauty.” 1997 MARCELLE HOMER (SF) is doing graduate work in rhetoric and teaching at Idaho State University. DEBORAH T YRRELL (SF) and JEFF HUGGINS (SF) were married on October 13, 2001, and are living in Albuquerque. PIA THADHANI (A): “I suppose an update is long overdue. After graduating from law school last year, I started work at a law firm in New York and I find it is a surprisingly pleasant work environment! If �39 {Alumni Notes} Quiet Neighbors and a Baby Boy (SF86) writes: “My husband, Graham Garner, and I were overjoyed to bring a baby boy, Simon, into the world on March 27, 2002. He is amazingly cheerful and social, and we’re having a wonderful time playing with him in the lovely Quaker burial ground (just outside Philadelphia) where we live and serve as caretakers. Our neighbors are very quiet and seem fairly friendly. Graham and I share a job as managers of QuakerBooks of Friends General Conference, which is ideal for getting plenty of time with Simon. Recently DEBBIE HUMPHRIES (SF86), who started out in our class, stayed here while she and her husband were in Philly at an AFSC board meeting. She and I keep finding Johnnies that also happen to be Friends (Quakers), which is remarkable since there are so few of both in the world, though they do seem to promote compatible ways of approaching life. AMY BIANCO (SF86) has also been to visit with her sharp sweetie, John Whysner, whom she married in September. I’d love to hear from anyone who remembers me and we love to have folks visit. You can contact me at ledgleg@earthlink.net.” x L UCY DUNCAN anyone would like to discuss law school, law firms in New York, or catch up, I can be reached at pia. thadhani@cliffordchance.com” tion. For many years it has been my dream to come back and make a difference here on the beautiful slopes of the Alleghenies. Here I am; now the difference remains to be seen.” CELINE BIANCA BOCCHI (SF) writes, “Hi everyone! Life is beautiful, isn’t it? I am living in Rio de Janeiro, close to the beach, with my cat, Pixel, and my fiance, Roberto. We have a nice little guest room, so feel free, if you just happen to be in the neighborhood, to give me a call (021-2429-5503). Abracos da cicade maravilhosa!” INA WUNDRAM (SFGI) is now retired from Emory University and is a professor emerita. She is also a first-time grandmother of a baby girl, Savannah. JUDITH TOLIVER NEELY (A) has taken on the job of revitalizing her native city, Aliquippa, Pa.: “This is an old industrial city on the Ohio River just 22 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, often called the cradle of the labor union movement. It has been plagued with growing rates of decay, crime, poverty, drug abuse, and a steadily decreasing popula- LORNA JOHNSON (ANDERSON) (SF) has moved with her new husband to a beautiful neighborhood in Chicago and is now working from home as an executive recruiter for her parents’ company. She is also working as an assistant stage manager for a fantastic play at a theater in Evanston, Ill. The play is titled Mad Forest,by Caryl Churchill, and she has been invited to assistant direct several upcoming shows. 1998 HEATHER MACLEAN (SF98) will be moving to Austin, Texas, this winter. While in Austin she plans to pursue a graduate degree in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. One of her longrange plans is to work in an art library, and earning a second graduate degree will help with this goal, as most art librarianship positions require a master’s in an art-related subject. For the last three-and-ahalf years she has been working as the associate librarian for Cataloging and Computer Services at the Santa Fe campus library. During this time, she also received her master’s in library science from Emporia State University in Kansas in August 2001 by completing their distance education program. muddyhands2@yahoo.com. MICHAEL O’BRIEN (SFGI) writes: “After bouncing back and forth between Alaska, New Mexico, and Vermont for the past few years, I have settled in Fairbanks. I’m still exploring wilderness and running marathons, but I also recently became a lawyer. Go figure. Anyone wanting to get in touch can reach me at: meoem2002@hotmail.com. 1999 Changes for BETHANY MATSUSHITA (SF), formerly Bethany Ann Creswell: “I am one of the many who went on to another place, eventually. However, after two years at St. John’s, I felt that I had found a niche of a sort and now, I suppose, I am trying to get back in contact with old friends and fond memories of yore. As of last March I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in art at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, Oregon, and—not long afterwards—married a man Japanese in origin and 15 years my senior (a sociology major of the same university). Now we are both in Portland, Oregon, slaving away and paying off student loans, and I would love to hear from any of you. You can reach me at bcreswell@ excite.com.” HONOR MOODY (SF) is currently cataloguing audiovisual Judaica at the Harvard College Library. She is also working towards her master’s in library and information sciences at Simons in Boston, MA. You can reach her at moody@fas.harvard.edu. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } MICHAEL HOKENSON (SF) is pursuing an MBA and MS at the University of Michigan. He plans to pursue entrepreneurial work in Asia upon graduation. 2000 PAIGE ELIZABETH FORREST (A) is now a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Following graduation from St. John’s, she completed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute summer research internship at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, then attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., for a year of self-designed post-baccalaureate studies to complete the science prerequisites for entrance into medical school. In her spare time at James Madison, she became a certified emergency medical technician with the Harrisonburg Volunteer Rescue Squad. JIM HALL (SF) is in his second year of law school at Seattle University School of Law. He’s doing well and loving the law! CHRIS JONES (SF) writes, “I am now in my last year at Yale Divinity School, and I’m in the process of applying for pastoral counseling programs. I hope one of them takes me back that way–back to those beautiful sunsets!” ANDREA QUINTERO (SF) and SAM MARKHAM (SF) are living together in London and doing post-graduate work. Andrea studies art history at the Courtauld Institute, and Sam studies book history at the School for Advanced Studies, University of London. BRITTA RILEY (SF00) spent some time in Florida, but is now back on the ranch in Brenham, Texas, where she is a construction foreman and carpentry apprentice for a residential remodeling contractor. Britta has founded an organization called the Texas Adult Recreation Initiative that “undermines the immediate association of exercise with lonesome drudgery. We work with advertising firms and public park departments around the state to create existence systems and advertising campaigns for open, noncompetitive, commitment-free, coed, pick-up games in soccer, basketball, volleyball, and softball. We �40 {Alumni Profile} An Anlage for Logophilia A Lover of Language Publishes a Book on Rare Words BY SUS3AN BORDEN, A87 H allie Leighton (SF92) collects words. From the Latinate allicient (attracting) to the Arabic zarf (a cup-shaped device for holding hot coffee cups), she is drawn to unusual words and devoted to learning their backgrounds and meanings. Her new book, Rare Words and Ways to Master their Meanings, includes choice specimens from her word collection. Rare Words, published this year by Levenger Press, was the brainchild of Leighton’s father, Jan, her co-author on the project and a great influence in her passion for hunting fresh and interesting words. “From the time he was a kid, his hobby has been collecting and memorizing words,” Leighton says. “When he was in the army he carried a Webster’s in his barracks bag all through Europe.” Leighton picked up the hobby in high school, fixing on “hussar” and “bivouac” in Tolstoy’s War and Peace at age 13. Every time she ran across an unfamiliar word, she looked it up and noted its definition in her journal. “I was trying to keep up with my dad,” she says. “We played a game where he would have me point to any word in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Ninety percent of the time, he knew what the word was.” Despite their shared interest, when her father asked her to help write the book, Leighton hesitated, fearing that such a book could inspire people to use words to distance themselves from others rather than communicate. In her introduction to the book, she writes that she was haunted by this passage from George Orwell’s essay on “Politics and the English Language”: “Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.” In the end, Leighton says, she realized that Orwell was not exactly right: “Athough many words have synonyms… no word possesses an exact clone. A synonym is just that: a word with similar—not identical—meaning. There is always a tiny shade of difference in meaning that makes one word the most appropriate in a specific context.” Freed from the judgment of Orwell, Leighton committed to the project. She and her father reviewed her father’s word collection and argued over which 500 words would go into the book. Leighton then looked up each word in 15 different dictionaries to extrapolate her own definitions. While her father insisted that each entry be pithy, Leighton wanted to pack the book with as much interesting information as possible. In the end, her father’s attention span proved an efficient arbiter: “Dad has attention deficit even worse than I have and if the definition wasn’t very brief he would fall asleep,” Leighton says. Among the charms of Rare Words are the mnemonics that accompany many entries. For the word fistulous (tubular and hollow) the book notes: “A fist is fistulous; it creates a hollow.” For invidious (provoking envy or ill will), we remember this: “Did his invidious preference for Sally invoke envy in Dee? Yes!” For chiasmus (a rhetorical inversion { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } Hallie Leighton shares a love of words–and co-author status–with her father, Jan. of the second of two parallel structures): “ ‘I had the Chianti, then the Chianti had me’ is a chiasmus.” And anlage (an inherited disposition to certain traits or a particular character development) is remembered as “the luggage of inherited traits.” Leighton considers her passion for words an anlage from her father, and says that this anlage is not limited to logophilia. Her father is a professional actor specializing in impersonations. He holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for portraying the most historical roles. Following in his footsteps, Leighton majored in drama at the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan. As a Johnnie, she performed at Santa Fe coffee houses, channeling bygone rock stars such as Cyndi Lauper, Edie Brickell, and Sinead O’Connor. After college, she wrote and costarred in “Divas Deconstructed,” impersonating over a dozen divas from �41 {Alumni Profile} also work with sponsoring businesses to cover the costs of field lighting and maintenance in cities where funding is limited. We are always looking for contributions of any variety—funding, contacts, and ideas.” If you want to harass her for not staying in touch, try her at brittariley@hotmail.com. WANDA R. ROBINS (AGI): “I have moved to Austin, Texas, and would love to hear from any St. John’s alumni. And for those GIs at St. Stephen’s School—come join the Austin alumni chapter!” ADELAIDE (Ada) JUNEBUG ROUECHE-BEARD was born May 31, 2002, to MARJORIE ROUECHE (A) and James Beard. Marjorie reports: “I am working as a science editor for a textbook company, a company that LOVES Johnnies (for those of you who may find yourselves in Austin looking for a job).” James and Marjorie married in March, “which is proof positive that we can find nonJohnnies who can stand us too.” JASON (AGI) and SUSAN SALINAS (AGI99) moved to Coronado, Calif. Jason flies helicopters for the Navy and Susie works at the Hotel del Coronado. CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN (A) had the opportunity to see DERRICK CUNNIFF FLETCHER (A00) when both were volunteer counselors at Boggy Creek Camp in Eustis, Fla., for a week last summer. Christopher is still pursuing a teaching degree in deaf education at Flagler College in St. Augustine. “My years at St. John’s have served me well,” he writes. “Taking Western Civilization last semester helped put a lot of my studies at St. John’s in chronological order.” 2001 From the Windy City, JENNIFER HARRIS (A) reports back: “I cannot believe that it has been over a yearand-a-half since I graduated from St. John’s. In that time I have been quite busy. I spent part of the summer after graduation in Florence, Italy, studying art history and painting conservation. I made the move to Illinois and I received my M.A. in the humanities (why limit myself) from the University of Chicago, focusing on art history and aesthetics. I am now working as the coordinator of Rights and Reproductions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.” DAN O’KEEFE teaches at the St. Thomas Choir School in New York City, a boarding school for the boys choir of Saint Thomas Episcopal Church. Rare Words Meets Great Books: The Quiz Which Program authors do you associate with these words from Leighton’s book? (answers below) 1. Antinomy 2. Delphic 3. Empyrean 4. Entropy 5. Heuristic 6. Incommensurable 7. Maenad 8. Manichean 9. Ontological 10. Peripatetic 11. Sennet 12. Theodicy Answer Key A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L. Euripides Aristotle Sophocles Plato Leibniz Kant Anselm Maxwell Dante Euclid Augustine Shakespeare 1-F; 2-C; 3-I; 4-H; 5-D; 6-J; 7-A; 8-K; 9-G; 10-B; 11-L; 12-E Barbra Streisand, Marilyn Monroe, and Maria von Trapp to Oprah Winfrey, Tonya Harding, and Xena, Warrior Princess. “Obviously, my doing a lot of impressions, the channeling, is definitely an anlage. I can’t escape from that,” says Leighton, who adds that her grandfather was a bandleader and her mother is a writer for As The World Turns. Leighton herself worked for two years as a writer’s assistant for the soap opera. She’s now a freelance writer whose clients have included Cotton Inc.; Verizon, and a chain of health food stores. Alumni networking functions in New York have been the source of some of her best jobs. But alumni activities aren’t all business for Leighton. She’s been a faithful participant in alumni seminars, served as treasurer for the New York chapter, was a reunion class leader in 2002, and with Bill Fant, set up the JohnnyXpress, a bulletin board for alumni on Yahoo. Right now, she’s planning another project with her father, this one about George Washington, one of his favorite characters from his acting career. Leighton won’t give away the content of the project, but says she’s interested in exploring what her father’s dug up as an amateur historian. “This is a playful side of George Washington, a fun side, a passionate side,” she says. “This is not your father’s George Washington.” Rare Words is available only through the Levenger Press catalog or web site: www.levenger.com. x TALLEY H. SCROGGS (A) lived in France to learn classical cuisine and then joined LOU KOVACS (A02) to backpack together through Romania. They both moved to Portland, Ore., last summer. Talley has two or three chef jobs, and Lou has been working in a vineyard. Talley thinks she’ll head back to graduate school in the fall. SUZANNAH SIMMONS (SF) has been living in Charleston, S.C., since February 2002. She will be joining the Peace Corps in Thailand beginning June 9, 2003. She sends her best wishes to everyone and can be reached at guneh@hotmail.com. TIMOTHY SPARKMAN (SF) and MARIA (MIA) MCDANIEL (SF00) were married in Santa Fe, N.M., on June 23, 2002. x What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in September; deadline for the alumni notes section is July 15. If you do not want classnotes included on The College web site, e-mail Victoria Smith: v-smith@sjca.edu. LAUREN SWEENEY (SF) moved back to her hometown of San Diego, Calif., and is happily employed at La Jolla Playhouse. She writes that she misses St. John’s and Santa Fe every day! In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; reharty@sjca.edu DAMON CARROLL (SF) was selected to attend the United States Army Officer Candidate School and began his active duty service as an army soldier in January 2003. In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College Public Relations Office 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599; tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu 2002 JOEY CHERNILA (SF) and ALANA HOLLINGSWORTH (SF) were married. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } Alumni notes on the Web: Read Alumni Notes and contact The College on the web at www.sjca.edu—click on Alumni. �42 {Obituaries} Martin Miller, A81 Annapolis Graduate Inspired Many Martin Miller and his son, Benjamin, at Annapolis Homecoming in 2001 ost of what Martin C. Miller—a Massachusetts engineer, husband, and father—accomplished in life may seem ordinary in the big picture of life; but to those who knew him—especially his friends and classmates in the Annapolis class of 1981—everything he did was extraordinary, and the way he lived his life was exemplary. Born with a congenital heart defect, Miller wasn’t expected to survive beyond infancy. Medical advances in cardiology, combined with his own resiliency, helped him defy the odds for much longer. He died January 11, 2003, at the age of 45. Determined to be treated like a normal child, Martin Miller insisted on a place on the Little League team, found mistakes in his school textbooks, and graduated first in his high school class. Miller left Brown University for St. John’s after a year because he sought a more challenging education with greater M opportunities for independent thinking. After graduation, he earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology. A resident of Framingham, Mass., he worked at Draper Laboratories in Cambridge, Avid Technology Inc., and most recently “To Martin, a problem was a problem to be solved.” Daniel Van Doren Crescent Networks. His wife, Linda, describes him as a man devoted to his family, who greatly enjoyed his four-yearold son, Benjamin, and excelled in his profession. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } Daniel Van Doren (A81), a former roommate and longtime friend of Miller’s, was among the Johnnies who shared remembrances at Miller’s memorial service. He remembered that Miller couldn’t walk the few short blocks into town without stopping frequently to rest, and that being out in the cold was particularly taxing to him. But mostly he remembered Miller’s determination to achieve his goals. “In our senior year, Martin was near the top of the class and had set his sights on a degree in electrical engineering. He applied to the top five graduate programs in the country. When two of them rejected his application, he was flabbergasted. You or I would have been disappointed by the rejections and would have accepted them as fate pre-ordained,” Van Doren said at the service. “To Martin, a problem was a problem to be solved. He composed letters to both schools informing them that they were wrong to reject him because they had not fully appreciated the importance of our �43 {Obituaries} St. John’s education. And wouldn’t you know it? They both agreed. MIT sheepishly admitted that it had already accepted its full class but offered to place Martin at the top of the waiting list in case an opening occurred. Cal Tech, I think it was, the best school in the country at the time, reversed its decision and admitted him into their program, and it was to Cal Tech that he went the following year.” Linda Miller sent along a text of a speech her husband gave at a conference several years ago. He spoke about the physical and psychological effects of congenital heart disease, but focused his remarks on living with hope: “I don’t think of my body as being ME. It is more “Do not live life piling up regrets...” Martin Miller the biological vessel that contains me. In this way, my body does not define me. If it fails, as it occasionally does, at least I don’t fail.” Recounting his choice to start a family with Linda, in spite of his fears of leaving a child without a father, Miller offered advice to others who struggled to overcome heart conditions—good advice for anyone to embrace. “Do not live life piling up regrets.... When I die, I would rather regret that I did not finish everything that I set out to do than regret that I never even tried to do something I wanted to do…” x in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia. During World War II, he drove ambulances in Africa and Italy for the American Field Service. After the war, he earned a master’s degree in engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. He taught at the Naval Academy from 1958 until his retirement in 1988, and was also a member of the Johns Hopkins University engineering faculty. An expert on auto safety issues, he held six patents on car emergency warning systems and was a consultant for Ford Motor Co. on automobile negligence cases. William Chester Buchanan William Chester Buchanan, class of 1947, and a teacher, translator, and writer, died Jan. 27 in India. Buchanan was born in East Lansing, Mich., in 1923. He received a bachelor’s degree in music from Michigan State University in 1944 and attended St. John’s from 1944 to 1947. In his sophomore year at the college, he won the prize for the best annual essay, and the following year, a prize for the best original sonnet. He spent three years teaching and studying in France, and earned a master’s degree from the Sorbonne. Later, he earned a master’s in theology and literature from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He taught English in France, taught at the Walt Whitman School, at Lenox Academy, and for 17 years taught English, French, and a great books sequence at Olivet College, where he was adviser to the Garfield Review, a literary magazine. His last teaching post was at Olney Friends School, in Barnsville, Ohio. He published numerous book reviews, translations from French, a volume of poetry, and a book of essays and reminiscences. Buchanan spent 17 years living at a monastery and retreat center in Michigan, and traveled extensively in Southeast Asia. B. Meredith Burke William Barr William Barr, a graduate of the class of 1942 and a former Naval Academy engineering professor, died December 15, 2002, in Charlottesville, Va. He was the nephew of Stringfellow Barr, who with Scott Buchanan, founded the New Program at St. John’s. After graduating from the college, Mr. Barr earned an undergraduate degree B. Meredith Burke, class of 1967, a political activist devoted to populationrelated issues such as immigration and birth control, died Dec. 11, 2002. A native of Los Angeles, Burke went on to earn a master’s degree in economics from the University of Southern California, and master’s and doctoral degrees in demographics from the University of Southern California. She worked to defend her controversial stance that the U.S. reconsider { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } immigration policies she believed threatened the environment. She served as chair of the Maternal and Child Health Advisory Board of San Mateo County, California; was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and fellow of Negative Population Growth. She was also interested in women’s rights and public health issues. She coauthored a book on prenatal testing and founded Lariam Action USA, an information service for users of the anti-malaria drug mefloquine. Jerome Goodman Jerome Goodman of Brookline, Mass., class of 1934, died in January at his home. He was 89 and had continued to work in the private firm he shared with his daughter, Carol, until a few months before his death. An Annapolis native, Goodman earned a degree from Harvard Law School in 1937. During World War II, Goodman left his law career to serve in the office of the judge advocate. After the war, he returned to Boston to practice law. In 1977, he and his daughter formed the law office Goodman & Goodman. Active in Brookline politics, he had served as a town meeting member for many years and had been a member of the town advisory committee and the Republican Town Committee. James Alexander Matthews James Alexander Matthews (HA99) died on March 9 as a result of a long battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He worked at St. John’s for over 37 years and was an important presence in the lives of students, staff, and faculty. A remembrance of Mr. Matthews will appear in the next issue of The College. ALSO NOTED ARE: DAVID ABBEY HOOKER, class of 1948, January 2, 2002 NOEL MERIAM, class of 1962, August 12, 2002 CHARLES O. “BUCKY” WINGATE II, class of 1935, June 11, 2002 �44 { S t u d e n t Vo i c e s } reading the signs by Sara White Wilson (A03) F or four years I have been reading books as the St. John’s curriculum requires—frequently and with analytic attention. I’ve come to read public signs and graffiti in the same way. Not only can I never look at a road or a store sign without reading it completely, even if I pass it every day and already know what it says, but I also can’t resist analyzing the subtleties of meaning in the words. Traveling on a small island in the West Indies I saw a road sign in plain lettering, “DEPRESSION.” Naturally, the sign indicated a decline in the road, but imagine such a sign appearing in our psychologically self-conscious America. We might wonder: Where is the rest of the pharmaceutical drug advertisement? Before I came to photograph official public signage, I photographed public words in the form of graffiti. Graffiti can be rendered quite artfully—despite that, or perhaps because, it is indecipherable. My impulse to read and make sense of everything is cleverly tricked. I think I can decipher the shape of a letter or a word but the play of colors and graphic shape will not let me make sense of it. I find it best to focus less on the letters and more on the colors and shape of the graffiti in order to discern a readable word or phrase. A theme has developed in my photography that encourages a similar sort of reconciliation between word, meaning, and composition. I like to photograph signs—legal or illegal—in their environment and capture how the environment enhances the sense of the words in the sign. Sometimes there is not reconciliation of sign and environment but rather a contrast between them. The photograph of artificial graffiti spray paint on an earthy and cracked adobe wall expresses for me the incongruity of seeing loud and commanding graffiti off a dirt road in barren Abique, New Mexico. My impulse to read everything seems to be similarly matched by a basic need to write, no matter what the forum. This photographic project—to frame words and their environment—also informs some of the thinking behind my senior essay. I tried to understand what some translators call “picture-thinking” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. How can thinking, which seems to be intimately connected with words in speech, writing, and internal dialogue, be connected with pictures in one working of the mind, according to Hegel? How was he suggesting images were co-concurrent to thought? { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } Signs gain their meaning relative to their surroundings. Reading the texts in the St. John’s program is unlike reading signs because the books convey a meaning that is not relative; we value them precisely because we can read them out of context and still learn their universal significance. Reading the texts at St. John’s is like reading signs, however, in that both signs and books are, at their most basic level, written in order to be understood. Furthermore, like a road sign or a political message in graffiti, the books at St. John’s intend to persuade and direct. I hope that my photography frames the relative nature of signs but with an eye that is well-trained by the readings of the past four years—an eye that works to discern the universal through the relative. x Sara White Wilson plans to keep taking pictures and never stop reading. �{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s } Left, “Graffiti on Cracked Wall; ” Above, “Exodus;” Right, “Philadelphia” “Reading the texts at St. John’s is like reading signs…in that both signs and books are, at their most basic level, written in order to be understood.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } 45 �46 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Dear Johnnies, As you might imagine, communication is the major challenge for the Association. Alumni live in many interesting places, move often, and have a habit of not reading every bit of mail they receive. I know I fall into this category—so many envelopes and so little time! Your Association Board is experimenting with new and more efficient ways to communicate with you. Let us know how they work. The annual dues mailer was sent out in February (and will be mailed again in June for those of you who prefer to pay dues in the summer). We are thinking about ways to make this invitation more appealing and more clearly distinguished from mailings from the college and from Philanthropia. Your Association dues are not donations to the Annual Fund; they go to support Association activities such as Homecoming, reunions, the alumni directory, senior dinners, and activities for chapters. Your dues payment makes you a “member in good standing” of the Alumni Association, so you can vote and run for a seat on the Association Board. Of course, we encourage you to donate to the Annual Fund to support the college, in addition to paying your dues to the Association. The postal service also delivers messages about chapter activities. Postcards are mailed out from each of the campuses to their respective chapters. If you are among the “geographically privileged” who live where chapter meetings are held, you should receive mailings. If you don’t get mailings let one of the Alumni offices know, and you’ll be put on the list. Some chapters also have web sites to support communications among alumni. In the past, we used The College magazine for our announcements about elections and changes in the Association by-laws. Recent changes in the publication schedule of The College make this approach impractical in future. So, we plan to make full use of our web site to distribute information about elections and other items of official business. Lest we leave out those among us who do not have ready access to the Internet, your dues mailer will include information about how to obtain copies of the information by mail. In the future, we will plan to use the web more extensively. Surveys of alumni indicate that the vast majority of us are online and prefer to receive information via e-mail or over a web site. During the last year, Association Board members and Action Teams have used e-mail to stay in touch and complete tasks between our face-to-face meetings. The trend will surely continue as our work expands and our time together becomes more precious. We are also supporting college staff as they improve their communications regarding alumni activities. You should have received your “stick-em-up” announcements about Homecoming in Santa Fe and Annapolis and reunions during 2003, thanks to alumni directors Tahmina Shalizi and Jo Ann Mattson. Finally, the college has a new web site in the works. Expected sometime late this summer or early fall, the web site will offer many features and functions to help us all stay in touch with each other. Most of all, we’re excited about the online, unified, user-maintainable alumni directory. Not only will it let you find friends whom you’ve lost, but it will also let you change your own data so that others don’t lose you. In conjunction with the web site, we are considering making a lifetime e-mail address available to alumni. Details will be worked out over the next few months, but the purpose is clear. The Alumni Association wants to connect more often and more meaningfully with more alumni. This goal shapes all our decisions about communications, events, and services we provide to you, our members. Please be in touch. Let us know what communications messages and methods work best for you. For the past, the present, and the future, Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76) President St. John’s College Alumni Association ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, undergraduate or Graduate Institute, old program or new, graduated or not, all alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The Board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the Association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates Alumni Association news and events of interest. President–Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President–Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary–Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer–Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair– Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76) Web site–www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml Mailing address–Alumni Association, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599 CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-275-9012 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 215-465-0244 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin 410-280-0958 PITTSBURGH Robert Hazo 412-648-2653 AUSTIN Bev Angel 512-926-7808 PORTLAND Dale Mortimer 360-882-9058 BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen 410-472-9158 SACRAMENTO Helen Hobart 916-452-1082 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 619-423-4972 CHICAGO Lorna Johnson 773-338-8651 SAN FRANCISCO, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Jon Hodapp 831-393-9496 DENVER Lee Goldstein 720-283-4659 LOS ANGELES Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 NEW YORK Joe Boucher 718-222-1957 NORTH CAROLINA Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } SANTA FE John Pollak 505-983-2144 SEATTLE Amina Stickford 206-269-0182 WASHINGTON DC Jean Dickason 301-699-6207 ISRAEL Emi Geiger Leslau 15 Aminadav Street Jerusalem 93549 Israel 972-2-6717608 boazl@cc.huji.ac.il �{Alumni Association News} Variety Reels in Denver-Boulder Alumni Undaunted, Jenny set to planning chapter events. “I sometimes resorted to scanning the invitations from other chapers to get ideas for programming,” she recalls. “I even went to the Internet to look up reading selections from the syllabi of philosophy professors from such places as Columbia in order to get ideas for our seminars.” Quickly realizing the “lone wolf” approach wouldn’t work, Jenny called for a planning session. She was gratified to see 15 people turn up with ideas and enthusiasm for the chapter. When Lee Goldstein (SFGI90) traded Miami for the Rocky Mountains a few years ago, she promptly went looking for an Alumni Association chapter. “I really love interacting with people who have gone to St. John’s,” Goldstein says. “With other Johnnies, I always have things to talk about, and I’m always interested in the conversation.” Goldstein, a Denver attorney, has been a member of the vibrant DenverBoulder chapter for three years; in January she assumed the presidency from Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF80) of Boulder, who founded the chapter. At an Alumni Association meeting in Santa Fe this January, the chapter won praise for offering some of the most creative and varied chapter events in the country. Consider this year’s slate, planned back in October: A February seminar on Stephen J. Gould’s The Panda’s Thumb. Joseph From left to right: Brian Van Way (SFGI96), Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand Virginia McConnell (AGI84), Nathan Pollack Faces. Physics with Stephen J. Hawk(A65), Ed Whitney (SF71), John Agresto (AGI89), ing or magic realism with Jorge Luis Beatrice Butler (SF81), Lee Goldstein (SGI90), Borges. Group outings to the Colorado Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SGI90) Shakespeare Festival and other area theaters, a field trip this summer to the Denver Art Museum, and the popular “And so our general inclination towards holiday potluck, this year, with readings diversity was born,” Jenny says. in Pirandello. Who could resist? Last June, Santa Fe President John Balkcom Good programming pays off in attenvisited Denver for an event co-hosted with dance. About 15 regulars turn up at every Philanthropia at the historic Brown Palace event, and every event draws a new face or two. Alternating meeting sites between Boulder Hotel; more than 50 alumni turned out for the meeting to offer ideas on how the college and Denver makes meetings more accessible can serve alumni, find out what’s happening for Colorado Johnnies, Goldstein notes. with current students, and express a sense of The quest to offer regular and interesting gratitude for their St. John’s education. chapter events has required a broad base of Looking ahead, Goldstein sees no shortage input, and alumni have risen to the chalof good ideas for the chapter. “There’s a lot lenge since the chapter was formed in 1998, says Elizabeth Jenny. As a newcomer to Boulder of energy in the chapter and we keep building on that,” she says. x and hungry for intellectual offerings, Jenny pushed for the formation of a chapter. “Imagine that you could revitalize an intellectual life in the midst of midlife job worries, suburbia, diapers, career-obsessed friends, and ailing parents by starting up a vigorous chapter,” Jenny recalls. But soon after gaining its charter from the Alumni Association, the chapter saw attendance drop off. Former mainstays of the reading group decided they needed a hiatus. Around the Chapters Alumni are active in 18 chartered Alumni Association chapters from New York City to San Diego, from Texas to Chicago and from the Puget Sound area to Israel. More than 100 St. John’s alumni meet every month to discuss books, poetry, art, or music. Chapters { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } 47 organize picnics, potlucks, art gallery visits and swing parties—but showing their true allegiance—still favor the seminar more than any other activity. Every year, from 650 to 800 different alumni attend at least one event sponsored by St. John’s alumni chapters. Here’s a status report from around the country: The Washington, D.C., chapter meets biweekly, except during the summer, when members tackle a long book to discuss together in the fall. The chapter organized a National Gallery visit and seminar, potlucks, and parties. Scoffing at superstition, the Austin, Texas, chapter meets on the 13th of most months. They gathered for 11 seminars last year. The San Diego chapter joined forces with the Del Mar Great Books group in their area in order to have a larger discussion group. The Twin Cities chapter has been organizing its meetings around themes or authors. Most recently, the chapter has taken on a series of Goethe readings and invited Julie Reahard, a Santa Fe tutor specializing in Goethe, to discuss “Elective Affinities.” Albuquerque chapter president Bob Morgan got on the phone two years ago to round up alumni for a more active chapter that draws alumni to seminars and potlucks held six times a year. Annapolis and Boston report newly revived chapters and interesting ideas for events. Additionally, two reading groups in Pittsburgh and Western New England held events to measure alumni interest in forming a chapter in their areas. Alumni in those areas contacted the alumni office close to them and received assistance in getting started. Many chapters were visited during 2002 by Santa Fe President John Balkcom or Annapolis President Chris Nelson or other college staff, who usually lead a seminar or participate in a reception. Several chapters assisted Philanthropia in planning fundraising events. In 2002, 14 of the 18 chapters had a president or other representative attend at least one of the four annual Alumni Association meetings, giving chapters a significant voice within the association. x �48 {St. John’s Forever} alfr ed eisenstaedt, life magazine Tutor James S. Martin delivers a lecture in 1940. This picture from the archives of Greenfield Library was originally published in Life Magazine as part of a major feature on the college. Martin, who joined the college from the University of Chicago, went on to hold a number of positions with the college. I n the 1937 supplement to the Bulletin of St. John’s College, Scott Buchanan set the criteria for formal lectures: “The liberal arts operate in the light of principles which constitute the liberal sciences. These sciences will be progressively expounded in formal lectures by various members of the staff as the course proceeds. They will be expository and critical also of themes that arise in the reading of the books.” Initially, lectures were held twice weekly. J.Winfree Smith wrote in A Search for the Liberal College that a few years after the New Program was adopted, the Friday night lecture and discussion period following it became tradition. Of its place in the Program today, Santa Fe Dean David Levine says: “Lectures are an opportunity for us to discover questions we didn’t have before, to develop new interest in texts that are both new and familiar to us, and to see how others think deeply about other important matters.” x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �{Alumni Events Calendar} Datebook Summer in Santa Fe June 29—July 4, 2003 Summer Alumni Program Week 1 Homecoming Events Reunion classes: 68, 73, 78, 83, 88, 93, and 98 Friday, July 4 Registration and hospitality—4 to 6 p.m. Grecian Picnic—5:30 p.m. Katy Moffatt (SF73) concert—7:30 p.m. Rock ’n’ Roll Party—9 p.m. Saturday, July 5 Registration—9 to 10 a.m. Alumni seminars, children’s activities —10 a.m. Fiesta Picnic—Noon All-alumni welcome-back gathering —1:30 p.m. Lecture—5 p.m. All-Alumni Art Show opening—6 p.m. Cocktail reception—6 p.m. Homecoming happenings in Santa Fe, July 2002 Alex Gammon (A94), Katherine Nehring (A03), and Bryce Heavner (A93) enjoy sushi and small talk in Annapolis. Sunday, July 6 President’s Brunch—11 a.m. July 4—28, 2003 Alumni Art Show July 6—11, 2003 Summer Alumni Program, Week 2 Fall in Annapolis Homecoming Events Reunion classes: 33, 38, 43, 48, 53, 58, 63, 68, 73, 78, 83, 88, 93, 98 Friday, September 12 Registration and lecture, wine and cheese with seniors Saturday, September 13 Seminars, picnic, Alumni Association Annual Meeting, and Homecoming Banquet Reception for the Class of 2003 More than 100 graduating seniors and alumni came together March 23 for a reception geared to connecting graduating seniors with Annapolis- area alumni. Alumni said they enjoyed meeting graduating seniors and talking about their varied career paths. For their part, the students gained perspective on the job market, law school, and other post-graduation plans. The event was sponsored by the Annapolis Alumni and Placement offices. Sunday, September 14 President’s Brunch { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2003 } �P ERIODICALS P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 2003 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 29, Issue 2 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2003. 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_2003 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/b6b50290f2bf08b23c0b09a5067e5e85.pdf 74038a96af953c82c5fe4e22a60cafa5 PDF Text Text �On O’Connor “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time andplace and eternity somehow meet. His problem is tofind that location. ” STJOHN’S College ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE lannery O’Connor’s fiction tends to elicit strong reactions from her F readers. Some object to the mixture of comedy and pathos (country girl wooed for her wooden leg) and the blend of the mundane and shocking (senseless violence emerges from a clear blue day on a lonely country The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapohs, MD and Santa Fe, NM readers was uncomfortable. OthersCeorgia, are entirely devoted toon hertoand will Mary Flannery O’Connor born in Savannah, in 1925, went earn a read and re-read her fiction, prose, and letters, even as they feel the discomfort sociology degree at the Georgia State College for Women, and studied at the Iowa Writer’s Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 and discordance witnesses to anfirst accident to beLiterary lookingconnections so closely. In the interest Workshop, whereofshe began her novel. ashamed Wise Blood. made in Iowa, of full editors of’sThe Colleger admit to in devotion: wc She havewas been scheming to get who and disclosure, later at the the Yaddo writer colony, helped her her career. a devout Catholic Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD road). The freaks, misfits, and fools who populate her world make many O ’Connor on the cover for now, and here is in her rightful corresponded regularly witha while Thomas Merton, theshe Trappist monk who place. shared her love of writing along with her deep faith. She suffered from lupus, the wasting disease that killed her father when she was 15. (It left her near death in 1950.) She was proud of being a Southerner and loved many aspects of the quiet rural life she was forced to live in Milledgeville because her illness left her dependent on her mother’s care. On the family’s dairy farm, she raised peafowl that dined on her mother’s Herbert Hoover roses. She wrote, she explained, because she had a gift lor it. O’Connor wa.s often amused by those critics who tried to label her. She argued eloquently with those who insisted that something “socially uplifting’’ must come from fiction: “The novelist must be characterized not by his function but by his vision, and we must remember that his vision has to be transmitted and that the limitations and blind spots of his audience will very definitely affect the way he is able to show what he sees” {Mystery and Manners}. The focus of this issue, “Revelation,” was one of her last stories, published a few months before she died on Aug. 3,196/,. We know from her letters that the story was inspired by a visit to the doctor’s office and that she wasn’t making fun of her protagonist or offering her up for scorn: “I like Mrs. Turpin as well as Mary Grace. You got to be a very big woman to shout at the Lord across a hogjten” {The Habit ofBeingY O’Connor made her first appearance on the Read­ ing List of St. John’s College in 1989 with “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” Throughout the years, the standard reading has been “Parker’s Back.” In addition to paying homage to a favorite Program author. The College accomplishes another important goal in this issue by showing off the tutors and the interesting things they have to say when we give them a chance. We posed a question about the short story “Revela­ tion” to a group of tutors from both campuses, and they approached it with zeal. (Advancement vice president Barbara Goyette, A73, wa.s inspired by a church sermon to contribute an essay.) To get the most from this feature, read or revisit “Revelation” before exploring these essays. -RH Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. postmaster: Annapolis 410-626-2539 reharty@sjca.edu Rosemary Harty, editor Sussan Borden, managing editor Jennifer Behrens, art director Advisory Board John Christensen Harvey Flaumenhaft Roberta Gable Barbara Goyette Kathryn Heines Pamela Kraus Joseph Macfarland Jo Ann Mattson Eric Salem Brother Robert Smith Santa Fe 505-984-6104 alumni@sjcsf.edu John Hartnett, Santa Fe editor Advisory Board Michael Franco David Levine Andra Maguran Margaret Odell Roxanne Seagraves Mark St. John Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �"I “I v„. College The ZINE FOR Alumni of t St. John’s College Annapolis • {Contents} PAGE JO DEPARTMENTS Revelations a FROM THE BELL TOWERS A routine visit to a doctor’s office ends in a painful revelation for a self-satisfied farmer’s wife. But what is really being revealed? Pondering Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation.” • • • • • • Santa Fe Initiative invests in student life. A new Web site debuts. Johnnies and Journalism Mids and Johnnies on Thoreau Middle States affirms accreditation. Wine, art, and conversation PAGE 2izj. 9 LETTERS The Habit oe Writing PAGE la Chris Lynch (A87) on Machiavelli’s Art of War A GI alumna considers the lost art and missed opportunities of letter writing. PAGE 30 BIBLIOFILE 35 ALUMNI NOTES 2i6 PROFILES 31 Tias Little (EC98) brings Eastern classics to yoga. 34 Ben Bloom (A97) finds fame. 38 Owen Kelley (A93) pursues monster hurricanes. The Mind in Winter The challenges of the examined life keep Johnnies young. PAGE Zj.6 41 STUDENT VOICES Summer at Stag’s Leap Is wanting good grades a bad thing for Johnnies? Fine wine, good company, and seminars make a traditional Northern Cahfornia chapter event a popular summer tradition. 44 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS 48 ST. John’s forever PAGE 46 ON THE COVER Flannery O 'Connor Illustration by David Johnson �{From the Bell Towers} The Santa Fe Initiative Concerned by the toll deferred maintenance was beginning to take on the Santa Fe campus, the college’s Management Committee came up with a comprehensive plan: the Santa Fe Initiative, a $4.5 miUion investment in buildings and grounds, improved staffing in the areas of student life, and immediate upgrades to two of the campus’ six laboratories. When he unveiled the commit­ tee’s initiative to the college’s Board of Visitors and Gover­ nors, Annapolis President Christopher Nelson, interim president in Santa Fe, received a standing ovation from the board. The reception from tutors at a Santa Fe faculty meeting was equally enthusiastic. For Nelson, serving as interim president of the Santa Fe campus in addition to his regular duties in Annapolis, the need for an immediate injection of capital to the Western cam­ pus was apparent. Even as the college plans a Capital Cam­ paign to fund a strategic plan of long-needed initiatives such as raising faculty salaries, Santa Fe’s needs couldn’t wait. Nelson had already seen what could happen to a campus during lean years: the Annapolis campus found it expensive and time­ consuming to catch up on main­ tenance deferred when funding for improvements was unavail­ able in the early 1990s. “With the Santa Fe initiative we are jump-starting a program of improving opportunities for students outside the classroom and for the improvement of buildings and grounds,” says Nelson. “This is just the start of what we need to do over an annual or intermittent basis over a period of a decade or more. We’ve invested about $35 million in the Annapolis physi­ cal plant over the last 13 years. We don’t want to see Santa Fe’s physical plant deteriorate to the level that Annapolis was.” The purpose of the plan is to make the kind of improve­ ments that will encourage student retention and enable the admissions office to attract a larger pool of qualified appli­ cants to Santa Fe. Thus the initiative focuses on areas that affect student life, the appear­ ance of the campus, and the operation of the admissions and financial aid offices. At the same time, the college will provide funding for an internship program similar to the Annapolis program funded by The Hodson Trust while the college seeks long-term grant support for internships. Costs for the Santa Fe Initia­ tive will represent a a percent ''This isjust the start ofwhat we need to do over an annual or intermittent basis... ” Christopher Nelson, Annapolis President increase in the operating budg­ et each year. The funds for the initiative will come from unre­ stricted endowment funds and early unrestricted gifts to the college’s Capital Campaign, expected to officially begin in June 2005, Improvements that affect stu­ dent life include funding for additional staff in the Assistant Dean’s office. Career Services office. Security, and Student Activities office. Facilities improvements include renovat­ ing the laborato­ ries; resurfacing all roadways and parking lots, curbs, and cen­ trally located walkways; adding a new parking lot; replacing After 40 years, THE Santa Fe CAMPUS IS SHOW­ ING SIGNS OF AGE. {The College- St. John’s College • Spring 2004 } hardscape between the upper dorms and Peterson Student Center; repairing concrete walls and steps; installing uniform campus lighting; installing patios for outdoor study and social fife; and adding attractive signs and a security kiosk at a more formal campus entrance. Some funding for a director of buildings and grounds and an additional maintenance staff member is also included. While it will mean significant short-term improvements in Santa Fe, Nelson emphasizes that the initiative is just a start­ ing point: “The campus needs an investment of about $30 million over time: new dormi­ tories, a home for the Graduate Institute and a new lecture hall, renovations of the Evans Science Laboratory, plus additional renovations campus-wide. For so many years, we’ve sacrificed every­ thing else to the Program. We’re on a slow, steady plan of improvement that requires investments to make up for deferred maintenance, for poor salaries, and insufficient student services-it’s time to turn our attention to them with­ out taking anything away from the Program.” To oversee the implementa­ tion of the initiative, Annapolis treasurer H. Fred “Bud” Billups (HA03) will assume a new college-wide position as special assistant to the chair of the Management Committee (a position that alternates between the two campus presi­ dents). Billups will split his time between the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses, providing oversight over the two admis­ sions offices, the two financial aid offices, and the college-wide Information Technology office. He will prepare a college-wide budget that will allocate annual operating funds between the campuses. 4^-Rosemary Harty �{From the Bell Towers} 3 One College, One Web Ifyou can make the time to search all of the 4,285,199,774 Web pages available through the search engine Google, let us know ifyou find another college with a Web site like St. John’swhere the dominant image is of a chair and the valuable center real estate is not a shot of smihng stu­ dents or the beautiful campus, but ofwords: the names of great book authors. On March i, after two years of planning and gathering comments from as wide a sector of the St. John’s community as possible, the college launched the new site: www.stjohnscollege.edu. Previously, the col­ lege’s student-designed site diverged into two separate paths for the Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses right after the home page. This new site was designed from the start to present St. John’s as one college with two campuses. Thus what is emphasized is the common curriculum and the prevailing Johnnie culture. The front-page tour is also a departure. The links in this Web tour introduce Johnnies and their wide range of reasons for attending the college, the unique and lively community of learners, the Santa Fe and Annapolis communities, and the chair thing. Alert visitors will also find surprises-“Easter eggs” in Web lingo-on the front page. The new Web site was designed to introduce the college to prospective students and to better serve alumni, current stu­ dents, parents, faculty and staff, and the communities of Annapo­ lis and Santa Fe. The alumni sec­ tion, developed with extensive input from Alumni Association president Glenda Eoyang and a team of alumni testers, offers something particularly useful: a secure, password-protected online Alumni Register. Previously, the college issued a printed directory of alumni every five years. With support and guidance from the associa­ tion, the college now offers this directory online. The search for­ mat allows alumni to look up classmates, find alumni in a new city, or identify a group of alum­ ni working in a particular field. Like many areas of the Web site, the directory is a work in progress. Information in the Register is drawn from two separate databases, and the program the college uses to “marry” the data often falls short of the ideal. The college’s Information Technology and advancement staffs are working to remedy this. The more alumni who use the database to update their records, the more accurate the register will be. A few caveats: to protect alumni privacy and restrict the directory to alumni, the system currently requires the college to authenticate each user who attempts to log in. Once an alumnus regis­ ters, it will take college staff about two busi­ ness days to pro­ vide a password that will grant access. Similarly, any changes made to an indi­ vidual record will take a few days to appear. Alumni can choose at any time to restrict their information to “name only” or to not appear in the Register. If you encounter any difficulty with the Register or the Alumni section, or have thoughts about how the Web site can better serve alumni, contact either of the alumni directors: in Annapolis, Jo Ann Mattson at 410-626-2531; in Santa Fe, Roxanne Seagraves at 505-984-6103. Diving with Sharks in South Africa OR Wrestling with Plato in Santa Fe? Along with articles about pumping iron and healthy eat­ ing, the April edition of Men’s Health listed Santa Fe’s Sum­ mer Classics among its “25 Greatest Getaways for Men.” “We’ve found the best places you’ve never been,” the article begins-“high-point adventures you can plan right now and brag about for years.” The fea­ ture lists opportunities such as climbing the sand dunes of Namibia, cage-diving with Great White sharks in South Africa, and piloting a subma­ rine in Mexico. Studying the classics at St. John’s sounds pretty cool, too: “Do you really want to check out of this life without having known what Shakespeare, Mozart, and Tol­ stoy were going on about? Take {The College- a crash course in the human experience-and spend a sab­ batical summer to rememberby registering at St. John’s Col­ lege, where laymen are invited to delve into the great works of man in small classes....” This year’s Summer Classics offerings are luxuriously eclec­ tic, combining classics of the East and West with modern fiction and a generous serving of music. The first week, July rr-i6, features Joseph Conrad and Henry James, Xenophon, and Freud in the morning; in the afternoon participants take on the stories and short novels of Dostoevsky and Gregorian Chant, During week two, July 18-23, morning session participants St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } can choose from Mozart or Lao Tzu, or Jane Austen paired with Shakespeare. Afternoon partic­ ipants can take on Copernican meditations, the short stories of Thomas Mann, or the Platonic dialogues Laches, Charminides, otEuthyphro. The third week, July 25-30, features a.m, offerings of Mahler, the Yoga Visitha, and Spinoza. In the afternoon par­ ticipants can study Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenolo­ gy ofPerception, Montaigne essays, or Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! The full schedule of seminars and tutors are available on the college Web site: www.sqohnscollege.edu. �{From the Bell Towers} Journalistic Johnnies The Gadfly What Dfcl You Do During the Hurricane? The Moon ^z/z^/The Gadfly/ Politics, Poetry, Punditry Of the four individuals who edited the student newspapers in Annapolis and Santa Fe this past academic year, not one has the shghtest interest in pursuing a journahsm career. Yes, it had crossed their minds at one point or another, hut they have all talked themselves out of it. Cathy Keene, a rising junior in Annapolis who helped edit The Gadfly for two years, admits to being a deadhne junkie and loves being in the know on controversies or breaking news. But one summer spent working at a magazine convinced her she should consider another way to make a living. “Too much stress,” she explains. Ian McCracken, her co-editor this year, is graduating and head­ ing to law school. Santa Fe Moon co-editor Jonathan Morgan, a senior, is more interested in biotechnology; senior Margaret Garry is now leaning toward law school and politics. So, if it’s not a career goal that tethers these individuals to to to 12 hours a week of writing, edit­ ing, and production headacheson top ofwork-study jobs and all the regular rigors of the Program- what is it? “1 have no idea why 1 do it,” Keene admits. “We’re all friends at The Gadfly, and it’s really fun getting it out every week. It gives me a real connec­ tion to the Polity.” “We get to produce this little snapshot of St. John’s,” says Garry. “And it’s really cool seeing the Moon come together, from somebody’s idea to publication.” The two periodicals differ significantly in graphic style, content, and tone. The Gadfly is heavy on politics and Polity issues; fiction and poetry are more hkely to turn up in the Moon (though it doesn’t shy away from hard news either). The Gadfly savors the backand-forth of intellectual argu­ ments between two people j that can span several issues. In the Moon, the “campus moralist” expounds on issues of student conduct; The Gad­ fly has “You Make the Gall,” athletic director Leo Pickens’ regular sports rules quiz. Consider some of the offer­ ings in Volume 8, Issue 4, of the Moon', an opinion piece honor­ ing military veterans; a feature on the Web site bartcop.com, a first-person parody of a seminar on The Runaway Bunny, an explanation of the Student Review Board, a think piece about the value of studying clas­ sical languages, an investigative report on problems concerning a Common Room, and a science­ fiction fantasy offering on “Poster Wars.” And Volume 25, Issue 20, of The Gadfly: of review of tutors’ performance of The Birds', an extensive piece on a cover-up by the liberal media, three-and-ahalf pages of letters to the edi­ tors, a review of Mr. Grenke’s Friday-night lecture on Kant, and “Why 1 Hate George W. Bush, the Final Installment,” including the author’s offer of a cup of coffee for those who would sit down and talk with him about their opposing views. Both publications attracted controversy this year. The Gad­ fly was delayed when assistant dean Judith Seeger and student services director Joy Kaplan decided two stories should not run. One included potentially libelous material, the other con­ fidential college information. Seeger doesn’t see her role as a watchdog; she reviews the publication with an eye to {The College- protecting the college from law­ suits. “We have occasionally seen things that we think are sometimes cruel, and we’ll say ‘do you really want to put that in your paper?’ And some­ times they have listened and reconsidered.” The Gadfly was also blasted for running a sham review submitted by two students on a movie they called “Tough Jew.” “What really got people mad was the photo we ran with it-Leo Strauss. The cutline was: ‘Leo Strauss: tough?’ One tutor wrote in and said, basically, ‘how dare you?’ We were totally blown away by the response. We defended ourselves, and then we learned the movie was a fake-we looked even stupider. It was a learning experience,” Keene says. The Moon editors also had a learning experience in the Santa Fe campus response to the newspaper’s “2003 Dirty Poetry Contest” issue last fall. The issue included photographs of female students that some in the campus community consid­ ered racy; others considered them degrading. “There were several different objections to the issue from faculty members, the administra­ tion, even a couple of students,” Morgan says. “I think the most valid point is that showing certain students in that frame­ work contributed to kind of an uncomfortable classroom environment. I hadn’t really St. John’s College • Spring 2004 } thought it was that immense of a deal. People have bodies.” After Morgan and Garry sent a letter to the faculty apologizing for the issue, and promising to be more responsive in the future, a proposed resolution condemning the Moon turned into a resolution supporting the newspaper. “I regret that we offended some people, but I still think it was a great issue because it got people’s atten­ tion,” he says. While both publications accept advertisements, they’re not self-supporting and, like other student groups, get fund­ ing allocated by the college. McCracken believes the publica­ tions might be better if they were independent and funded by ad revenue. “Given all the guidefines, I sometimes think it would be easier if we weren’t affiliated with the school. I know of people who would write more things if they knew their copy wasn’t going to be reviewed by the administration first,” he says. Morgan hopes future Moon editors work to maintain the publication as a voice for students. “I like that the Moon doesn’t have a strict focus, that we can have poetry and artwork, a commentary on Dante’s Inferno or the Iliad, philosophical pieces and funny pieces,” he says. “I like the creativity. ”4-Rosemary Harty �{From the Bell Towers} 5 A Meeting of Mids: Students Launch Joint Seminars with the Naval Academy The Johnnies wore jeans and t-shirts and lounged comfortably at the seminar table. Bolt upright in their chairs, white caps set neatly in front of them on the table, the midshipmen were clad in their dark uniforms and polished shoes. As they spoke, they looked to the semi­ nar leaders, tutor Louis Miller and Naval Academy Professor Lt. David Bonfili, and resisted the urge to raise their hands. The text before the group of to students was Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedi­ ence.” Miller’s opening ques­ tion drew from Thoreau’s words: “Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?-in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable?” For two hours, students grappled with the text not as students from a military academy or liberal arts college, but as intelligent, self-directed individuals eager to grasp the heart of an idea. The discussion quickly drew out strong responses, but it didn’t evolve into a debate between students from the two institutions. Thoreau’s stance on not paying taxes and his views about resisting an unjust government were seen by some of the midshipmen as ideological luxuries. One midshipman was distinctly annoyed by what he described as Thoreau’s “arrogant” ideal­ Junior Rachel Hall AND Midshipman David Buck ism. “He’d like to be a martyr, but he’s not,” said a midship­ man who pointed out that Thoreau did not resist when his friends bailed him out of jail. And several studentsJohnnies and mids alikedisagreed with Thoreau’s stance that it was not his “business” to petition the government to remedy what he viewed as unjust laws. Saida Johnnie, “Thoreau believes that we won’t need gov­ ernment if we’re enlightened.” Enlightenment is a fine thing, a midshipman coun­ tered. But who will build the roads? Can we convene a government just when we need one to accomplish some particular goal? Can we call up a military force only when under attack? One of the midshipmen said that governments do make bad decisions and meddle in per­ sonal liberty; citizens should protest when a government’s actions are unjust. “There are people who don’t have any­ thing to do with me making {The College. decisions about how I live my life,” she said. “Not all of us,” said another midshipman, “can be Martin Luther King or Gandhi. If everyone stopped supporting the government, I don’t know where we’d be today.” After the seminar, the group gathered in the Great Hall with the participants of the five other seminars, about 70 in total. Midshipman David Buck attended all three semi­ nars, partly out of interest in the readings, but also because his girlfriend, St. John’s junior Rachel Hall, helped to organ­ ize them. Hall hit on the idea when she began reading Sun Tsu’s The Art of War last year and found she wanted to dis­ cuss it with a group of people. She brought the idea to Navy Professor David Garren, and Garren helped recruit Navy co-leaders and organize the seminars. “He was very enthu­ siastic about it,” said Hall, who found St. John’s tutors were also pleased to partici­ pate. The first seminar, in St. Jo hn’s College ■ Spring 2004 } January 2003, was on Sun Tsu’s The Art of War. Johnnies went to the Naval Academy to discuss Plato’s Crito last fall. Jacob Thomas, a junior, found the Thoreau seminar the best of the three so far, because mid­ shipmen had caught on to the dynamic of seminar. In discus­ sion of Sun Tsu, their superior military knowledge tended to lead them to dominate the conversations, he said. “But this time, they really became involved in the discus­ sion and in Thoreau’s ideas, which was wonderful,” said Thomas. “It’s good for our students to be exposed to each other,” said Lt. Bonfili, a political science professor. “I see the diversity of opinions coming out.” Having encountered John­ nies during waltz parties, croquet, and Reality, Buck has been impressed with the intellectual side of St. John’s. Still, he added, “Johnnies are crazier than mids.” Like croquet, the joint seminars seem to have become another tradition, says junior Mark Ingham, who helped organize the seminars. “The more you talk with the mid­ shipmen, the less intimidated you are by the uniform,” he said. -Rosemary Harty �{From the Bell Towers} 6 News and Announce­ and in Santa Fe from 1989-96 before she came to Annapolis in 1997- ments Steve Linhard, assistant Appointments In the Graduate Institutes, effective June i: Tutor Krishnan Venkatesh becomes director in Santa Fe; tutor Joan Silver the director in Annapolis. Venkatesh has been a tutor since 1989. He earned a bachelor’s in English from Magdalene College, Cambridge. He spent more than three years conducting postdoctoral research in Shakespeare and Renaissance English at the University of Muenster, West Germany, and later taught at Shanxi Universi­ ty, People’s Republic of China, where he helped develop an ESL curriculum. Silver earned her bachelor’s degree from the State Univer­ sity of New York, College at Old Westbury, a master’s from St. John’s, and a doctorate in Theology and the Arts from Graduate Theological Union. She was a tutor in Annapolis from 1974-77, a tutor for several summers beginning in 1985, Middle States Review Annapolis Appointment St. John’s in Annapolis has earned a lo-year reaccreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The college’s accreditation was reaffirmed at the March meeting of the commission and followed a review of the college’s extensive self-study. A report from the evaluation team affirmed that St. John’s is carrying out its educational objectives. The college community found its opening words most gratifying: “St. John’s College (SJC) deserves its reputation as one of the best and most distinctive institutions in the United States, indeed the world. The College has a long and unswerving history of commitment to a single ideal: the life of the mind as principally represented in the great books of the Western tradition. Everything in the educational program evolves from this ideal and it has worn well over many years. By design, change occurs slowly at SJC and this deliberateness buffers the College from the swings of fad and momentary diversions that often plague other sectors of higher education.” The college this year also sought accreditation from the American Academy for Liberal Education; a decision from the AALE is pending. treasurer in Annapolis, will fill the position of treasurer on the recommendation of St. John’s President Christopher Nelson and the campus faculty. The college’s board approved the appointment. Linhard came to the college in 1997 as con­ troller. Prior, he was the accounting manager/ controller for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. New Staff in Santa Fe Doug Single joins the college as director for college-wide major gifts. He brings extensive fund-raising and management experience to the new position. After earn­ ing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from Stanford University, Single became associate director of athletics and assistant football coach at Stanford; he also served as athletic director at Southern Methodist and Northwestern universities. Single recently served as chief executive officer of the David Douglas Marketing Group in San Francisco. John Hartnett (SF83) has been named communications director. Hartnett attended the Santa Fe campus before going on to earn undergradu­ ate degrees in philosophy and economics from the University of Illinois. He also holds a master’s degree in writing from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn. Most recently, he was the president of his own marketing communica­ tions company. 4" Consider Consolidating Alumni with student loans may want to look into consolidating them into one fixed-rate loan, the college’s Financial Aid offices advise. Student-loan consolidation involves paying off current federal education loans in full and creating a new loan with a new interest rate and repayment term up to 30 years. Federal Stafford and PLUS loans charge variable rates that are set by formulas based on the last auction of 91day U.S. Treasury bills in May. Federal consolidation loans, however, carry fixed rates that are based on the rates of the loans being consolidated. In recent years, the variable student loan rate, determined by the government, has been at record lows (3.4 percent on Stafford loans in May), but interest rates are expected to rise this year. Parents of college students who have taken out PLUS loans may also consoli­ date these loans at current rates. There’s another reason to act quickly, says Caroline Chris­ tensen, financial aid director in Annapolis. Legislation expected {The College -Sf. to come before Congress as part of its renewal of the Higher Education Act this year could turn that low fixed rate into a variable rate in the future. Proponents of the bill say the government is losing millions in subsidies it pays to lenders and want the savings directed to other aid programs for currently-enrolled students. However, new alumni face complications. “Ifyou consoli­ date during your six-month grace period, you lock in at the in-school rate, currently 2.82 percent,” Christensen says. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 } “What ifyou lock in at 2.82 per­ cent, then rates drop on June 30? You’ll have a higher rate for the fife of your loan, in addition to losing remaining months of interest-free grace period when you consolidate. So you want to wait until very close to the end of your grace period.” Contact your lender or the Financial Aid office on either campus: in Annapolis, 410-626-2503; in Santa Fe, 505-984-6058. Information on researching and comparing loan programs is available at www.estudent.com. �{From the Bell Towers} Board Approves Polity Amendments Among the many actions it took at its quarterly meeting in April, the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors approved a change to the college Polity, the governing document for St. John’s College. The Management Committee-which oversees non-aca­ demic policy and coordinates administration of the two campuses-was made a permanent part of the St. John’s governing structure. The Management Committee was established in 3000 and included as an addi­ tion to the Polity with a five-year sunset clause. The board voted to delete the sunset clause, thus continuing the committee. This action represents the culmination of a several-year review of the Pohty, which also resulted in a rewording to reflect gender-neutral language and 10 amendments being passed in April 3003. One of these amendments-the addition of sexual orientation to the college’s non-discrimination poUcy-had been controversial a decade ago. During a review of the Polity in r993, the board failed to adopt an amendment that specifically prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Five years later, in 1998, the issue was not even raised. “The first time it came up, it was so bitter, so divisive, that people were afraid to bring it up again,” said Jean FitzSimon (A73), a lawyer who served on the board committee that took up the most recent review of the document. Original resist­ ance to adding to the document was centered on the belief that discrimination based on sexual orientation was covered by other laws, and therefore did not need to be spelled out, FitzSimon said. FitzSimon and other commit­ tee members believed other­ wise: “Even if it [discrimination] isn’t happening at the college, the Pohty is the Polity. We talked about the public nature of this document, and we felt that this was something that had to be speUed out,” FitzSimon said. This time around the Polity Review Committee, led by Greg Curtis, did bring up the issue as it began to work through possi­ ble revisions in 3003. This com­ mittee recommended, and the Board adopted, a revised non-discrimination clause: “There shall be no discrimi­ nation at St. John’s College in appointments, conditions of employment, admissions, educational policy, financial aid programs, athletics, or other activities, on the basis of race, religion, age, sex, national origin, color, disabiUty and/or physical handicap, sexual orien­ tation, or other characteristic protected by any applicable federal, state or local law.” In the Nick of Time A TRAFFIC STOP ON THEIR WAY TO THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE NEARLY MADE THIS GROUP OF AnNAPOLIS SENIORS MISS THE MIDNIGHT DEADLINE FOR TURNING IN THEIR SENIOR ESSAYS. (ThE POLICE OFFICER WAS UNIMPRESSED WITH THE students’ PLEAS TO LET THEM GO ON THEIR WAY.) FrOM LEFT TO RIGHT ARE DeAN HaRVEY Flaumenhaft, Justin Berrier, Hayden Brockett, Melissa Thomas, and Joseph Method. A rattled Thomas is more than ready to hand over copies of her essay, “Reconciling Faith with Action.” {The College ■ St. Jo hn ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 } 7 Taxing Bachelors As Maryland’s legislators grap­ pled this spring with measures to raise money for the state’s coffers, word of an innovative approach from the past-a tax on bachelors-reached The College, thanks to Richard Israel, retired Maryland assistant attorney general. While browsing through pages of General Assembly proceed­ ings, Israel found that in 1761 legislators issued a series of proposals for funding a college that eventually resulted in St. John’s. The “batchelor’s tax” was expected to have a value of 500 pounds or more, according to a bill aimed at acquiring Bladen’s Folly, now McDowell Hall. Listed also were 600 pounds to be raised through licenses for public ordinaries (pubs), 150 pounds from taxes on wheel carriages, and 90 pounds through fees on card and billiard tables. The idea wasn’t just to raise money, but also to encourage single men to settle down, as Israel found in the Acts of the General Assembly, 1755-56: “Forasmuch as Divine Institu­ tions ought to be strictly observed in every well-regulated Government, and as that in Regard to the entering into the holy Estate of Matrimony may tend to the more orderly Propa­ gation of Mankind, it ought, not only in a rehgious, but pohtical View, to be promoted, and the continuing in a State of Gehbacy discountenanced, especially in every Infant Country.” The measure, however, was never signed into law. After several subsequent attempts, St. John’s was chartered as a college in 1784, soon after the end of the Revolutionary War. The charter provided that the college would be financed by the revenue from several different taxes. — Rebecca Wilson (AGI82) �{From the Bell Towers} 8 Fun-Raising, East and West Art, Wine, and Good Conversation Brighten Winter's Dark Nights Two events in January show that alumni and other college support­ ers won’t pass up a chance for self-improvement along with the opportunity to stay connected to St. John’s. Fine wine and good food can’t hurt, either. In Santa Fe, Larry Turley (SF69) brought the extraordinary wines of Turley Wine Cellars to a benefit hosted by the Philos Society-a group of local patrons of the college. The event had wine-lovers buzzing over Turley’s hard-to-find wines, paired with gourmet food. Philos Society Event Features Turley Wines “Wine is the glass ofthe mind. ’’-Erasmus A wine dinner hosted by the Philos Society of St. John’s College brought too people from the Santa Fe community to the rooftop garden room of La Fonda Hotel in January. While the opportunity to learn more about St. John’s College and fine wines attracted many, it was clear that the main attractions were the Napa Valley wines provided by Larry Turley (SF69). After all, there’s a two-year waiting list for Turley’s coveted wines, such as a aooi bottle of The White Coat. The event was limited to 100, and the tickets, at $125 apiece, sold out well in advance. Now the owner of Turley Wine Cellars, Turley earned a medical degree and became an emergency-room physician after leaving St. John’s. He co-founded the Frog’s Leap Winery in 1981, and then moved on to open Turley Wine In Baltimore, Philanthropia (the Alumni Development Council) and President Christopher Nelson hosted a “Conversa­ tion About the State of the College’’ at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Wintry weather in December cancelled the first attempt at the BMA event, but the rescheduled event was well-attendedencouraging Philanthropia to plan future stimulating occasions to keep Johnnies informed and involved in the college. Cellars with his sister, Helen (A67). The hotel’s wine experts and chefs worked to create the night’s dinner menu. The White Coat was paired with appetizers; langostino and goat cheese empanadas with toasted pinon-green apple slaw. Next came the duck confit on greens tossed with chile cascabel-basil vinai­ grette, served with a aooi Pesenti Vineyard Zinfandel. Paired with the third course (pan-roasted chicken breast with white truffle demi-roasted garlic mashed potatoes and sauteed spaghetti squash) was a aooi Hayne Vineyard Zinfandel. A aooi Library Vineyard Petite Syrah accompanied cheese and fruit. The event raised $6,500 for the college’s Annual Fund. Left: Philos board member Charmay Allred shares her APPRECIATION FOR LaRRY Turley’s wine. Above: Richard Morris, A PAST BOARD MEMBER OF THE COLLEGE, AND JeFF BiSHOP (HA96), VICE PRESIDENT FOR COLLEGEWIDE ADVANCEMENT, PERUSE SILENT AUCTION OFFERINGS. {The College. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } Turley donated some of the wine for the event and provided the rest at cost. In his holo tie and denim shirt, he circulated among the guests, talking about wine and wine-making and graciously accepting compliments from wine lovers grateful for a chance to experi­ ence something extraordinary. The Philos Society of St. John’s College was founded to foster and enhance commu­ nication, understanding, and joint activities between the college and its community. Co-chairs of the board are Donn Duncan, M.D., and Robert Zone, M.D. �{From the Bell Towers} 9 Friday at the BMA WITH Chris Thanks to Philanthropia (the Alumni Development Council) and Annapolis President Christopher Nelson, BaltimoreWashington alumni had an opportunity to enjoy a private viewing of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Cone Collection. Afterwards, the 82 alumni gathered for conversation, refreshments catered by The Classic Catering People, owned by Harriet Dopkin (A77), and an update on the college by the president. The sights and sounds of the evening echoed the style of the Cone Collection, creating an impressionistic tableau of delights for the eyes, treats for the tongue, fellowship for the soul, and ample food for thought. Thus, as an homage to the Cone Collection, The College offers its report in the style of the impressionists. The Art time in Paris among the expatriates. It was as though he had memo­ rized all the accompanying notes on the walls. It was great fun hstening to him-he completed the experience for me. I’m not sure going through the Cone Collection will ever be the same. “Although I didn’t ask a question of Chris Nelson, I liked hear­ ing what he had to say, and I know that people felt free to ask him anything about the college. I was reminded that I still don’t know very much about the Santa Fe campus and what its financial needs are, or what those needs grow out of.” Matisse, Purple Robe and Anemones, Interior, Flowers, and Parakeets Picasso, Mother and Child Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire Seenfrom theBibemus Quarry Monet, Waterloo Bridge Van Gogh, Landscape With Figures Fete avec Biere et Vin Caprese skewers of pesto-rubbed grape tomatoes, baby mozzarella, and kalamata olives Dried fig, walnut, and goat cheese tapenade Tenderloin roulades with spinach and portobello mushrooms Jumbo lump crab fondue with a hint of dry sherry and old bay Miniature fruit tarts, petite brownies, raspberry almond bars, and fresh strawberries DeGroen’s micro brew. Banrock Station wine, coffee, tea Report of the President Applicant pool up, attrition down. Graduate Institute-healthy. A new dormitory with water view is being built for 48 students. The Santa Fe Initiative invests $4.5 million in the campus and student life. Gratitude for The Hodson Trust’s $10 million grant, which funded the Mellon renovation and new dormitory. Two or three additional major gifts this year: a possibility. The help and support of aU alumni at all levels of giving: priceless. President Christopher Nelson with Mark Lindley (A67). Stacey Andersen (AGI93): “While we were wandering through the Cone Collection, we noticed it was noisy: not normal museum behavior. Yet we were expected to talk. There’s a commonality we’ve run into with people who’ve gone to St. John’s. There’s a shared dialogue. It’s a tone that was set and carried throughout the evening. I think that’s what led to the discussion that contin­ ued after Chris Nelson gave his introductory talk. We thought the venue for an alumni function was fantastic. Is there abetter place to unleash a group of Johnnies than in a museum? Thank you for giving us the text! ” - SUS3AN Borden, A87 The Reviews Sara Stuart (Ago): “Mark Lindley (A67) must have gone through the Cone Collection before Brad (A89) and I arrived. He was able to teU us about all of the paintings and art objects, and about the Cone sisters’ Above: The feast Right: Sara Larson Stuart (Ago), Brad Stuart (A89), and Philanthropia EVENT CHAIR Steph Takacs (A8g) {The College. 5t. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �{Letters} Febbie Question Answered Wendell Finner’s account of his query concerning SJC’s lack of Eastern authors (Winter 2004) brought back a memory of Douglas Allenbrook that 1 cherish more as political correctness continues to elimi­ nate free speech. During convocation for the Febbie 1980 class, one student asked about the lack of Eastern authors. Without hesitation, and with a charming smile, Mr. Alienbrook replied “...the only thing good that has come out of the East was the Sun.” Memo­ ries like these convince me that St. John’s College is more important than ever to liberal education and free thought. Steven D. Brower (A83) The Lost Languages It was a joy and consolation to read the article about the intensive Latin summer classes in the Fall 2003 issue of The College. It made up for the allegation by a recent commencement speaker that the students in front of him were lucky to have the best education: liberal arts, i.e. trivium and quadrivium-or, as my Munich editor explained to colleagues at the Beck publishing house, the “Septem Artes”'we did at this interesting college in America. Yes, the liberal arts, all seven of them, and four foreign languages, the commencement speaker said: Greek and Latin and German and French. The graduates kept a straight face. Latin had already been dropped from the curriculum when I joined St. John’s in i960. German survived another couple of years; then it, too, was gone. I taught one of the last classes. It was a pleasure, and a profitable one. We read bits of the Luther translation of the Bible, the beginning of Genesis and the opening of the Gospel of John, and the juniors recalled some of the Greek New Testament. We read Lessing and a little Kant (with the surprising earthiness of his vocabulary); we read some Goethe; some of the rhymed caution­ ary tales of Heinrich Hoffmann...and stuck to texts that seemed more memorable and discussable. There was a young man in that class, Jim Forrester (A62). He took the very first [translation], six weeks into the first semester. I was amazed at the result, which included a perfect translation of a page from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. He translated it into real English, not translaterese, and showed an astonishing feel ''Yes, sing ye and chant id andyou il learn to speak and read it.. ” Beate Ruh m von Oppen for nuances. Next time the class met I asked Mr. Forrester if he had been a begin­ ner when we began six weeks ago. He said: “Yes”-and after a moment’s reflection he added: “I’d sung some Bach.” Bach makes the language, especially the biblical language, Luther’s German, memorable. It sticks in the mind-even as some of Picander’s poetry in the St. Matthew Passion does, or perhaps just first words like “Buss undReuf though the Gospel of Matthew itself is more memorable, e.g., “Der Geist ist willig, aber das Fletsch ist schwach ” quotable and even usable in daily life... That remark by Jim Forrester taught me that singing is the best way to learn a language. Perhaps poetry, anything that scans is the next best. So we now leave German (and Latin) to the freshman chorus and the other, voluntary singing groups. Yes, sing ye and chant it! - and you’ll learn to speak and read it... Beate Ruhm von Oppen Tutor Emerita Thailand’s War on Drugs I wanted to address something that [Tiitor Linda] Weiner said in describing her summer in Thailand (Winter 2004). Ms. Weiner suggested that Thailand benefits from an “enlightened monarch” and described the king’s policy of replac­ ing opium farms with organic farms. While the king may be enlightened, Thai­ land’s Prime Minister and police force are not. In Thailand’s own war on drugs, 2,245 people were killed in an anti-drug cam­ paign from February to April 2003. The police admitted to killing 50 themselves, and many others were killed as they returned from police stations. Thai officials have neglected to investigate or prosecute the killings. In August Prime Minister Thaksin said, in reference to drug smugglers crossing from Myanmar to Thailand, “From now on if their trafficking {The College- St. John’s College • Spring 2004 } caravans enter our soil, we won’t waste our time arresting them, but we will simply kill them.” This and other policy statements of the Prime Minister suggest that more extra­ judicial killings will come. The international community, including the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudi­ cial, summary or arbitrary executions; Amnesty International; and the Drug Policy Alliance, have expressed outrage over the human rights abuses stemming from Thailand’s war on drugs. I would hate for Johnnies to get the impression that the program described by Ms. Wiener is indicative of Thai drug policy. More information can be found in the Amnesty International report “Thailand-Grave Developments-Killings and Other Abuses” available atwww.amnesty.org Renate Lunn Room for (A96) Gauss Doing year-end cleaning I chanced upon Sheri McMahon’s letter in the Spring 2003 issue of The College. I guess it’s a recurring topic among alumni who reflect upon the mathematics tutorial. I personally have often thought it a pity not to pursue geometry a little further. I always felt a historical approach to Gauss’s Theorema Eregiurn on curved sur­ faces or something like that might be pos­ sible. Michael Spivak does something along these lines in his Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry. I always felt there was no greater figure left out of the program than Gauss, that there was a route to some of his work in geome­ try that would be accessible to seniors, that it was the perfect context for glimpses of non-Euclidean geometry and general relativity that were offered in the tutorial (nearly three decades ago!), that it has a perfect antecedent in the spherical geometry of Ptolemy. Mark Copper (SF76) Words and Deeds Thank you for the article in the Winter 2004 issue on Santa Fe’s martial artists. The Annapolis campus has also enjoyed the Asian martial traditions over the years. In 1977 tutor David Starr persuaded one of his former philosophy students from the University of Rhode Island, a prodigiously talented gentleman named Robert Galeone, to move to Annapolis to teach the Okinawan system of Uechi-ryu karatedo. continued on nextpage �{Letters} I was Mr, Galeone’s first student at the col­ lege club, which met in one of the handball courts in Iglehart Hall on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and Saturday morn­ ings. Mr. Galeone, a 5th-degree black belt, produced quite a few serious students over the seven years that he led the dojo.... Today, Annapolis students interested in aikido may join the U.S. Naval Academy’s Aikido Club, which holds classes on both the Naval Academy campus and in Iglehart Hall. (For more information, see http://www.geocities.com/navyaikido/.) It seems to me that study and practice of the martial arts, whether from Asia or the West, is essential to the development of a free citizen. Whether the pen is mightier than the sword is not the right question. Rather, why should the study of one pre­ clude the study of the other? To paraphrase a Japanese proverb, in the hands of an educated individual, the sword and the pen are one. Unfortunately, it is too easy for a student of the liberal arts to acquire a great and unjustified faith in the power of speech, along with an all-too-ready skepticism concerning action. Words need the support of deeds. As Mr. Galeone once said, “The body remembers what it does, and not what you tell it.” Martial arts training provides the student with the framework to become as proficient in the world of action as he or she is in the world of reason, by teaching balance, grace, and poise, all while facing an adversary. I hope that students on both campuses will take advantage of the opportunities to pursue these disciplines. Jim Sorrentino (A8o) Calendar Mysteries Revealed I was quite amazed to open the 2004 calendar and find a photo of my high school math teacher (February 2004). He is Thomas Yoon (A58), and he taught me trigonometry and led a philosophy seminar at Scarborough School, in Scarborough, N.Y. My guess is that it was 1967. He was an inspiring teacher with a great sense of humor, and was the one who told me about St. John’s College. Pippi Ellison few lists I have. The whole scene was contrived, which is why there is a smirk on the face of the guy front center and guy left. Girl center was trying to look serious and guy rear was told to pose in an awkward position. The people at the end of the table were told to look at each other. No one has the same book. The photos were intended for a catalog redesign, or a flyer for the admissions office. I was the student aide for Marsha Drennon, then admissions director, and helped find the students and arrange the furni­ ture. Notice how there aren’t any empty chairs? We did have a blast doing the series of pictures around the campus. Michael David (SF87) Dumping Concerns While I found the “Night Crawlers” letter (Winter 2004) somewhat amusing as a piece of black humor, I was taken aback that there was no editorial note as to the state of affairs since the dumping occurred. Has all that stuff been leaching into the ground and water and possibly the creek ever since with nothing being done, or was it cleaned up at some later date? If not, I think [the college] is morally, and perhaps legally, bound to address the prob­ lem. Surely, SJC is not so philosophically preoccupied that it doesn’t care what it does to our environment? Natalie Chambliss (class of 1964) Editor’s Note: Steve Linhard, treasurer on the Annapolis campus, says thatfor an undetermined period oftime, a dumping ground was sited on the college’s back campus. When the college investigated severalyears ago, it uncovered bricks, broken china, bottles. (Aya) The May 2004 photo of students at a table on the dining hall balcony was taken in June or July 1985. It was a PR photo from a whole set of photos taken that day all over the campus. The students in the photo are mostly January freshmen, though I can’t remember or find their names in any of the {The College- St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } cans, kitchen utensils, and similar domestic refuse. “'Testpits were dug by an outside survey company three summers ago, and nothing ofany chemical nature was found,” Linhard says. “In addition, core samples were taken by a geological testing firm to examine the soil contentforfeasibil­ ityfor thermal conductivityfor the geother­ mal heating systemfor the new dormitory. These samples were examined and nothing hazardous was discovered. ” Errata An article in the Fall 2003 issue stated that Hans von Briesen attended and taught at Stanford and the University of Rochester. He attended the universities, but did not teach at them. The reading list on St. John’s history that accompanied an article on the attempted Navy takeover of St. John’s (Winter 2003) should have included these works by Charlotte Fletcher (HA69), former librarian at the Annapolis campus: Cato's Mirania: A Life ofProvost Smith, and “St. John’s ‘For Ever’: Five Essays on the History of King William’s School and St. John’s College,” published in the St. John'sReview (1990-91). The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters maybe edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or The College Magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: rosemary.harty @sjca.edu. �{Revelation} la REVELATION and REDEMPTION hat is the revelation in Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation”? That was the question The College asked of a group of tutors and others in the St. John’s College community. The short essays that follow are presented as thoughtful responses to a question posed in search of gaining more insight into a puzzling and multi-layered short story. If you have not read “Revelation,” or read it long ago, put this feature aside until you can. W Ripe for Revelation by Joan Silver Lastfall I received a letter from a stu­ dent who said she would be “graciously appreciative” if I would tell her “just what enlightenment” I expected her to getfrom each ofmy stories. Isuspect she had apaper to write. I wrote her back to forget about the enlightenment andjust try to enjoy them. I knew that was the most unsatisfactory answer I could have givenbecause, ofcourse, shedidnt want to enjoy them, shejust wanted to figure them out. In most English classes the short story has become a kind of literary specimen {The College -John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } to be dissected. Every time a story of mine appears in a Ereshman anthology, I have a vision ofit, with its little organs laid open, like afrog in a bottle. I realize that a certain amount ofthis what-is-the-significance has to go on, but I think somethinghas gone wrong in theprocess when, for so many students, the story becomes simply a problem to be solved, something which you evapo­ rate to get Instant Enlightenment. A story isn I really very good unless it successfully resistsparaphrase, unless it hangs on and expands in the mind. Properly, you analyze to enjoy, but ids equally true that to analyze with any discrimination, you have to have enjoyed already.. ..” Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners. I will assume that all who have read Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Revela­ tion,” have enjoyed it. We enjoy the story, and her remarks above, somehow as wholes, and also in their humorous and penetrating details. In the spirit of the above remarks, I would like to notice numerous revelations which spring from �{The Colleges?. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �14 {Revelation} ''In a crucial moment ofthat vision, she finds her own kind bringing up the rear... ’ this story, which calls itself “Revelation” in the singular. I hope that together they may “hang on and expand in the mind.” Perhaps the key revelation in the story is the return to Mrs. Turpin of the enraged question she asks of God, “‘Who do you think you are?’”: “The question carried over the pasture and across the highway and the cotton field and returned to her clearly like an answer from heyond the wood.” This answer is a distillation of the revelation already embedded in her earlier questions: “‘How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?’” At this reply, Mrs. Turpin’s mouth opens (is it in wonder or in understanding?), and she does not speak. But this revelation is not the end of the story. Other revelations follow, mediated by a moment in which she imagines the death of her husband, his truck hit by anoth­ er, his “brains all over the road.” Seeing his truck return, she herself begins to move, “hke a monumental statue coming to life.” Only now do initial events of the story receive their answering revelations. An early revelation in the story is that “living demonstra­ tions” are present in the world. When the story begins Mrs. Turpin (who is “very large”) is entering the “very small” waiting room of a doctor’s office; she is said to be a “living demonstration that the room was inadequate and ridicu­ lous.” As the story goes on, of course, we see that the waiting room is exactly the right size for the events which take place in it. A later echo which replies to this apparent “living demonstration” immediately follows Mrs. Turpin’s “coming to hfe.” The “old sow” and young hogs, above whose “pig parlor” she confronts God, find their places in their “waiting room” with ease: “They had settled all in one corner around the old sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suffused them. They appeared to pant with a secret hfe.” It is the sow and the other pigs who become a real “living demonstra­ tion” for Mrs. Turpin and for the reader. Her earher “glow­ ering down” at the hogs and disdaining of others has become a “gazing down”; she “remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge.” {The College - Two more echoes follow. The first is a revelation and echo for Mrs. Turpin and the reader alike; the second, for the read­ er alone. Early on, Mrs. Turpin’s charac­ ter is revealed by one of her inner “games.” In one, she lies awake at night “naming the classes of people.” She sep­ arates and tries to rank human beings by certain combinations of race and proper­ ty, but the real people of her acquain­ tance will not stay put in the places that she gives them: “Usually by the time she had fallen asleep all the classes of people were moiling and roiling around in her head, and she would dream they were all crammed in together in a box car, being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.” The impulse from which such grading and judging spring leads ultimately to the gas chamber-to spiritual and physical death for all. This dream is echoed and transformed at the end by Mrs. Turpin’s vision of the “vast horde of souls rumbling toward heaven” in which all classes and kinds are present. In a crucial moment of that vision, she finds her own kind bringing up the rear: “she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.” Not the fire which makes the gas chamber, but the fire of purgatory is needed. Note, too, that hogs are easier to clean than humans; for pigs, only water is needed. The final echo is concerned with seeing (and with size). Mrs. Turpin’s eyes were initially described as “little bright black eyes . . . [that] sized up the seating situation” and all else around her. After the vision just mentioned, O’Connor tells us that her eyes are “small but fixed unbfinkingiy on what lay ahead.” We may need to ask just what is intended by “what lay ahead,” but, in this changed description, we receive the revelation both that a kind of steadfast looking is necessary for us, and that a transfor­ mation of one’s manner of seeing in the world is possible, (and that size-at least relative human size-does not matter). Among the many other revelations in the story, two seem worthy of note in the context of the ones mentioned above. The first concerns the catalyst for revelation, the St. John’s College • Spring 2004 } �{Revelation} second the capacity to receive it. The story shows revelation-or the beginning of it-coming from the strangest source: Mary Grace. The suffering of one human being, her anger and anguish, gives birth to grace for another. And in Ruby Turpin the story shows inquiry, linked with sin, as a potential path to revelation and grace. Mrs. Turpin’s inner “games” embody inquiry in a strange form: who might I have been if not myself; what is my place with­ in all of humanity? They also, of course, reveal pride mas­ querading as gratitude. This picture remains a revelation, if a comic one, of what can make one ripe for revelation. Joan Silver is a tutor and incoming director ofthe Graduate Institute in Annapolis. In the Eye of 15 Judgment Day by Pamela Kraus Ruby Turpin knows what should be and does her part to make it so. She notices every instance of the messy, dirty, unregulated world. She has her faults, she knows that, but she’s a respectable, church-going woman who always tries to make things right. She keeps pigs-just a few of the preemi­ nent unclean animal-but she’s built them a concrete pen, a “pig-parlor,” to keep them from wallowing in mud and slop, and she hoses them down regularly. On the day of this story Ruby accompanies her husband Claud to the doctor and sizes up the waiting room: it’s small and dirty and filled with slovenly, careless people. To counter the disorder she exer­ cises the best force she can, her good disposition generously Since the emergency, a wrathful Mrs. Turpin has been demanding why Mary Grace called her an old wart hog from hell. Mrs. Turpin is convinced that Jesus sent her the mes­ sage and, though she has negotiated with him before, for once, she finds that defense is futile. She has no one to turn to. She doesn’t trust the cotton-pickers, whose comments she finds intolerable and full of flattery. She can’t confide in Claud (whose name sounds like “clod,” and who can’t shore up her failing faith). She shouts defiantly to Jesus, “Who do you think you are?” The sight of the sun setting in the back pasture, “looking over the paling of trees like a farmer inspecting his own hogs,” triggers the collapse of her carefully-tended beliefs. She inspects her own hogs, who are glowing rosy in the cor­ ner of the pig parlor, and takes in the “abysmal life-giving knowledge” from them-sees, I think, that though there is no one out there measuring each person for a future crown, yet we have the present life. There is no doctor behind the waiting-room door, about to call our names. Mrs. Turpin sees the vast parade of people, carried to heaven on the pur­ ple bridge shouting hallelujah. She knows, for the moment at least, that this is nothing but a dream. Heaven by Basia Miller Mrs. Turpin’s revelation is pretty dark. She has experienced the dark before-at the end of her dreams, everyone is crammed in a boxcar and sent off to a gas oven. Today when she and Claud enter their own dirt road on the way back from the doctor’s, she is ready to see her home destroyed, “a burnt wound between two blackened chimneys.” A few moments before the end, she imagines the pickup truck being crushed and her husband’s and the fieldhands’ brains oozing out on the road. Her final revelation seems, too, to be of a world destroyed, a kind of apocalypse that nevertheless offers “life­ giving knowledge.” First, Mrs. Turpin’s vision was affected in the waiting room. When Mary Grace sent the book flying at her head, Mrs. Turpin saw things smaller first, then she saw everything larg­ er. The impact was particularly powerful because Mrs. Turpin sensed that the girl had a deep, timeless knowledge of her, perhaps of her soul. We who have heard Mrs. Turpin talking incessantly, all afternoon, about her own goodness have to ask if much of this talk isn’t inspired by self-doubt. She’s con­ verted everyone’s gestures, everyone’s shoes, green stamps, Basia Miller is a Santa Fe tutor. and traces of snuff into material for affirming her worth in the eye of heaven, like a person feeding an insatiable hunger. {The College- St. John’s College • Spring 2004 } �i6 {Revelation} ''Thepurgatorial vision reveals all manner of sinners lined up ingroups... bestowed, a veneer of nice manners and char­ • itable platitudes barely covering harsh judg­ ments. This is her way of following the com­ mandment Love Thy Neighbor. Both her justice and her mercy are superficial rather than utterly misplaced. They are poor imita­ tions of the divine, not complete aberrations. Yet they are not harmless: they hold her fast in easygoing self-righteousness and could forever blind her to herself. Mary Grace is the only occupant of the wait­ ing room who won’t submit to Ruby’s intru­ sive geniality. An ugly, cranky, even mean young woman, Mary Grace sees a deeper dis­ order than Ruby sees, and her penetrating eye is right on Ruby Thrpin. Mary Grace waits in the waiting room but is sickened by the world that surrounds her, as if she has taken in its ugliness. She is most revolted at Ruby, its banal and self-satisfied leading citi­ zen. Seemingly lost to charity, or too bur­ dened for it, she freely offers this world her scorn. Each of these judges is drawn to the other from the first as to a perfect enemy. Mary Grace rebuffs Ruby’s attempts at cordial small talk, even when not directed to her, by making grotesque faces. The affronts enliven Ruby’s insistence on the virtue of good-naturedness. The garrulous, prettied-up world of Ruby’s waiting room advances upon the stark, friendless one defended by Mary Grace. When Ruby’s enthu­ siasm reaches its peak, she bursts out in praise: “Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is! ” Mary Grace retal­ iates. She launches her book at Ruby and goes for her throat. Both fall in this battle. Mary Grace inflicts the blows, yet she is the one sedated and removed to a hospital. The purple swelling above Ruby’s eye and the marks on her throat are on the surface; deeper is a more grievous wound. Not the book, not the hands clenched around her throat, but the words Mary Grace whispers as the two lock eyes hit home: “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.” These words “brooked no repudiation.” They strike Ruby’s center of grav­ ity, confusing her sight and toppling her confidence. Ruby is turned, readied for revelation; Mary Grace, an inadvertent {The College- cause of grace, goes to a fate we do not know. The vision of an ugly wart hog besets Ruby all afternoon. Driven by anger, confusion, and need, she spills her story almost in spite of herself to the Black cotton workers in her employ. This veiled plea for compassion is met with highly spirited but superficial concern-the kind of concern Ruby has been so proud of and good at herself, especially with the Blacks-and it angers her to receive it from those she has considered so far beneath her. She goes to her pig-parlor seething as intensely as Mary Grace in the waiting room, turns the hose on the pigs, and, like a comic Job, thrusts question after question at God. The questions begin in a forceful whisper, “How am 1 a hog and me both?”, and reach a summit of fury: “Who do you think you are?”, the fundamental question to which a vision is the mysterious answer. The purgatorial vision reveals all manner of sinners hned up in groups, each rejoicing in its distinctive way, and puts Ruby in her place. Ahead in line are the leapers and rollickers; she, Claud, and the other respectable people are last in the procession, their virtues the sins being burned away. The vision is a reminder of our essential unfitness to understand and follow the commandment to love even when we desire to and a reve­ lation of God’s inscrutable, comic ways. As Ruby stands gaz­ ing upon “what lay ahead” and hearing at the crickets’ chirps hallelujahs of praise, we wonder in what world Ruby now is and whether it may embrace the edge that Mary Grace inhabits. 99 Pamela Kraus, a tutor in Annapolis, also serves as editor of the St. John’s Review. The Private Hell of Ruby Turpin by Cary Stickney Without rereading the story, 1 want to say that the primary revelation is what the girl in the doctor’s office says that St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �{Revelation} wounds Mrs. Turpin so: “You are a warthog from Hell!” Ruby Turpin cannot forget it, and it brings on a kind of crisis of faith, I presume because on some level Mrs. Turpin acknowledges its truth. It is at least in part-the warthog part-an inevitable consequence of existing as a creature in the same cosmos with an infinitely good Creator. In this sense I suppose even archangels are warthogs, compared to the beauty of God. That the warthog is from Hell seems to me to say that we have each taken the finite beauty and goodness we might have had and thrown it away. That is, we are sin­ ners, and we make a kind of hell for ourselves. Looking back at the story I see that the girl in the waiting room says, “Go back to Hell where you came from, you old warthog!” Mrs. Thrpin had been revealing by her conversa­ tion with the girl’s mother that she lives in a world of careful­ ly maintained distinctions, and that she compensates herself for the efforts she makes to be good by looking down on all those who seem not to try as hard. She would not describe her own world as a hell. But I see something hellish in the dream we are told she sometimes has, in which her struggles to 17 maintain the picture of a well-ordered hierarchy of human virtue and vice correlated with property ownership and worth ancestry, to say nothing of skin color, give way to a vision of a cattle-car crowded with every kind of human on the way to a gas oven. In her waking hours, she sees a world in which good people are the exception and things are get­ tingworse. To be “saved,” as she believes she is, requires that she think better of things than that, at least in an ultimate sense, but it looks as if she has reduced God to a scorekeeper and that her gratitude to have been created as the one we see is dependent at least on her fear of and contempt for others. The Wellesley girl, Mary Grace, may see that, and may mean that she is far from heaven and fairly close to hell, so that it would be easy to just go back. Of course being an effective messenger may not require that the aptly named Mary Grace fully understand the message she delivers. Both the aspects of the revelation, that she is a warthog and that she came from Hell, carry with them a redeeming and mysterious grace: namely that in spite of our vanishingly small claim to significance or beauty or even to being at all. {The College -St John’s College • Spring 2004 } �i8 {Revelation} we somehow do exist in the same cosmos with infinite beauty and heing-God has made room for us and wants us to be. That turns out to involve, in the Christian understanding, that He has moreover forgiven us the waste of our time and gifts, the pettiness and cruelty we might have avoided, and that He offers us His love. What Mrs. Turpin demands to know, namely how she can be herself and a hog too, or saved and at the same time from hell, is the mystery that requires a further revelation, or a deeper view of the one she has been given. In the story, Mrs. Turpin is hosing out the hog pen and shaking her fist at God when the shape of the stream of water momentarily comes to resemble a snake. She is at that moment complaining to God that she might as well have never tried to lead a good life at all, if she can be so insulted and feel it so deeply; if, in a word, she is still just a warthog: in spite of all her efforts still essentially no better than the worst of sinners, the most lazy and wicked. This is a form of the temptation to think that she should. Godlike, be able to make herself, to accomphsh her own goodness and merit by her unaided efforts, and thus, implicitly, to know good and evil: to have the right to judge and condemn others presumably less industrious or tasteful than herself. For if it does not ulti­ mately matter what she does, and all saving power remains with God, why has she troubled herself all these years? “Why should we not sin the more, that Grace may abound?” asks Paul, before repudiating the question. The mystery and the final aspect of the revelation, granted in her sunset vision, is that it does and does not matter. It does: before she sees the highway into heaven she has seen the setting sun like a farmer looking over the fence of the treetops at his hogs, and she has seen her own hogs, clean now and gathered around the old sow, the source of their hves, and one kind of image of herself. She gazes “as if through the very heart ofmystery,” and again, “as if she were absorbing some abysmal, life-giving knowledge.” It is a knowledge set off both by the previous sight of her husband’s truck going down the road no bigger than a toy, liable at any moment to be smashed, and by the fact of sunset itself. Even without accident we are not here long. From the abyss, the depths at greatest distance from God, she absorbs the knowl­ edge that life-finite, particular, hog-ugly hfe-precisely in its finitude, is beautiful, is full of God, its secret source. If those hogs are beautiful, then so is she; it is right that she is who she {The College- is. But then it is equally right that others are who they are. Her struggles to do right have not made her superior. When she sees the horde of ascending souls, led by the crazy, lazy, crippled, and off-key, she sees she had to make the efforts she made to be who she is, not because God would not love her otherwise, but because there must be all kinds of saved sin­ ners, and it is a divine gift to be whatever kind you are. It does not matter: the very virtues of the decent and upright like herself are being burned away in the purging fires of the ascent; that is, even their virtues are small and small-minded in the hght of God’s love. That God’s love is not hmited by human wickedness and yet does not annihilate the significance of an individual life is part of the same revelation as that an infinite being should make room for finitude to begin with. Greation and redemption are revealed to be at one. Carey Stickney (A75) is a tutor in Santa Fe. The Presence of Evil by George Russell Flannery O’Gonnor did not write about the lives of the great, but the lives of the ordinary and the lowly. By conse­ quence, the situations and actions of her characters are most often the stuff of comic and not tragic report. One finds himself laughing spontaneously at the human beings in her stories. Nevertheless, she is not condescending to her characters. She takes them seriously, holding them accountable for their weaknesses and transgressions. They may be ridiculous in the smallness of their views and desires, but they suffer nonetheless for their sins, and one is brought to feel for them in their sufferings and in the realizations that their sufferings allow. “Revelation” is a story about a day in the life of Ruby Turpin, a farming woman who, as far as she knows, is “saved” (“And wona these days I know I’ll we-era a crown.”) and who, in her own words is “a respectable, hard­ working, church-going woman.” From the first we are told that Ruby Turpin is a woman, big in size (“I wish I could reduce...”), blessed with a “good disposition” and “a little of everything,” with the emphasis on “everything.” In the story, we see her settled conclusions about the world St. John’s College • Spring 2004 } �{Revelation} around her and her place and identity in that world and in the divine plan come under an unexpected and jarring attack during a visit with her husband to the doctor’s office; and we witness a recovery which is as remarkable as the fall. A story with two distinct parts, “Revelation” in its first part takes place in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. The waiting room is emblematic of the shared human condition. Human beings are susceptible to injury and sickness. And their susceptibility is real; they get injured; they get sick. However that maybe the case, the story is less about bodily injury and illness than it is about another abo­ riginal susceptibility, the proneness to sin and especially to pride. It reminds one of the passage in the Bible from On the Road to Damascus by Michael Dink The revelation that comes to Ruby, in the form of a book thrown by Mary Grace that knocks her off her chair in the doctor’s office, is in essence identical to that which came to Saul, in the form of a flash of light that knocked him to the ground on the road to Damascus. Prior to the revela­ tion, Ruby and Saul shared a sense of their superiority to certain other human beings, a superiority achieved by reg­ ulating their conduct according to certain precepts and recognized in the eyes of God. In Ruby this sense takes the form of a self-congratulating condescension, in which she sees herself as kind and tolerant to those inferiors, while in Saul it took the more aggressive form of trying to pun­ ish or reform those who had strayed from the right path. When Ruby is called “a wart hog from hell” and Saul is asked, “Why do you persecute me?” they are confronted with the claim that they are sinners, certainly no better than those they had despised, and perhaps even worse, precisely because of the claim to righteousness implicit in their despising, a claim that Saul, reborn as Paul, denies that any human being can truthfully make. Ruby struggles valiantly to deny this message, “But the denial had no force.” She resents its being directed to her, “a respectable, hard-working, church-going woman,” 19 Proverbs, “Pride goeth before destruction, and haughty spirit before a fall.” The central dramatic incident that takes place in the first part of the story occurs in the con­ text of a conversation between three women, Mrs. Turpin, a poor white woman, and the mother of a college student named Mary Grace. The conversation of the women, taken together with the reports of the narrator, reveals the pride of the three women and of Mary Grace, but especially that of Ruby Turpin. About Mrs. Turpin we learn early on, that when she is restless and unable to sleep, she has two nocturnal occupa­ tions. In one, she seems to be acutely aware of the contin­ gent character of her present life. Like Eve, who is tempted by an alternative vision of the world, Mrs. Turpin’s imagi- “though there was trash in the room to whom it might justly have been applied.” A kiss from her husband and flattery from the black womenfolk of their hired help fail to assuage her resentment. When she goes to the pig parlor and tries to cleanse the pigs, she speaks out her resentment, evidently to God, indicating that she does recognize the source of the reve­ lation, despite her resistance to it. She continues to justify herself, to defend her innocence, her charity, her superi­ ority to lower orders of people. Her fury bursts forth in a defiant challenge, “Gall me a hog again. From hell. Gall me a wart hog from hell. Put that bottom rail on top. There’ll still be a top and bottom.” After seeing her husband’s truck in the distance as tiny and vulnerable, she gazes at the hogs for a long time, “as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge.” Then she has a vision of a procession of souls marching toward heaven. Leading the way are “the bottom rail,” all the kinds of people she despised, “shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.” Behind them, with “great dignity” but with “shocked and altered faces,” come people like herself and Glaude, and she sees that “even their virtues are being burned away.” In this final vision, she at last sees how she is “saved and from hell too.” Michael Dink fAyjJ is an Annapolis tutor. {The College -5f. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 } �ao {Revelation} Priestess and Visionary by Elizabeth Engel Mrs. Turpin’s revelation builds from the first face the girl makes at her through Mrs. Turpin’s wonderful defiant questions to God as she stands at the pig parlor; “What do you send me a message like that for?” “How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?” The set­ ting sun, now far more mysterious than when Mrs. Turpin saw it, hke her, “looking over the paling of trees like a farmer inspecting his own hogs,” transforms everything. Mrs. Turpin, ignoring the transformation, dares God again and ends with roaring “who do you think you are?” An echo comes back at her “like an answer from beyond the wood.” God answers her by questioning her and her pride, with far more right than she had to question him. Mrs. Turpin begins to see who she really is as she sees the fragility of human life in Claud’s tiny truck, which from her position looks like a child’s toy: “At any moment a bigger truck might smash into it and scatter Claud’s and the nig­ gers’ brains all over the road.” When she has seen the truck home safe, she turns to the pig parlor: “Then, hke a monu­ mental statue coming to life, she bent her head slowly and gazed as if through the very heart of mystery, down into the pig parlor at the hogs. They had settled all in one corner nation brings her to envision the world other than it is. She wonders how things would have gone “If Jesus had said to her before he made her...You can either be a nigger or white-trash.” Her preference, she decides, is for Jesus to have made her “a neat clean respectable Negro woman, herself but black,” changed but still saved, sidestepping the lowly. In her other nocturnal activity, Mrs. Turpin is said to have “occupied herself at night naming the classes of peo­ ple.” She lies awake at night trying to sort out the people in her world into classes, in accordance with their material and social standing in the world. She assumes blindly that she possesses the standard and judgment for the task of sav­ ing and condemning. However, the fluctuations in the for­ tunes of the human beings that she would rank make such a jumble of her very attempts to rank them, that she finally falls off to sleep, imagining them all condemned, (“she would dream they were all crammed together in a box car, being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.”). Her virtues notwithstanding, Mrs. Turpin remains prey to these temp­ tations, and we see her assailed by them too in the light of {The College. around the old sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suf­ fused them. They appeared to pant with a secret life.” The hogs have become beautiful gathered around the maternal and musical old sow, a vision of animal life filled by grace. This is how we can be both hogs and ourselves too. Mrs. Turpin is herself transformed by gazing at the hogs; she becomes a sort of priestess, raising her hands “in a ges­ ture hieratic and profound.” Her transformation allows her final vision, the bridge over which souls are marching towards Paradise. The most respectable, the group she thinks she belongs to, come last, and “even their virtues were beings burned away.” In relation to salvation, virtue doesn’t matter, nor does top and bottom, dignity and luna­ cy, white and black. This, I think, completes Mrs. Turpin’s revelation. O’Connor says, “she lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unbhnkingly on what lay ahead.” We see what she sees, and we see her seeing it, pig-like, with her small eyes, and still as priestess and visionary. Is this our revelation? Our judg­ ment of her has become irrelevant, just as have her judg­ ments of other people. We turn with Mrs. Ihrpin back onto the darkening path-surely O’Connor intends us to think of Dante-and with her we hear “the voices of the souls climb­ ing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.” Elizabeth (Litzi) Engel is a tutor in Santa Fe. day. Mrs. Turpin feeds her false pride by imagining the infe­ rior world or worlds that might have been. Those imagina­ tions of worlds inferior to her world feature the lowly ones of the here and now whom she judges so severely. As Mrs. Turpin’s prideful attitudes leak out in the waiting room conversation, they become contagious. In the chief exchange in the waiting room, an exchange about the Turpin farm, Mrs. Turpin and Mary Grace’s mother silent­ ly join together against the opinions of the “white-trash woman.” The two women form an alliance inasmuch as “...both understood that you had to have certain things before you could know certain things.” An antagonism erupts between the poor white woman and Mrs. Turpin regarding their differing opinions about the possessions and associations that Mrs. Turpin has; Mrs. Turpin raises pigs and associates with black people. According to Mrs. Turpin, the Turpins have “a couple acres of cotton and a few hogs and chickens and just enough white-face that Gland can look after them himself.” That report elicits a retort from the white-trash woman that she doesn’t want St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 } �{Revelation} ''The corruptive power ofpride takes its toll once more.'' anything to do with hogs: “Hogs. Nasty stinking things, a-gruntin and a-rootin all over the place.” It does not matter to her that the Turpins have a “pig-parlor” a con­ crete-floored pen where the pigs are raised and where “Claud scoots them down with the hose every afternoon and washes off the floor.” The poor woman wouldn’t stoop to “scoot down no hog with no hose.” And as to the black people that the Turpins hire (“butter up”) to pick their cotton, the “white-trash woman” is equally as adamant: “Two thangs I ain’t going to do: love no niggers or scoot down no hog with no hose.” As far above the “white-trash woman” as Mrs. Turpin seems to place herself, the “white-trash woman” places herself above hogs and “niggers.” The corruptive power of pride takes its toll once more. In the doctor’s office, then, we witness Mrs. Turpin’s awareness of the contingent character of her life (“When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got...It could have been different!”) and how that awareness contributes to her false pride and a lack of understanding both of who she is and of the true character of her world. Behind her “good disposition,” we see her judgment on the world as it is given to her. Despite the fact that her virtue has no positive ground, she imagines that her goodness is sufficient both to judge and re-order the world and to do that without any assistance: “It’s no use in having more than you can handle yourself with help like it is.” Hers is not a position where she needs help, and she doesn’t ask for any. She divides her world into those like herself and Mary Grace’s mother, who don’t need help, and those like the poor white woman. Of the latter, she thinks, “Help them you must, but help them you couldn’t,” even though, “To help anybody out that needed it was her philos­ ophy of life.” Mrs. Turpin is saved and she is a would-be sav­ ior. From that vantage point of self-sufficiency, hers is a posi­ tion of gratitude. (“Oh, thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!”) But she is more grateful for what she is not than for what she is, perhaps grateful even that she is child­ less. What she does not seem to acknowl­ edge is that bad things and evil itself can­ not be relegated to what is not or to absence, and for that reason in part, no one is completely “saved” in this world, cer­ tainly not by dint of one’s own efforts alone, from the power of temptation and malevolence. It is in the context of her ignorance of the forces of evil in the world that Mrs. Turpin comes to consider Mary Grace (“Why, girl, I don’t even know you...”), who gives up her reading and bears wit­ ness to the display of pride. She takes up her station, staring relentlessly at Mrs. Turpin and making ugly faces at her until she feels the need to defend herself. But most importantly, at the point where Mrs. Turpin claims not to know Mary Grace, she thinks that Mary Grace, “was looking at her as if she had known and disliked her all her life-all of Mrs. Turpin’s hfe, it seemed too, not just the girl’s life.” What there was to be known all of her hfe is nothing but the susceptibility to temptation and the depredations of evil which are coeval with the garden and human existence. Mary Grace, possessed of money, family, education, is a real puzzle for Mrs. Turpin. So obviously lacking in grace, she is loaded with the worldly goods by which Mrs. Turpin partially takes her bearings. It does not make sense to her that Mary Grace with all of her books could be possessed of a false pride dwarfing that of her and the others. (“The girl looked as if she would like to hurl them all through the plate glass window.”) It does not make sense to her that Mary Grace as Mary Grace could be a source of evil. Mary Grace would open her eyes though, and so she throws the book at her. The incongruity of first being silently intimidated, and then being assaulted with a book by someone such as Mary Grace, convinces Mrs. Turpin that there is more to the situa­ tion than meets the eye. And so she seeks out Mary Grace, “What you got to say to me?” And she receives the retorted command, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old {The Colleges?. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �aa {Revelation} wart hog.” When Mary Grace tells Mrs. Turpin to go to heU, Mrs. Turpin does not understand what she means, does not accept the evil that confronts her. She thinks that God is telhng her that she is not saved. The second part of the story addresses that mistake and achieves in a way a resolution to the story. The shift in the story from the doctor’s office to the farm marks a shift from pride to humility, the doctor’s office hav­ ing pride of place. Mrs. Turpin is so convinced that God has abandoned her, that when she and Claud drive home, and she looks for their house, “She would not have been startled to see a burnt wound between two blackened chimneys.” She and Claud he down, but she cannot escape what had hap­ pened or the image of her that had been deposited in her soul. “She had been singled out for the message.” In her feel­ ing of sohtude, she cries, but when her tears dry, “Her eyes began to burn with wrath”: she is “a respectable, hard-work­ ing, church-going woman.” When her self-pity turns to anger, Mrs. Turpin turns to the farm community, which she rules for affirmation and assurance of who she is. In a sense, she wants the message to be overruled by her loved ones, her husband, her black field hands, and her hogs. But the fact of her rule presents a problem for her, because now she needs help. She turns to Claud for solace-(“‘Listen here,’ she said.” ‘“What?”’ “‘Kiss me.’”)-and Claud obliges her, as he does through­ out the story, “as if he was accustomed to doing what she told him to,” but nothing happens. She turns to the black workers, but the workers think that Mrs. Turpin is beyond anything bad happening to her, as if “she were protected in some special way by Divine Providence.” When Mrs. Turpin leaves the black workers, she goes down to the pig parlor and takes the hose from Claud; on the farm, she is “the right size woman to command the arena before her.” When he goes off, Mrs. Turpin begins speaking to God, raising her questions, wanting to know how she is herself and a hog both and how she is “saved and from hell too.” In a final display of pride, hosing down her hogs, she rants and raves at God until she comes to the more general form of her question, “Who do you think you are?” the question echoing back to her. The humihty on the farm appears to be the antidote to the diseased pride infesting the doctor’s office. There Mrs. Turpin comes face to face with someone “above” her, who is {The College. not thankful to Jesus, who does not “read from the same book” as she does and who takes her bearings from what Mrs. Turpin ostensibly is, a fat, indulgent, prideful woman, who, just like Mary Grace, “complains and criticizes all day long.” The evil in Mary Grace would claim Mrs. Turpin for itself; hence, the condemnation. But because Mrs. Turpin thinks that she is saved, she thinks that evil is somehow warded off, existing in some imaginary alternative world; and so, she mistakenly interprets what Mary Grace says. Mrs. Turpin mistakenly thinks that God is turning away from her because evil makes its presence known to her and even as having a root in her; she thinks that she is no longer one of the saved. But to say that God is not turning away from Mrs. Turpin is not to say that God was not working through the force of evil. O’Connor clearly beheves that God does work through evil, and that He is able to do such work just because of the inroads that evil has made in the souls of human beings. God was not turning away from her, but turning her so that she might face the reality of her continual need for salvation. On the farm, in her rant, Mrs. Turpin would fight God with her pride-until she hears herself. Then it is that the day’s lesson begins to come clear to her, the lesson about the world and the serpent and the lesson of Job and God and the Adver­ sary. Then she sees Claud’s truck, looking “like a toy,” and sees the downside of that technological marvel, that it could be smashed by a bigger truck and everyone in it destroyed. Then Ruby turns to her hogs gathered around the sow, where “A red glow suffused them;” they were God’s crea­ tures, panting “with a secret life.” Her acknowledgement of the presence of evil in this world and of the goodness of God’s creation even in the lowly allows her to have a vision of a new order marching to salvation; in that order the lowly are entering first. It is hardly accidental that the setting of the first part of the story is in a doctor’s office, that there is even a black den­ tist in town, or that the book that Mary Grace throws at Mrs. Turpin was titled Human Development. Today, many people have a difficult time talking about good and evil, preferring instead to talking about health and sickness. But O’Connor’s character, Mrs. Turpin, when she is in need of help, does not want the doctor’s help. What is aihng her is a matter of the spirit. Of course, the terms in which she understands the “classes of people” and herself belong to the contemporary John’s College • Spring 2004 } �{Revelation} ^3 revelation is not a quiet Inull... • United States South, where the old notions of rank based on land owner­ ship and breeding issue in such cate­ gories as “good blood” and “white trash” and “niggers.” She is a stock character in O’Connor’s repertoire of stories, each one having its place as in a series of echoes originating in and echoing from a single homeland, O’Connor’s powerful imaginative intellect. O’Connor is a Catholic writer from the South, for her, the land of the humble and the humbled. Persisting in her faith and her South­ ern roots and in allusions to the Holo­ caust and the dark sides of technolog­ ical life, O’Connor helps us navigate our own darkness and locate the beau­ tiful in lowly and humble lives. On that account, in the aist century, she is a writer whose meanings are not only important but urgently needed. George Russell is a tutor in Annapolis. The Message-Bearers by Barbara Goyette Perhaps this story is not only about a revelation but about revelation itself, the nature of a mysterious occurrence that serves as a link between our everyday world (or the somewhat off-kilter but nevertheless recognizably every­ day world of Flannery O’Connor’s South) and some deeper reality. Revelation involves drama and it involves some kind of truth or disclosure about something that wasn’t realized or known before. In a theological sense, revelation involves a manifestation of the divine will. A revelation is not a quiet truth: Mary Grace hurls a textbook at Mrs. Turpin and then pronounces her verdict, “You are a wart hog from Hell.” The black field-hand ladies also tell her the truth: “ ‘Ain’t nothing bad happen to you! ’ the old woman said. She said it as if they all knew that Mrs. Turpin was protected in some {The College. 7 99 special way by Divine Providence.” This truth infuriates Mrs. Turpin; she fervently hopes that it is as false as Mary Grace’s revelation. And then there’s the wild and wooly vision of the souls marching up to heaven, violent in its intensity and in its absolute nega­ tion of all that Mrs. Turpin thinks she believes to be right and just. Revelation does not need proof. It can’t be arrived at by logic, and one can’t be persuaded to it. Revelation suggests someone or something as the medium of higher truth or another level of reality. In this story, the irony of the message-bearers-a disaffected, angry, acne-scarred intellectual; a troop of respectable, sycophantic field workers; and the pigs, hosed off to spot­ lessness from their naturally filthy state-reinforces the disjunction that is at the root of Mrs. Turpin’s sinful view. Her sin is that of not seeing, not understanding the most fundamental fact of grace-that it applies to everyone at all times, no matter what their level of receptiveness or worthi­ ness. Mrs. Turpin fails just as we aU fail, by virtue of being human. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. In the beatitudes, the unhappy are blessed and the happy are cursed (this complementary “woe to...” set of pronounce­ ments is often ignored in our recollection of the beatitudes— it’s not only that the downtrodden have a special place in God’s consideration, it’s that those who are successful do not, at least not insofar as they are successful). Our measures of success, those that Mrs. Turpin admires and with which she measures the worthiness of others, are worse than mean­ ingless. They get in the way of our understanding that we are all in need of grace. Revelation is a gift, presented to Mrs. Turpin and to us. It’s there every day for all of us, and everyone around us is a messenger. Barbara Goyette (A’^g) is vice presidentfor advancement in Annapolis. John’s College • Spring 2004 } �24 {Alumni Voices} THE HABIT OF WRITING BY Brigid K. Byrne, AGI03 hen I open my mailbox to find an ingly [reflects] the object, the being, which [specifies] it.” envelope addressed in a bold, careful Studying O’Connor’s letters, I decided that Fitzgerald had script and bearing an Iowa City post­ given the collection the perfect name. O’Connor offered mark, mixed in among bills and cata­ her correspondents thoughts about everything: her pet logs, I feel a small thrill, an excite­ peacocks, her writing habits, and her peculiar interpreta­ ment that there is something meant especially It tion offor theme. Catholic faith. Her letters to friends, fans, pub­ seems strange that finding a personal letterlishers, in my mailbox and fellow writers reveal a woman who wrote them gives me so much joy. Yet, how often do we get a letter from not only to maintain her connection to those she loved, but someone we know and love? How often do we take the time also to explore and reveal the parts of herself which the to write to others? Most of the written communication we intended recipient had the power to bring out. send and receive are hasty e-mails, typed quickly, in lan­ I was most struck by O’Connor’s correspondence with guage created to speed up the time spent composing mes­ Cecil Dawkins, a college professor who introduced herself sages. While e-mail has perhaps kept us closer to those we to O’Connor in a letter. Dawkins challenged O’Connor by may otherwise have drifted apart from, our brief electron­ asking her advice in matters concerning her career, her ic conversations lack the richness and intimacy that are desire to write, and her faith. In a response to a question vital parts of human relationships. We compose our mes­ Dawkins raised about the effectiveness of the Catholic sages so quickly that we forfeit the benefits of self-reflec­ Church, O’Connor wrote, “You don’t serve God by saying: tion and personal growth that we can gain when we write the Church is ineffective. I’ll have none of it. Your pain at letters to others. The flow of thoughts seems better suited its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. to the flow of ink from the pen than to the pecking of We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suf­ fingers on a plastic keyboard, and the act of sealing an enve­ fering on account of it.” Reading this unusually lengthy lope much more satisfying than hitting the “send” button. response, I realized that Dawkins had asked a question that I felt the loss of the art of letter writing poignantly as I O’Connor herself struggled with and wondered if O’Con­ recently revisited The Habit ofBeing, Sally Fitzgerald’s col­ nor was speaking more to Dawkins or to herself. lection of Flannery O’Connor’s letters. Fitzgerald titled In her introduction to the book, Fitzgerald notes that “on her collection The Habit ofBeing because she saw that the the whole, [O’Connor’s] correspondence was an enrichment writer’s correspondence reflected the attainment of that of her life, to say nothing of the lives of her correspondents” habit, which she defines as “an excellence not only of and that “almost all of her close friendships were sustained action but of interior disposition and activity that increas­ through the post.” W {The College- St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �{Alumni Voices} As I reread O’Connor’s let­ ters, I realized that my own habit of letter writing has enriched my life. 1 was not much of a letter writer until about five years ago when I began corre­ sponding with Sandra, an honors student from Iowa, whom I met while interning at the U.S. Department of Education. After rais­ ing her children, Sandra enrolled in a community college near her home and was so successful in her studies that she gained an internship through Phi Theta Kappa. Over that summer, Sandra and I had many conversations, and I learned much from her about courage and faith. When our internships ended, Sandra and I exchanged addresses in the way parting people do, intending to keep in touch, but doubtful whether such a brief acquaintance would with­ stand time and distance. I returned to college that fall, but I could not forget San­ dra. I pulled out the scrap of paper on which she had care­ fully printed her address and wrote her a letter. Thus began years of correspondence that have led me to question and contemplate many of my ideas, choices, and beliefs. When I first began writing to Sandra, I was feeling uncertain about my faith. Having been raised Catholic and force-marched to Mass, I purposefully spent each Sunday of my first few years away at college lingering over breakfast in the dining hall, ignoring the bells chiming at St. Paul’s, just a few hundred yards away. I was torn between rebelling against my parents and discovering my own sense of faith. In writing to Sandra, I found that I could wrestle with my doubts and hesitations. Through my letters to her, I came to recognize my struggle was not between me and God, but one of becoming an adult. {The College- 25 learning to make choices for my­ self. Sandra’s res­ ponses, resonat­ ing with her faith in God, even in the face of hard­ ship and sorrow, gave me the strength to travel my own spiritual road. Without Sandra as my audience, I am not sure that I would have found that part of myself. While my relationship with Sandra has led me to a deeper sense of faith, having a variety of correspondents challenges me to look at many sides of myself. One of my favorite audi­ ences is my friend Sally, who lives in Atlanta. Although Sally and I talk on the phone frequently and see each other occa­ sionally, letter writing is still an important part of our friendship. We enjoy what Shakespeare might term “a mar­ riage of true minds,” as our thoughts, interests, and experi­ ences run uncannily parallel. Writing to Sally is almost like writing to myself, except that I wait in anticipation for her honest replies, replies that demand that I look into myself more alertly. In my day-to-day habit of living, running from job to job, eating in my car, I have little time for reflection and clarity. I have come to see this habit of living, which requires me to direct so much energy away from myself, as distinctly differ­ ent from the habit of being, which allows me to spend time inside, listening only to myself. Like O’Connor, I have found that I can practice my habit of being most effectively as I sit down to write. So I will find time today to retreat from the habit of living and write to my friend and fellow St. John’s alumna, Sarah. I can’t wait to see what my letter will reveal. St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �{Johnnies 2,6 on Aging} THE MIND IN WINTER Living an ExaminedLife in Later Years wi Sus3AN Borden, A87 would lose meaning and she knew that there have even been suicides [among older people]. To provide meaning to their lives, she endowed the institute, which provides high-quality, exciting courses for seniors. The faculty, illiam Butler Yeats Institute, where he explores the world -W from a classroom. from neighborhood universities and the U.C. Medical “Hannah Fromm was worried that the life of retired people Center, are also mostly seniors,” explains Brunn, who has ohn Brunn (class of 1947) is no Magellan, no studied history, literature, science, and music at the insti­ Columbus, no Ernest Shackleford or Neil tute since his retirement. Armstrong, but in an important way, he has Brunn’s explorations are important to an aging mind, remained true to his childhood ambition to says Helen Hobart (class of 1964). Hobart works with become an explorer. “I thought of it then as older people who are experiencing dementia, and she’s a physical exploration,” he says of the ambition true believer in the adage “use it or lose it.” “The more that has become increasingly intellectual as he we exercise our minds, the more protection we have from has aged. “When I first came to California, the effects of dementia,” says Hobart. “People who com­ I fell in love with the Sierra and have spent plete loth grade have five more years of protection from vacations exploring the mountains, at first with friends theand effects of Alzheimer’s than those who don’t. You may later with my wife. With increasing age-I have turned be 77showing signs of the disease neurologically, but symp­ that has become difficult. Most of my learning istomatically, now you’ve got enough other brain connections indoors, but I am still curious about the world.” that function because you’ve stimulated their growth, so the assault of Alzheimer’s won’t show up.” While keeping the mind active slows the effects of aging, Hobart encourages us to recognize that, with the loss of cognitive ability, other strengths can come into Life moves out ofa redflare ofdreams Into a common light ofcommon hours. Brunn is fortunate to live in San Francisco, not just for Until old age and brings the but redflare the mountains the city, also foragain. the Hannah Fromm J {The College -Sr. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �27 {Johnnies on Aging} play. “Roughly half of people over 85 have Alzheimer’s and we’re aU hving longer,” she says. “So it behooves us to consider what it means to be human in addi­ tion to our cogni­ tive functions. I’ve seen a lot of suffer­ ing because people feel they’re no longer worthwhile because their memoryis failing or they can’t figure out how to do something that they used to do. But there are so many wonderful ways of being in relationship with the world and other people. The epidemic of dementia as we grow older really invites us to consider our humanity, our affections, our spirituality, our art, our love of music. All these things can thrive, even flourish, if our cognitive functioning {The College -St Playing the piano is JUST ONE RETIREMENT PURSUIT FOR Carolyn Banks Leeuwenburgh . gets out of our way a little.” Carolyn Banks Leeuwenburgh (class of 1955) has yet to notice a drop in her cognitive abilities. She’s an avid reader, an insightful conversationalist, and a freelance teacher of English as a foreign language. She also pursues a number of interests that will serve her well if cognition begins to fail. A retired opera singer, she is still involved with the arts, maintaining subscriptions at the McCarter Theater in Princeton in drama, dance, and music. She’s also an avid movie-goer and a fairly active practitioner of several John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �2,8 {JohnniesonAging} experiences mostly loss. Although arts: “I paint, very poorly, but I only 46, Nick Giacona (SFGI98) is paint,” she says. “I play the piano now facing the physical effects of poorly. I still can sing and I still sing 'Tve always believed age as he cares for his 8i-year-old publicly.” Leeuwenburg performs in a thatpeople older than mother, Betty, who moved in with small cafe just outside of Princeton, him and his family last spring. “My singing mainly popular music, blues, mepossessed some mom is a retired schoolteacher with and torch songs. wisdom. Pre always an alert mind and a body that’s fail­ Music has been the saving grace for ing. She has very bad arthritis and is many older people, even those whose felt they were worth pretty much confined to an electric other faculties are deteriorating, says working with and wheelchair. Yet her mind is still very Hobart. “It’s fantastic to watch people active. She goes on the computer, start playing the piano again. The learninp^from, worth does e-mail. She’s a voracious read­ parts of the brain formed when we’re sharing with. er and we have great theological, younger last the longest, so the capac­ spiritual, and political discus­ ity to play the piano can come back,” sions,” he says. she says. There may be no ability to Philip Valley (SFGI75) Giacona sees first-hand the trials make a coherent sentence, but the of life in an aging body. “I’m learn­ reward and beauty of making music ing day by day with her and I really can persist for a long time.” admire how she’s handling it,” he says. “It’s hard and There are other compensations to counter deteriorat­ frustrating for her to do the little things we take for grant­ ing cognitive ability, according to Virginia Seegers Harri­ ed, even something as simple as making herself a meal. son (class of 1964), a geriatric case manager. “Over time Yet she’s handling that with grace and courage.” you learn to tune out nonsense more quickly,” she says. A discussion on aging that former Santa Fe campus “The experience you’ve had in life makes it easier to say, president John Agresto gave years ago left an impression ‘uh-huh, right.’ From observation and personal experi­ on Giacona. “He said that our culture doesn’t really pre­ ence, I would consider that a real advantage.” pare us for aging and death. I thought he was so wise. He She describes the benefits that come in later years as we said that death and aging should be the culmination of a grow to accept our lives. “You can bring your mind to well-lived life, an examined life,” recalls Giacona. “While bear more easily on what is actually accessible, doable. my mom didn’t have a St. John’s education, I’ve turned You learn to pick your battles. You learn to pare down and her on to the Apology and the Crito and the Tibetan Book be satisfied. There’s a feeling in youth and middle age, of the Dead." ‘this world is out there-where do I start?’ When some Giacona says that his mother seems prepared for her options have closed behind you, there can be a sense of own death: “We’ve already discussed the whole memorial liberation. That may be what makes working with elders service. She wants to be cremated and have her ashes so sweet, so affirming, for people in middle age who are scattered where my father’s ashes were scattered. She’s still struggling to be greater than they ever will be. When even decided what songs we’re going to sing. If she died people accept themselves and their lives, that in a sense is tomorrow, she would feel that she had a good life.” where life really begins.” When his mother’s life does end, Giacona will consider Harrison underscores her point with a joke: “A retired himself lucky for the time that he and his family spent woman is listening to several young mothers talking with her. “My wife, Keiko, is so great and supportive. She about when life begins. One says at conception. Another helped convince my mom to stay with us. My mom had says, no, it begins when the fetus quickens. A third says, concerns about moving in and invading the family, but ‘I think life begins at birth.’ Finally, the retired woman Keiko told her that when she was a kid her grandfather leans over and says, ‘Listen, I’ll tell you when life begins. lived with her family and she appreciated the time she Life begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies.’” spent with him.” While it’s comforting to know that the mind enjoys gains to offset its losses, a sad fact of aging is that the body {The College -Sf. John’s College - Spring 2004 } �{JohnniesonAging} ag Although she’s a young Giacona’s own chil7a, Leeuwenburg knows dren-Sarah, 13, and Kyle, ii-respond to his she has some tough times mother in different ahead. “Many years ago I ways. “My son is outgo­ heard Bette Davis say that getting older is not ing and loves to hug her and sit and talk to for sissies,” she says. “As her. My daughter’s really you get older you aren’t shy, so it’s harder for really aware of getting her. She appreciates hav­ older, but you are aware ing her there, but she that you don’t do the shows it in a different same things you used to way. It’s so rewarding to do physically. There are have three generations times when I get out of in one house.” bed in the morning and I don’t think I can move Philip Valley (SFGI75) runs day programs in and other times I’m New Hampshire for fine.” Leeuwenburg swims adults over 55 with nearly every day, but a developmental disabili­ recent cancer scare ties. He says that sharing revealed her true attitude time across the genera­ Nick Giacona and his mother, Betty, are tions is rewarding even for people LEARNING TOGETHER ABOUT AGING. about exercise. “I was thinking, ‘hell, who are not related. “Maggie Kuhn, if I’m going to die. I’m certainly not going to swim,”’ she says. “This is head of the Gray Panthers, once not something I’m doing for the gave a talk where she told the audi­ 'She s a voracious reader sheer pleasure of it. At my age your ence, ‘We are not wrinkled babies, metabolism gets so slow that, even if we are elders of the tribe.’ I’ve and we have great you do all your cleaning, all your gar­ always believed that people older theological, spiritual, dening, you still have to exercise.” than me possessed some wisdom. Leeuwenburgh has not reached I’ve always felt they were worth andpolitical working with and learning from, the point where she feels encum­ worth sharing with.” bered by aging, but she has begun to discussions. ponder her own mortality. “I don’t Harrison, the case manager, has NickGiacona (SFGI98) think anyone ever really comes to nothing but scorn for those who grips with the reality of their own subscribe to the “wrinkled babies” death. When we view ourselves, we view of seniors. “Many people who work in nursing facilities call the elderly ‘baby.’ That’s view a disembodied creature. Chronologically, I’m 7a absolutely not right,” she says. But she’s also disturbed by years old. I’m at the point where I know I’m not going to a subtler form of infantilizing. “Even older people who be here in 20 years. Yet there’s a part of me that you could are quite cogent are pretty much treated like they have to stand up and say, ‘Caroline, you’re getting old,’ and I be fed, clothed, and then amused. I really have trouble would say, ‘I am?’” with that. Yes, it takes time to go at the slower pace and hear someone tell his story, but it’s usually extremely worthwhile. I would encourage anybody to start to talk to people over 75. Ask them about their lives. Ask them what they remember.” {The College* St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 } �30 {Bibliofile} Approaching Machiavelli’s Art OF War Art of War Niccolo Machiavelli, translated, edited, and with a commentary by Christopher Lynch University of Chicago Press, 2004 hris Lynch (A87) traces the origins of his newlypubhshed translation of Machiavelli’s Art of War to the questions posed hy what is known in the academic throats. As I studied him more, I realized that world as the ancient/modern split. Lynch says Machiavelli ’s emphasis on the bellicose that Johnnies have a more intimate relation ­ aspect of human beings, an aspect acknowl­ ship with the split, and rephrases its essence edged but not emphasized by the ancient for the SJC crowd: “Why was everything so philsophers, was part of his overall goal to much fun sophomore year and why did transform the terms in which human life is everyone get so depressed junior year?” generally understood.” Lynch arrived at the University of Fortunately for Lynch, his academic inter­ Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought in ests dovetailed with a hole in Machiavelli the fall of 1988 with this question (in its grad­ scholarship. Of Machiavelli’s four major school expression) very much on his mind: vtorks—Prince, Discourses on Livy, Florentine What is the end of human hfe? Is man natu­ Histories, and Art q/' UAr-almost no one had rally social or essentially alone? What is the seriously studied Art of War. Lynch threw purpose of philosophy? As he pursued these himself into that text and, seven years (and a questions, Lynch came to see Machiavelli as Ph.D.) later, emerged with an impressive the pivotal writer in the transformation between the ancient and modern worlds. “The most sahent aspects of the transfor­ mation that Machiavelli tried to affect were, first, to change the general climate of opinion “Controversy abounds as to what caused and discourse such that human hfe would no the dizzying military changes during longer be understood in terms of its ultimate Machiavelli’s day. Also debated is goal or purpose but instead in terms of its whether these changes constituted a origins and roots,” says Lynch. “The second full-blown military revolution or instead is the attempt to bring about in this world the represented a particular moment in a best regime human beings can come up with, long-term evolution. In considering the best way of living together, instead of these questions, it is important to leaving it to chance hke Plato. And the third remember that the sense at the time was is really a corollary of the first, to get subse­ that tumultuous change was indeed quent thinkers to be primarily concerned afoot, but not rapid change in a single with human freedom and independence as direction driven by gunpowder technol­ opposed to virtue as understood as obhgation ogy. On the tactical level especially, and duty to something higher.” each of the battles that occurred on the These issues gave Lynch a clear direction Italian peninsula, from the battle of for his graduate work. “The more I saw Fornovo in 1495 to that of Pavia in 1525, Machiavelli as the key figure in the seemed to offer a new lesson to be ancient/modern spht, the more I wanted to learned, a new innovation that trans­ figure out what was on his mind,” Lynch says. formed the ways armies ought to be “I started to see war as central to his thought, armed, ordered, led and used.” to understand that for Machiavelli, humans - Christopher Lynch are not social beings, but at each others’ C Excerpt: {The College -Sf. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } pubheation to his credit: a translation of the text with an introduction, interpretive essay, and (he points out with the pride of a Johnnie who’s successfully negotiated secondary sources) more than 600 notes. Lynch originally wrote the translation for himself, “blasting through it” in just a few months, he says. “I wrote the initial transla­ tion as a way to study it carefully. I translated it as literally as I could so I could think about it the way we do with readings in language class, as a tool for closer reading,” he says. Over several years. Lynch returned to the translation, making changes after improving his Italian by translating works by Machiavelh’s predecessors, including Dante and Boccaccio. Later, when he decided to submit a proposal to the University of Chicago Press to turn his translation into a book, he first reworked a portion of the text to see if he could make it valuable to other readers. Once the proposal was accepted. Lynch had to rewrite the entire translation several times. In the process, he discovered a practi­ cal approach to translation that satisfactorily answered for him the issues that arise in discussions about translation in St. John’s language tutorials: “You start off as literal and as consistent as you can, then you puU the translation back toward understandabihty, readability and accuracy,” he says, “In the next phase, you forget about the Italian and ask what the passages mean in Enghsh and how they sound. If it’s not in readable English, you pull the Itahan out again and start thinking about changes.” Lynch notes that this is not the process for most non-Johnnie or non-Strauss-influenced translators. “They think about how it sounds right away,” he explains. “But I think that puts too much emphasis on the translator and makes him think he is a sort of god mediating between two languages with full omniscience of what the author intended. I think it’s better to approach it humbly, to cleave to the hteral andonlybepushed toward readabi 1 i ty when it’s clearly necessary.” With the time and energy Lynch lavished on Art of War, you’d think he’d be a fierce Machiavellian, but that’s hardly the case. “Machiavelli presents himself as the ultimate antagonist to the basic understand­ ings that I’m inclined to-ancient, philosoph­ ic, and religious,” Lynch says. “However, I think he’s also the most trenchant critic of ancient thought, both philosophic and rehgious, and therefore I see him as the person to understand if I’m going to understand the truth about the big questions at stake in the quarrel between ancients and moderns.” -SUS3AN Borden �{Alumni Profile} 31 Tias Little, EC98 Santa Fe Yogi Combines Wisdom with Practice BY Andra Maguran such as the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutra and he word “yoga” once con­ Bhagavad-Gita, along with studying San­ jured images of health nuts skrit or ancient Chinese in order to read contorting their bodies in works in their original language. impossible, seemingly Reared in Amherst, Mass., Little attend­ painful positions. Now ed Amherst College, where he earned a women, men, even children bachelor are flocking in droves to yoga. An estimat’­s degree in English. Inspired by mother, who also taught yoga. Little ed 15 million Americans say theyhis have a began his studies in the Iyengar system in regular practice; more than double that the early 1980s, and continued his study in number say they expect to try yoga in the Mysore, India. Frequent trips to visit his next year, according to a Harris poll. The grandfather, a Presbyterian minister who reasons for yoga’s newfound popularity are served on the board of directors at many: stress reduction, improved strength Abiquiu’s Ghost Ranch, fed Little’s love for and flexibility, and heightened concentra­ New Mexico. He moved to Santa Fe in 1991 tion are among the many benefits linked to to teach yoga, and in January aooo, he this 5,ooo-year-old practice. opened Yoga Source with his wife, Surya. Inside Yoga Source, a small studio Little began hearing about the Eastern tucked into a Santa Fe shopping center, Classics program at Santa Fe, established studio founder Tias Little {EC98) walks in 1994, from others in the Santa Fe yoga among the students after his morning community. Friend and fellow yoga teacher class, preternaturally serene, his voice as Nicolai Bachman (EC96) persuaded him soft as a temple bell. Like yoga teachers that the fledgling program was worth everywhere. Little is benefiting from the pursuing. “I was very enthusiastic [about wave of yoga popularity-his studio sched­ Eastern Classics] from the first day,” says ules more than 40 classes every week, Bachman, who now leads workshops across many of them packed. The Santa Fe the country in Sanskrit, Ayurveda (healing New Mexican recently described Little as “one of the emerging stars of the yoga phenomenon.” He leads classes for yoga teachers, writes articles and serves as an expert for a leading yoga magazine, holds clinics all over the country, and offers yoga retreats in venues such as Costa Rica. But even if the craze wanes and the numbers drop. Little believes that people will con­ tinue to seek out something beyond yoga’s physical benefits. His own devotion to the practice, he says, was informed and deepened by intense study of the works in the St. John’s Eastern Classics program, a yearlong program in which students read works T Tias Little’s yoga practice is INFORMED BY HIS STUDY OF Eastern classics. {The College. St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } arts), and the Yoga Sutra. “I knew it would be a great chance for Tias to deepen his understanding of the Indian, as well as Chinese and Japanese, traditions.” Little began by auditing a seminar on the Upanishads, after which he applied to the program in full. After 15 years of practice. Little hoped to find a solid foundation in the original texts for his own philosophy toward yoga, the Mahayana Buddhist “middle way” teachings that are pertinent to living in the world today. He had previ­ ously read the Bhagavad-Gita and Yoga Sutra on his own, but the formalism and structure of a discussion-based graduate program offered a key to deeper learning, he says. “The texts are complex and philosophi­ cal,” Little says. “It would have required an intense practice and austerity to have read the works on my own and gained as much insight and understanding of them. The dialogue that the classroom setting encourages is far superior to simply reading alone.” For Little, the Eastern Classics program afforded a marriage oiprajna (wisdom) andsadhana (practice). Wisdom training comes through study of scriptures that are the historical backdrop of the practice. “Just as scholarship feeds the practice of yoga, so the practice feeds the scholarship. To me, just reading can become very eso­ teric if one tries to cognitively grasp the teachings one needs to embody, or engage through psycho-spiritual discipline. The two modes of understand­ ing are cooperative, but not interchangeable. ” Little encourages yoga teachers-in-training to enroll in Eastern Classics; already, two Yoga Source instructors, Wendelin Scott (EC03) and Lynsey Rubin (ECoa), have completed the graduate program. �{AlumniNotes} 3^ 1935 and dance to a caUer. Will any of the class of 1944 be at our 60th anniversary?” “I’m in my goth year,” writes Melville L. Bisgyer. “My beloved wife, Pauline, passed away a few years ago. I now make my home comfortably in a retirement home named Signature Pointe. Many of my children, including the normal, the grand, and the great, live near­ by. I shall never forget St. John’s. I spent four very happy years there. I wish good luck and much happi­ ness to all my fellow Johnnies.” 1937 “Just a word from the Class of’37Bob Snibbe alive and well-will be 91 in April. Still playing golf and still publishing small shirt-pocket handbooks. One on ‘Our Flag,’ the story of Old Glory... sold in large quantities to big companies for sales promotion purposes. I call Harry Fahrig (Class of ’37) from time to time. He is very sick and in a nursing assisted living facility. His wife, Frannie, was a former model for Ponds-‘she’s lovely, she uses Ponds’- ads in the ’30s and ’40s. They live in Jupiter, Fla. Also call Alan Pike (’37 too). He’s also in an assisted living facility with his wife in Deland, Fla. And my brother Dick, class of’39, lives in Arlington, Mass. He’s also in an assisted living facility recuperating from a stroke. Have fond memories of days in Crabtown. Football and lacrosse. B.C. great books.” 1944 John Davis Hill writes that he and his wife, Dorothy Murdock Hill, spent the winter in Southern California attending four Elder­ hostel programs sponsored by the University of Judaism at Camp Ramah in Ojai and at their Bel Air campus. “We like to sing folk songs 1947 Changes for Stephen Benedict: “Three years ago, I pulled up stakes in New York City after 40 years and moved 125 miles north to the hamlet of Spencertown in Columbia County. After prowling the area, I bought an old farmhouse-type structure, whose earli­ est segment dates to about 1750. It’s said to be the second- or thirdoldest house in the area. The transition from city life turned out to be seamless. Time, of which there’s never enough, is variously allocated to work on family and personal archives, the nearby cul­ tural center, the local Democratic Party, and play—the piano, tennis, and cats. Then there’s always fixery to be done on my ancient structure. I do maintain one interest in NYC, the Theatre Development Fund, which I helped found 37 years ago. Watch for the new half-price booth in Times Square. Drop by if you’re up this way: 518-392-0487; stevebenedict@taconic.net.” 1949 Frederick P. Davis sends news from California: “Since last report­ ing from this always sunny and warm southwest corner of the ‘lower 48,’ we ‘3-Ds’ (Fred, Rita, and son David) are still holding the line as ‘Mr. Outside’ and ‘Mrs. Inside’ (the house). David recovers from infections of both legs and feet resulting from badly broken legs of late aooo. But things are looking up. David, after over a year at a Riverside City Con­ valescent home, should soon come home. He is now equipped with a motorized wheelchair, enabling him to be on his own to go out to see docs.” David B. Weinstein has retired from the practice of medicine and is living with his wife, Stella, in Atlanta to be near his daughter and her family. “Attending senior class­ es at Mercer University and learn­ ing to play the recorder to keep the gray cells and fingers limber.” do’s top was the thrill of a lifetime, along with riding through a city rainforest to get there. Anticipat­ ing my trip to Alaska in July.” i960 Peter J. Ruel sends in a book 1955 With a July production of La Traviata, Harold Bauer will conclude a 27-year tenure as music director of New Philharmonic and DuPage Opera in Chicago’s west suburban region. His 42 years as a conductor include the music directorship of six orchestras in the U.S. and numerous guest concerts in this country, Canada, and Europe. What’s next? More reading, traveling, painting (oil and watercolor), golf, composing, and, of course, some guest con­ ducting. He looks forward to the 50th reunion of his class in 2005. 1957 News from Joan Cole: “I am continuing to enjoy my retirement. With friends, I attend the Metro­ politan Opera and work with the New York Black Librarians Cau­ cus, raising funds for scholarships. Am also enjoying my vacations-in September 2003,1 went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Viewing the Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcova­ recommendation: “Thomas Cahill has written an insightful history of the ancient Greeks, printed 11/03: Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter.” 1961 Harrison Sheppard has been a regular columnist for San Francisco Attorney Magazine. the quarterly journal of the Bar Association of San Francisco. “The regular title of the column is ‘Law and Justice,’ with a subtitle relating to the particular column subject. For the most recent col­ umn (Winter 2004), the subtitle is ‘Law and Privacy: The Right To Be Let Alone.’” 1962 JusTiNA Davis Hayden sends in good news: Justina and Luci, her partner of ig years, were married in San Francisco on February 19. A magical day! They are living in San Diego now, having sold their Startup to Success (class of 1956) is now general manager of Word Web Vocabulary, a new curriculum for grades 5-10. “From a startup last year we are now in 55 school districts in 16 states plus Barbados. Word Web is a paperworkbook system based on root words, prefixes, and suffixes, all of which are Greek and Latin in origin. Grant Wiggins {A72) thinks it’s an excellent way to approach vocabulary.” ASQUALE L. POLILLO P {The College -St John’s College • Spring 2004 } �{Alumni Notes} 33 Mark Bernstein (A) writes; “Linda (Bernstein, nee Torcaso, A69) and I are looking forward to our last child graduating high school and going off to college. I’m a judge in Philadelphia court doing class actions and about to finish a book on Pennsylvania evidence. Linda is also a judge of the Social Security Administration.” Courtesy of The Moon, Santa Fe students and hobbes house in Berkeley. Luci is an artist whose work from recycled materi­ als may be seen at CorrugatedArt. com. Justina designed and main­ tains the web site. She is enrolled in a certificate program in Finan­ cial Planning and is having fun with investing. practicing law in Washington, D.C., and is writing for the local newspaper in her spare time. “Am looking forward to the next reunion of the Class of’65.” “Niece Megan Drolet, daughter of Melissa Kaplan (SF72) and Ray Drolet (SF69) will be coming to Annapolis this fall, continuing the Kaplan/Drolet tradition,” writes 1963 Bart L. Kaplan. Charles B. Watson (A) writes that Madeline Rui Koster writes: “I was very much looking forward to attending the 2003 40th class reunion, since as a Californian I have not been back to Annapolis in 40 years. A sudden change in my teaching assignment (high school) from all algebra to algebra and ceramics, in September, led me to change my plans. I was a potter and ceramic sculptor for 20 years before becoming a full-time teacher in the Bos. I look forward to another Homecoming. As time goes on, I value the St. John’s edu­ cation more than ever, and greatly enjoy reading The College.'" Michael Trusty attended Homecoming 2003 in Annapolis and had a great time: “I’m married, living in New Mexico, and ride horses with my 12-year-olddaughter.” 1965 Grace Logerfo Bateman is married, is the mother of four chil­ dren (mostly out of college), is Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Fran­ cisco, the inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award for “unique and distinguished ministry in the church and especially pioneering contributions to liturgical practice.” The church’s Web site, www.saintgregorys.org, docu­ ments this practice (and theory) with extensive photos and articles. Rev. Schell is a 1971 graduate of General Seminary; his co-rector, a 1970 graduate. 1968 “Finally finished my B.A. in 1999only 30 years late-at Thomas Edison State College,” writes Megan Beaumont (A, formerly Anne Beaumont Reid). “Received an M.A. in Spiritual Psychology 2001. Nowadays I am an ordained non-denominational clergy person and spend my time leading person­ al growth workshops, teaching manifestation and self-forgiveness, and officiating at marriages, memorial services, and most recently at an un-handfasting-a spiritual ceremony to honor and complete the severing of ties after a civil divorce. My husband has retired, and we are enjoying the blessings of good health and happy travel.” “I’m somehow still in Britian!” writes Deborah Rodman Lawther (SF). The General Theological Seminary Alumni Association awarded Donald Schell (SF) and Richard Fabian, co-rectors of St. Gregory of {The College. he was sorry to miss the 35th reunion of the Class of 1968 last year, but he enjoyed e-mail and pictures. “Spring has finally come and our family looks forward to visiting our Martha’s Vineyard home again. Happy to say that we are all well and enjoying diverse pursuits. Would come to SJC more often but we are far away...” News from Bob Wycoff (A) and Maya Hasegawa (A), first from Bob: “Bob’s computer system support job is going to India and Bob has enrolled in Berklee College of Music as a full-time undergradu­ ate to pursue a B.A. in music, starting in September. Four grandchildren and still counting; number five is due in August. See you in October! ” And from Maya: “Maya is now working as compliance manager for the City of Boston’s Department of Neighbor­ hood Development. DND builds affordable housing, finances rehabs, and helps small businesses. The satisfaction comes from seeing formerly vacant lots with houses on them. Spare time is spent practic­ ing tai chi and researching a Methodist deaconess named Hattie B. Cooper.” 1970 Isaac Block (SFGI) writes: 1969 High praise for tutor Steve Van Luchene’s second Tecolote colloquium for K-12 teachers from Elizabeth Aiello (SFGI), who found it “even more gratifying and professionally stimulating than the first one. It inspired me to expand my Great Books class by offering two more sections. Each section has 12 students, all enthusiastically participating in meaningful dialogue related to meaningful text. I have been honored as a ‘Los Alamos Living Treasure’ in recog­ nition of my 14 continuous years as ‘the Great Books Instructor.’” St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } “My wife, Mamerza Delos Reyes Block, has published her book. The Price ofFreedom: The Story of a Courageous Manila JournaHst." Last fall, Theda Braddock Fowler (A) published her second book. Wetland Regulation: Case Law, Interpretation, and Commentary. After an illustrious career with the Postal Service and World Bank (over 30 years and 83 foreign coun­ tries), Juan Ianni (A) has decided that it’s time to hang up his spurs. classnotes continued on page 36 �{Alumni Profile} 34 Rich and Famous Ben Bloom, Aq7, Finds Fame, Fortune—and Something Even More Important. vi Sus3Aw Borden, A87 embers of the Annapolis class of 1997 may not be surprised to learn that classmate Ben Bloom (A97) has achieved a degree of celebrity. He was certainly well known as a student, and his jump-head-hrst approach to life revealed a boom-or-bust attitude that leads those who meet him to believe that he is not destined for an ordinary life. Indeed, he is not. Today, seven years after graduation, he has won a measure of fame in three categories: Scrabble, poetry, and table tennis. Bloom was already a skilled Scrabble player when he arrived at St. John’s, but since graduating, he has played in tourna­ ments in Italy, Israel (his home for much of his life), Turkey, Norway, Reno, San Diego, Tennessee, and Florida. Although his cur­ rent rating is 1428, at the height of his play in March 2003, he was rated 1649 (a rating over 1600 is considered expert). Bloom learned of his Scrabble-world celebrity in 2003 when he was flying to Reno for the National Scrabble Champi­ onships. “I had to fly via O’Hare airport in Chicago. There were several players there, wearing their typical Scrabble t-shirts,” he recalls. “In the airport lounge, I saw a bald guy in his early 4os-black pants, white t-shirt, and two red braces with which he was continually fiddling. I recognized him as Joel Sherman, the 2002 National Cham­ pion and one of the top three players in the world. I got up the courage to ask him if I was correct in identifying him. He said, ‘Yes, and you are Ben Bloom.’” Stefan Fatsis, a Wall Street Journal reporter and author of Word Freak, a New York Times bestseller about Scrabble, also knew who Bloom was before the two were paired in an expert match in the 2002 he read from his thesis at Books & Books, a finals in San Diego. Bloom beat him and prominent Miami bookstore. walked away from the match with a signed As for table tennis. Bloom has been prac­ copy of his book. In the world of poetry. Bloom is complet­ ticing for years. He was an aggressive play­ er at St. John’s and shared the Annapolis ing his final semester at the University of campus titles in men’s doubles and mixed Miami, where he received his master’s doubles in 1996. When he lived in Israel, degree in poetry in May. His 15 minutes of he played in the National League for the poetry fame took place on March 31, when M {The College -St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } For the poet in Ben Bloom, words have GREAT MEANING. FoR THE SCRABBLE PLAYER, they’re just part of the game. �{Alumni profile} suggestion: “During my late teens I was disabled (he has cerebral palsy). After graduation, he took his game on the road, still in denial with regards to my CP. I wanted to fit in with other students and coming in third at the European Disabled was ashamed of being different. This feel­ Championships in Budapest in 1998 and winning the silver medal at the World ing turned into anger and resentment. I Games for CP athletes in 2001. wanted nothing to do with other people Thus accounts for the fame. The fortune with CP as I felt this would be letting go of my aspirations, a stupid concept which I is a different matter. It stems from the con­ look back on and thank God I have come so ditions of Bloom’s birth, which are both far in the last decade.” tragic and miraculous. The short version is Bloom has indeed come far. He is calm this: Ben was born brain dead. The attend­ ing nurses thought he and relaxed, accepting was stillborn. His par­ and tolerant. He has grown into a man with a ents asked the hospital strong, healthy sense of staff to do all they himself. It would be could so they put him in an incubator. After impossible to recount all that went into that 72 hours, he came to growth, but Bloom cites life. The staff said that a particularly transfor­ if he survived a week it mative experience he would be a miracle. had during the World The price of that Games for CP athletes. miracle is cerebral “While there I felt palsy, the condition like never before,” he that Bloom has lived says. “I made friends with-and struggled with other CP athletes against-his entire life. from Russia and France. In 1999, after a nineI speak French well, so year legal battle. -Ben Bloom it was easy to break the Bloom settled out of ice with them. Many court with the hospi­ athletes had more tal. A profile of Bloom severe CP than me, and were very hard to by Sam Orbaum, Web-published in 2000, understand. We communicated through sums up his situation: “He is now, in the other means; the bond that we shared, of most grotesquely literal sense, a self-made being equal, made for a wonderful feeling. millionaire.” At the end of the Games, we had a party Bloom’s cerebral palsy makes him hard to understand, contorts his face, and gives with Karaoke. All of us moved the same him a peculiar, dragging walk. But it’s not way. All of us had the same unclear voice. just his speech, gait, and appearance that There was an intense feeling of cama­ raderie and equality.” CP has disfigured. His condition has also Bloom is now finishing his thesis-a col­ affected his sense of self. lection of 50 poems that reveal much about Bloom has a history of buoying up his him and the way his world is shaped by challenged sense of self with humor. The cerebral palsy. His poem, “Jane Fonda’s Orbaum article quoted some of his witti­ (pain in the) Neck Workout” describes the cisms: “Hey, you know what happens when mechanics of dealing with a stranger’s I have a few beers?” Bloom asks. “I talk insults. “Special Olympics” describes a clear and walk straight.” He describes giv­ night out for eight people with CP. In the ing his own brand of speech therapy to a crowd: “I make them repeat the alphabet poem, the group tries to order drinks: “Two Heinekens, two Carlsbergs, two after me, with all 26 letters sounding Guinness and two Everclears./Five min­ exactly the same.” utes trying to communicate, then we settle Humor, of course, does not heal all for eight domestic beers.” wounds, and Bloom has not always known In “The Extremities Of A Line Are how to salve them. When he first arrived at Points,” Bloom describes the obstacles, St. John’s, several people unwittingly both interior and exterior, of everyday found themselves on his bad side by sug­ events. The poem reveals Bloom’s writing gesting he get to know Santa Fe tutor for all it is: story, insight, therapy, balm, Robert Sacks, who also has CP. An older and wiser Bloom recalls why he hated that ''All ofus moved the same way. All ofus had the same unclear voice. There was an intensefeeling of camaraderie and equality. {The College -St John’s College • Spring 2004 } 35 The Extremities Oe A Line Are Points -Euclid, Elements., Book i. Definition 3 Standing in line Motionless Passing glances from strangers Maybe three-quarters of a second longer than normal Nothing to get upset about. “Next!” Four steps to reach the desk One-two-three-four People have other things on their minds They’re here for a reason They’re all adults They’re not going to stare. “Next!” They want to rush me No, it’s not me Don’t be oversensitive Do other people have these inner dialogs? Am I Socrates or his interlocutor? “Hi. I'm here to... ” Said too much She’s been working all day No patience for me No patience for my voice Fuck it Can’t stop now. “For my appointment. ” Confusion. Disappointment. Disgust. Pity. The myriad of facial expressions tell a familiar story The patented neck strain won’t be too far away Yup, here it comes In answer to your next question, “I’m here alone.” “Is anyone responsiblefor this... guy?” Should I look around? Should I glare at the people behind me? No point. One day they’ll read about it. In a poem. They can wait. “Next!” �{AlumniNotes} 36 et al.), ‘What constitutes scientific proof?’ Very fun.” 1971 In April, pediatrician Linda Belgrade Friehling (SF71) embarked on a trek to Everest Base Camp to raise funds for Himalayan Health Care, serving the people of rural Nepal. In a fund-raising letter she sent along, she described the trek and its mission: “We will cover lao miles on foot and attain an elevation of 18,500 feet. The funds raised will support the completion of a project sponsored by Himalayan Health Care. Himalayan Health Care is a small non-govern­ mental organization founded approximately a decade ago by a Nepalese and an American to promote better health and life in remote rural areas of Nepal. With a dedicated group of volunteers, including physicians, dentists, nurses, and other professionals, this small organization has facilitat­ ed impressive improvements in pre­ natal care, infant mortality, dental hygiene, and overall health for over 40,000 people. Learn more by visiting the Web site: (Himalayanhealthcare.org)...One of the things that has impressed me most about Himalayan Health Care, is the forward-looking approach that emphasizes educating the Nepalese team to carry out on a day-to-day basis vastly improved health prac­ tices. In a country that currently has one doctor to 32,000 people, I feel this is the only way to make a substantive difference.” For more information, e-mail her at: tlofftrax@aol.com. From Colorado, Michael ViCTOROFF (A) writes: “After nearly five years as medical director for Aetna, I left to work as an investigator for the Depart­ ment of Toxicology at the Universi­ ty of Colorado Medical School. Officially, I’m a private detective. Our group has M.D.s and Ph.D. toxicologists. We investigate medical claims of inquiry from environmental chemicals. Sort of like Erin Brockovich-only we use science. Much of the most difficult work is philosophical (Karl Popper 1972 Wesley Sasaki-Uemura (A) writes, “On December i, 2003, we finalized the adoption of Melina Mei (Xin Yi) Sasaki-Uemura. She was born October of 2002 in Jiangxi province, China. She has ‘smiling eyes.’” IleneLee (A) reports: “McKee (A72) and Ilene’s daughter, Mollie, now 25, is completing her first year at Yale Law School after a summer South American tour that ended with sailing from Galapagos to Tahiti on a 37-foot catamaran. Ilene has a busy play therapy practice in the San Francisco area, specializing in autism and consulting with schools.” 1973 Jose F. Grave de Peralta (A) is taking a group of art and architec­ ture students from the University of Miami to Florence, Italy, for six weeks to learn fresco painting and restoration. Side trips include Assisi, Rome, and Pompeii to view fresco sites in those places as well. 1976 Jonathan Mark (A) was a recent William Malloy (SF) writes that he took early retirement in Decem­ ber 2003 for health reasons. “Now I have the opportunity to work four mornings a week holding prema­ ture babies and to concentrate on improving my health. Additionally, I am a volunteer reporter for KPFT (Keep People Free, Thinking), the local Pacifica station in Houston. Not only can I put up a couple of alumni who may be passing through Houston, I am also accept­ ing invitations to visit alumni. Particular consideration will he given to those invitations that are accompanied by a prepaid airhne ticket. Kidding? No, really, I mean it!” David Pex (SF) is “working hard as contributor to Popular Science magazine and built an off-road course for Toyota in San Antonio. From Steven and Melissa Sedlis (both A): “Our daughter Elizabeth is a first-year medical student at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Our daughter Jennifer will graduate in May from Scripps College, Claremont, Calif.” 1974 From California, Gerard (A) and Daphne Kapolka write: “Daphne (nee Greene, A76) retired from the Navy in July. She is now a senior lecturer in physics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. Gerry continues to teach English at Santa Catalina School in Monterey. Basia Kapolka (Aoi) is studying acting in New York City.” John Rees (A) is working hard as a tele-neuroradiologist: “I live for my work and my family. I greatly enjoy participating in a small seminar group of old SJC friends!” {The College. 1975 is not yet completely comfortable with the “Transgender Club” and similar organizations constituting student life today-but he’s trying. He is feehng very old these days. A career change for Idell KesselMAN (AGI): “After more than 20 years of teaching college composi­ tion, literature, and other related courses, followed by two years as a vocational rehabilitation counselor, I am working as a psychotherapist at a nonprofit agency in Phoenix operating under a managed care system. In July I begin a one-year residency in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a cognitive approach to helping individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder. My daughter Bisa, nearly 25, is completing her master’s in education this June, with several years of elementary teaching already completed. We live in our separate apartments in Phoenix, with our own cats and habits. It helps us to keep our friendship strong. I’d enjoy hearing from old friends and tutors: ideleyz@earthlink.net.” 1977 Brad Davidson (A) still lives in Annapolis with his wife, Lynne, and children Teddy and Lucy. He’s been taking Teddy on college visits and St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } the finance director at Ecos Con­ sulting, which implements energy­ efficiency programs for electric and gas utility companies. Write me at dpcx@qwest.net.” Carla S. Schick (A) won an honorable mention in the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award. The poem, “The End of the Words,” can be found at www. wagingpeace.org. Marlene Strong (A) has news: “After a year of being a lady of leisure, which I spent fixing up my new house and garden in Boise, I’m starting work at a therapy center, so I’ll finally get to use my hardearned MET (Marriage and Family Therapist) license. Life in Idaho is calmer; Boise is small enough that you know your neighbors, but large enough to have plenty of culture, and the mountains are beautiful. Any classmates are invited to stop by if you’re in the neighborhood-if not, see you for our 30th reunion.” �{Alumni Notes} 1978 Robert McMahan (SFGI) reports that he is now full professor at The College of New Jersey and has given many recent concerts both as per­ former and composer. His wife, Anne, continues to teach at the Pennington School, working with West African drumming. Renais­ sance recorder, and Native American music. An invitation from Lawrence Ostrovsky (A); “I see a lot of gray­ haired people in the summer who come up here to visit Alaska. So I’m sure there must be someone from the class of ’78. If you find yourself up this way, please give me a ring.” 1980 Leanne J. Pembvrn (A) writes: “After five years of planning and hard work, Mark and I have com­ pleted phase I of home building in our woods. Next phase will be straw bale-all help is very welcome for the bale raising. Contact me via e-mail: leanne@pemburn.com.” Tom G. Palmer (A) sends a quick update: “I was in Iraq in February under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and the American Federation of Teachers for a conference for educators on civic education and have been working to get a lot of important books translated into Arabic and pub­ lished. In addition. I’m helping Iraqi libertarian friends to set up a think tank there, for the purposes of educating people in the princi­ ples of classical liberalism and producing policy studies for the new Iraqi government on how to reform the judiciary to secure the rule of law and the protection of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, how to priva­ tize state-owned industries, and so forth. I’m leaving this Wednesday for the European meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Hamburg (Free Trade from the Hanseatic League to the EU) and from there to Moscow to give a paper, ‘The Role of Law and Institutions in Economic Development’ at a conference, ‘A Liberal Agenda for the New Century: A Global Perspective.’ I hope to be back in Iraq in May and July to set up a series of seminars for students, some of which will involve SJC-like seminars and discussions, as well as lectures. I’ve recently published a few items, including a monograph, ‘Globalization and Culture: Homogeneity, Diversity, Identity, Liberty’ (published by the Liberales Institut in Berlin for worldwide distribution through the many offices of the Friedrich-Naumann Stiftung) and a paper, ‘Globaliza­ tion, Cosmopolitanism, and Personal Identity in the Italian journal Etica e Politica. ’ I’ve got a few other items in the works, as well. All in all. I’m keeping busy and off the streets.” 37 Susan Read (SFGI) writes that her 1986 “Greetings, SJC,” writes Clayton DeKorne (A). “I live now half time in Burlington, Vermont, with my daughters, Cecilia (16) and Helen (14), and halftime in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my new wife, Robin Michals. I work as a full-time free­ lance writer with regular assign­ ments at The New York Times Learning Network and a steady stream of multi-media production work from a handful of education media companies. I would love to hear from old friends and any John­ nies interested in the brave new world of online learning: cdekorne@verizon.net. ” son, Harry, is a thriving 8-year-old. “We have just bought the house of our dreams. I continue to enjoy teaching English at Wooster School.” 1988 Juliet Burch (A) writes from Boston: “David (Vermette, A85) and I are still happily impoverished in Boston. I am apprenticing to be a film projectionist and he is researching Franco-American and Quebec history alongside an edito­ rial job. We continue to use our St. John’s education for good instead of evil, vigilantly keeping cocktail party conversations away from portfolio talk and on track with suitable topics like ‘what is color, anyway?’” About the Tattoos 1982 Geoffrey Henebry (SF) writes: “Ana and I and our brood of seven (Patrick, Claudia, Gus, Thomas, Isabel, Maria, and Tessie) continue to enjoy the Good Life here in Lincoln, Neb. My research over the past five years has been diverse: from modeling the ranges of native vertebrate species in Nebraska to analyzing the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the annual cycle of greenness in Kazakhstan.” 1983 Theodore Zenzinger (A) just had a daughter: Sophia Anne Zenzinger, born in April. {The College- to have passed in a flash. Sophia is a fearless, joyful, lively child, and she infinitely enriches our lives. She doesn’t have any tattoos yet, but I was able to locate some black clothing in her size. Our families and friends helped us adjust to parent­ hood, but we are especially grateful to my classmate Ken Hom (A80). Ken has logged thousands of hours in Babylon with us. If Sophia develops a taste for good music and a knack for pool, she will owe it all to him. I continue to practice the Japanese martial art of aikido, in which I currently hold the rank of 4thdegree black belt. Since 1999,1 have been the chief instructor at Aikido of Northern Virginia. I have about 75 students, any 30 of whom may show up for a given class. You may visit the dojo’s website at http://www.aikido-nova.org. I’m still a bureaucrat in the Department of Housing and Urban Develop­ ment. For the past two years. I’ve been working as a housing program policy specialist in the Office of Lender Activities and Program Compliance. We spank mortgage lenders when they’ve been bad. People may reach me at Jim_Sorrentino@hud.gov.” St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �38 {Alumni Profile} Looking for the “Monster” Owen Kelley, Agg, Finds a Clue to Why Hurricanes Intensify BY Rosemary Harty Before investigating hurri­ omputer models can often canes, Kelley had entered a make accurate predictions doctoral program in compu­ of where a hurricane will tational science immediately wander. But no one has yet found an accurate method to after graduating from predict how intense a hurri­ St. John’s. He ended up cashing out his credits for a cane’s damaging winds win hecome. Grapmaster(A93) ’s degree in physics pling with this question, Owen Kelley because he worried that he asks, “Why does one hurricane become a “wasn’t smart enough to be a monster and another one doesn’t?” As a scientist with George Mason Univer­ Ph.D. scientist.” After honing sity, Kelley is part of a team that works at his skills at NASA for six years NASA’s Goddard Space Fhght Center to and feeling a growing desire to study satellite data gathered by the Tropical “ask the big questions,” he Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The decided last year to continue TRMM satelhte is a joint effort between where he left off with his NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration doctoral studies. Agency, and its data are being analyzed by When Kelley began his scientists around the world. For most of the hurricane research last year, past six years, Kelley created graphics and he did not immediately think software for other researchers. Through this to look for hot towers. “Erich Stocker, my work, Kelley met Joanne Simpson and project manager at NASA, came in my learned of her pioneering hurricane office one day and saw me poring over my research. Back in the 1950s, Simpson hurricanes pictures, getting nowhere. He proposed that short-hved “hot towers” told me to pick one thing to study, and that sustain a tropical cyclone, allowing it to made all the difference. I had in the back of travel a thousand miles in a week. But with­ my mind how Joanne Simpson would talk out computers or satellites, Simpson’s hot passionately about hot towers, so I looked tower hypothesis was difficult to prove. up one of her articles and then taught my Hot towers are rain clouds that reach at computer how to find towers. It turns out least to the top of the troposphere, which is that the only instrument in space that can nine miles above the earth and four miles clearly see hot towers is the radar that’s higher than the rest of a hurricane. The tow­ onboard the TRMM satellite. This radar ers are called “hot” because heat released by gives us ‘x-ray’ vision. It doesn’t look at just water condensing allows these towers to rise the upper surface of a hurricane-it sees into higher. the heart of the storm.” Once Kelley began pondering the myster­ ies of hot towers, his training at St. John’sparticularly his fondness for a question that begins with “what is?”-began to pay off. “Freshman year, I was horrified when we started Euchd and my class argued for an hour about the definition of a point. By the time I graduated, I appreciated the power of simple questions. Instead of becoming lost in the data, I repeatedly asked the simple question, ‘What is a hot tower?’ Every paper I found seemed to use a slightly different definition of hot tower. Eventually, I settled on a precise definition and my persistence C Kelley’s computer models show hot towers RISING FROM HURRICANES. {The Colleges;, John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } As A SCIENTIST, Owen Kelley appreciates THE POWER OF SIMPLE QUESTIONS. led me to patterns that other scientists failed to notice in this same dataset. “It took my breath away when I first examined my statistical summary and I saw that hot towers appear often in the intensify­ ing hurricanes, but rarely in the ones that are not intensifying,” says Kelley. A good example of an intensifying hurricane with a hot tower is Hurricane Bonnie in August 1998, as the storm intensified a few days before striking North Carohna. Kelley cautions, “We still can’t predict which hurricanes will become monsters, but perhaps we are now one step closer to an answer.” Kelley’s results suggest that seeing a hot tower near the hurricane’s eye is a clue that the hurricane is twice as likely to intensify than it would be otherwise. In January, Kelley flew to Seattle to present his findings at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society. He was not prepared for the media atten­ tion that resulted when NASA issued a press release about his findings on the day that he presented them. While answering journal­ ists’ questions, he had to learn how to describe his research in a few words. In the end, more than 80 Web sites, newspapers, continued on nextpage �{Alumni Notes} Shannon May Lavery (A) and her husband, JOHN (A87), celebrated the eight-month birthday of daugh­ ter Aurora (A2025) in Healdsburg, Calif., where they recently relocat­ ed with their first-born dog, (Vizla) Lucius. All are well and peaceful. “Fellow Oenophiles and Tahoebound schussers and ski rats pass­ ing through should get in touch. We are local and down to the ground. Hookenzababy!” Kim Paffenroth (A) has published another book. In Praise of Wisdom: Literary and Theological Reflec­ tions on Faith and Reason (New York and London: Continuum International Publishing, 2004). In it he traces the Biblical image of wisdom as it unfolds in Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Augustine, Goethe, Pascal, and Melville. 1990 Rebecca Ashe (SF) writes: “I’m turning 40 this year and going back to the UK for my high school class reunion in June. Still happily married to Steve Simmer with three gorgeous and interesting daughters (10, 8, and 4-all avid readers). My beloved Faraday died at age 13. Lee Whiting (SF89) and I got him in Santa Fe. I still run daily and am training for a half-marathon in May. Also starting a private practice in West Springfield. Would love to hear from classmates again: Rebecca.ashe@the-spa.com.” “Greetings to all. I hope you are well. Zip bang,” writes William Culley (SF). James Clinton Pittman (SF) writes 1989 After a year in Thailand, Elizabeth Powers (A) and her husband returned to Brooklyn in late 2002. They gave birth to a daughter, Madehne Josephine Wagner, in October of 2003. that younger son Sam just turned two. “Hope everyone is well. I need to write a book-anyone know how to get political commentary published when you hate Democ­ rats and Republicans alike?” 1991 Brad Stuart (A) and Sara Larson (Ago) are delighted to announce the birth of their second daughter, Phoebe. Brad is a software engineer for General Dynamics in Westminster, Md. RonalieMoss (SFGI, EC95) is still a teacher at Los Alamos High School, but she looks forward to retiring soon. “I have had a reward­ ing career, but now I am looking forward to reading great books again instead of student papers.” News from Megan Smith (A): My husband, David Dougherty (AGI98), and I welcomed our baby television stations, and radio stations picked up the story. His hurricane results appeared in the media from Texas to Canada, Switzer­ land, Colombia, Australia, and Japan. A European Web site has even posted an Italian translation of the story. Perhaps the most gratifying attention came from Simpson, who sent Kelley an girl. Harper Claret, into our world on September 2, 2003. She is a bright and smiling baby with a full head of spiky hair, just like her mother’s. We are still living in Annapolis, and I am working part time as an optician and trying to start a career in freelance ad design for small businesses. David is a Java programmer with Anne Arundel County government. We’d love to hear from any of our old friends. My e-mail is peanutmom® comcast.net and David’s is dsmithdi@comcast.net.” 1992 From London, Victoria Burgess (SF) writes: “I wish to thank every­ one for their kind wishes following the death of my father. They mean a great deal to me. I would love to see any Johnnies passing through the London area.” “After almost eightyears at the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE), I will start a new job in April with the Office of Education and Sustainable Development at NOAA’s headquarters in DC,” writes Sarah ScHOEDiNGER (A). “While this job won’t shorten my commute from Annapolis, I am looking forward to the new professional opportunities it presents.” Michael Zinanti (SF) tells us: “I am an antenna design engineer for Centurion Wireless Technologies and have contributed to three anten­ na patents with one more pending. Susan (formerly Switich, SF93) and I are raising and home-schooling one e-mail that pointed out weaknesses in his research, but closed with the statement: “An old person feels that his/her life has not been in vain when we see young people grabbing the ball and running with it.” This year, Kelley plans to revise the material he presented at the conference and submit it to a scholarly journal. Once (The College. 39 daughter, Anna. We would love to hear from any Johnnies passing through the Denver area.” 1993 “Hello, all!”AMYFlack (A) writes. “Things in South Dakota are going well. Ministry is an adventure, harrowing, wonderful, blissful, wacky, and so many other adjectives both good and bad.” E-mail: thiers55@yahoo.com . 1994 Natalie Arnold and William Blais (both SF) were married in July 2001 and celebrated with a 30-day cross­ country train trip. Currently, they “five in Pittsburgh and are the proud owners of a happy house in need of a little TLC. We are happy to provide bed and breakfast, good conversa­ tion, and a warm welcome to any Johnnie traveling through Pitts­ burgh. We are best reached through e-mail at bill.blais@pobox.eom.” Larissa Engelman (A) is currently living in New York after moving from Washington, D.C., in 2002. “Working as marketing manager of the New York office of Covington & Burhng. As a side project, am look­ ing to raise money for an independ­ ent film project and would love to be connected to others who have expe­ rience or contacts in that world. My hellos to the class. Hope to see you at our lo-year reunion.” he finishes his doctoral studies, Kelley is not sure what the future holds. “The ultimate goal is supposed to be teaching at a research university and doing ground­ breaking research between classes. I just want to look at data and see things other people haven’t seen before. I’m not sure how to make that happen.” -*■ St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } �{Alumni Notes} 40 1995 Joel Ard (A) and his wife Hannah (A92), announce the birth of their son, David Frederick Ard, on September 4, 2003. David made his first appearance at St. John’s at Homecoming a week after his birth. “Remember kids,” writes Chris Davis (SF), “funk is its own reward.” Benjamin “Alex” Ruschell (SF) has a new baby. George Alexis Ruschell (8 lbs., 20 in.) was born in Schweinfurt, Germany, in December 2003. Jessica VanDriesen (A) is about to complete a master’s in education as part of the New York City Teaching Fellows. “I have been teaching math at Wadleigh Secondary School since 2002. It is a far cry from explorations of the conic sections or Minkowskian space-time, but there are moments. I plan to travel abroad next year, teaching in an interna­ tional school or possibly switching to ESL. Anyone with suggestions, please contact me via e-mail: jvandriesen@hotmail.com.” Tracy Whitcomb (A) is still in Vermont and now back in school for a second bachelor’s degree: in nurs­ ing. “I hope everyone else is well! ” An invitation to adventure from KiraK. Zielinski (SF). “Anyone in or passing through Las Vegas, Nev., I’m now flying the Dam Helicopter Tours out of a Bell 206 at the Hoover Dam-the tours are quick, but a ton of fun, so drop by and fly with me! I just bought a house and I’ll be here for a year. Because it’s Vegas, I think I need to consider modifying my uniform to sparkly midriff-baring nomex with rhinestones! My callsign is Dam Helicopter...too cool... I’m obviously having a blast with my new life. Also need to design more bookshelves to go in the helicopter...” business journalism, I moved on to Moscow. As of March, I have been here for two years and I’m now writ­ ing for a Dutch AIDS charity. I got aggie Roberts Arnold (A95) writes: married last summer to Elena “Late as usual, I am announcing the Rudykh, a Siberian intellectual arrival of our son Augustus Bullock beauty queen. We see ourselves Roberts (Gus), born on September 16, moving back to the homeland 2002. Parenthood is a blast! Thanks to Gus eventually, but in the meantime, we are frequent visitors to the San Antonio I hope to see the day when one of Zoo. (I am expecting the bears to wave to us out of therecognition many Marx readings on the any day now.) We are also frequent visitors to theProgram McNay isArt replaced by Bulgakov’s Museum. As parents we love this enthusiastic rediscovery of ‘Heart of a Dog’ for a modest the basics: the naming of and conversational focus on ani­ injection of reality.” Rediscovering the Basics M mals, shapes, colors, vehicles, body parts, foods, nature (you name it). I think fondly and frequently of the time I spent on each campus and wish my contemporaries great happiness and fulfillment! (And the courage to send in a note!)” 1996 1997 Maya Brennan (SF), formerly J. Maya Johnson, is in New Jersey: “I’ve recently moved from Baltimore to central New Jersey where my husband. Grandpa of evihobots .com, found a paying job after his election-induced unemployment. I’m working at Princeton University, compiling and coding data for the Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA). Anyone interested in the cultural pohcy field will want to check out our free online data archive atwww.cpanda.org. I’d love to hear from former classmates, especially anyone passing through the central New Jersey to New York City area. My e-mail address is mahimsab@yahoo.com. Snail-mail: 501 Raritan Ave., D6, Highland Park, NJ 08904 Erin N.H. Furby (A) is working as a massage therapist in Anchorage. “My husband and I are enjoying our attempts at balancing middle-class American fife with the fife of the mind, and we still love Alaska, even if it snows five days before April.” {The College. Michael Chiantella (A) married Karen Burgess in Buffalo, N.Y., on August 2, 2003. “Taffeta Elliott (SF) gave a reading at the wedding. Currently almost completed an LL.M, in Trust and Estate law at the University of Miami.” 1998 In September 2003, Julie Bayon (AGI) graduated from Claremont Graduate University with a Ph.D. in education. The title of her disserta­ tion is “The Neo-Classical Ideal: Liberal Arts Education for the Twenty-First Century.” She is currently assistant professor of English and chair of General Education at Washington Bible College in Lanham, Md. Jacqueline Camm (A) announces Shannon Stirman (SF) writes: “We’re moving from Philadelphia, where I’ve been studying at Penn, to San Francisco, where Kelly will begin working for a new software company. Henry turned 2 in August and we’re trying to keep up with him. I’m finishing up my disserta­ tion in psychology and will plan to start an internship in the fall. As soon as we figure out exactly where we’ll be hving, visitors wifi be welcome!” “I think the last time I appeared here, just after graduation, I was rather optimistic about saving the world through economics,” writes David Veazey (A). “Well, since then, I got my M.A. at Fordham but stopped just before I had to start on my dissertation. Over the years I had become disenchanted with the inherent inabihty of economics to solve any meaningful problems. Then later, after becoming an expert in maximizing my unemployment checks and dabbhng in health and St. John’s College . Spring 2004 } her marriage to Robert Travis (a 1998 graduate of Columbia University) on February 8, 2003, in the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Fla. The Rt. Rev. John Howe, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, presided. Amy (Norman) Morgan (A96) and her husband Bill provided music for the ceremony. Writes Jacquehne: “We moved to Tennessee in August for Rob to attend seminary. We also purchased our first home with the help of Milk Klim (A02) of Columbia National Mortgage. If anyone would like to reach us, or is passing through Tennessee, please send us an e-mail: jacquelinecamm@ hotmail.com.” Method-acting studies for Stephen Conn (SF) finally hit Hollywood gold! Look for him this summer in Troy, he plays the third spear from the left in that big battle scene towards the middle. “Brad was a dream to work with,” Steve adds. �{Alumni Notes} Christopher Pagan Nelson (SF) Grateful for Phlogiston reports: “Right now. I’m living in Texas and concentrating on my turbo-gangster country band. The drian Lucia (SFoo) writes: “After living in Foggy Mountain Cop Killin’ Boys. Philadelphia and Chicago for three years. I’m College didn’t really prepare me for pursuing a master’s degree in library and infor­ the scads of fame and money I’m mation science at the University of Illinois, receiving, but it was cool anyway. I Familiarity with the theory of phlogiston has would love to hear what other John­ never been so helpful. I plan to flee the Mid­ nies are doing, so please e-mail me west in basically any direction when I finish this program. Any at donkeytown@hotmail.com . A Johnnie librarians out there?” James Petcoff (SFGI) is teaching: a college administrator for the University of Chicago’s economics department, serves as president of the Chicago chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and is a member of Chicago’s Caxton Club (for bibliofiles): “I collect 16thcentury Aristotle texts.” “I recently left my job as a mental health counselor in Hyannis, Mass., and now work for The May Center for Child Development at The May School in Chatham, Mass., teach­ ing children with developmental disabilities. I recently moved to Wellfleet, Cape Cod, from Yarmouthport. When I am not involved in the above, I play with my jazz, folk, blues rocka-billy band: Skeeter and the Buz­ ztones. I would love to communi­ cate with fellow Johnnies in the area.” 1999 Benjamin Closs (A) is serving at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, Calif. “I may go overseas for a while this fall, but Pacific Beach isn’t bad until then.” from Philadelphia to Frederick, Md., a year and a half ago to live with Vince Baker (AgsJ-yes, that Vince Baker. We’re now engaged, we’ve just bought a house and are planning an October wedding. I’m working for a biotech company, while Vince is an editor. We have a bit of a menagerie with the cats Apollo & Artemis, and our recently acquired blue-fronted Amazon par­ rot, Pancho, the Bird of Mass Destruction. We’d love to hear from anyone in the D.G. metro area: cinderlou@peoplepc.com and oldmarley@hotmail.com.” announce the birth of their son. Mason, on February 14, 2003. “We’d love to hear from our former classmates at ShannonandKerry@ earthlink.net.” Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A) are pleased to announce the birth of their first child, Lucila Adele. Lucy was born on September 30 in Los Angeles, where Mike is begin­ ning his second year as an attorney in the tax department of O’Melveny & Myers. Abby recently finished the post-baccalaureate program in classics at UCLA. They’d love to hear from anyone, especially those in or passing through Southern California (asoejoto@cs.com or 323-572-0343). Nevin Young (A) writes: “I am now Mauricio Rojas in August. “Also I am currently teaching in Prince George’s County. I got my certifica­ tion through their Resident Teacher Program and would be happy to talk to any seniors or graduates who are looking into doing the same.” “Hey all,” writes Jessica Sprout Morgenstern (A). “Still busy out here, loving my job, loving the weather-sunny Santa Barbara. Feel free to e-mail anytime...anyone looking for a fun way to get paid to learn (and teach) dance (ballroom and social) give me a call!” {The College. Christopher “Casey” Vaughan (A) is living in St. Augustine, Fla. “Anyone who wants to come surfing feel free to contact me at cvaughan@flagler.edu. 2001 Katharine Christopher (SF) and Billy Davis (SF) were married on December 20, 2003, in a beautiful traditional ceremony at the Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe. Katharine reports: “We were attended by our five sisters as bridesmaids, and Jackson FrishMAN (SFoi) and Chris Carlisle (SFoi) as groomsmen. Nikki Mazzia (SFoi) sang two lovely solos, and Juliana Corona Kirmeyer (SF02) read a Scripture passage. A number of other John­ nies also came to celebrate with us, as well as family and friends from all over. It was a wonderful day, as well as the beginning, God willing, of a long and joyful marriage.” 2000 Lori Beth Kurtyka (AGI) married Cindy Lutz (A) writes: “I moved married in Rocky Mount, N.C., and now live in Indianola, Miss., which has been my home since gradua­ tion. I will be ordained in May and we are expecting our first child in November.” Shannon Rohde and Kerry O’Boyle (Both AGI) would like to Robert Herbst (SF) is employed as A report from Andrew B. Hill (A): “I’m getting married sometime in 2004 to a tremendous woman who did not, sadly, attend St. John’s. I reside in Fort Worth, Texas. I recently completed an unsuccess­ ful bid for the mayorship of my lovely city, for which I was reward­ ed with a whopping 206 votes, as well as about 60 hours of Digital Beta footage, which I intend to convert into something remotely saleable. Thus, no matter how vague my connection to the school may be, I am following in a tradition of Maverick Johnnie filmmakers, or at least I think I am.” 41 finishing my third year in the evening division at the George Washington University Law School, and am working for a lawyer in the District of Columbia. (I cannot understand why anyone would not want to be a lawyer.) I would be happy to answer any questions from Johnnies who want to know about law school in general, or GW.” “Greetings from the Mississippi Delta!” writes Paul Spradley (A). “This past January 1 got married to Caroline Taylor of Rocky Mount, N.C. In the wedding party were Derek Alexander (A99), David Bohannon (A99), Adam Dawson (A03), Alan Hudson (A03), and George O’Keefe (A03). We were John ’5 College . Spring 2004 } What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in September; deadline for the alumni notes section is July 15. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College Public Relations Office 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �4a Katrina Costedio (SF) has finally decided to use her powers for good and is heading for law school, although she isn’t sure which one. “Also shaping the young minds of California in various volunteer positions and as a sub. And on the weekends I work with an adult who is learning to read. I’m struggling with the demands of being a good citizen. Most of the time I still feel like I’m pretending, but what’s the difference really?” Terence Duvall (A) writes: “I just returned from my first major trip since graduating college so I decided it was about time to send an update. My lomo and I spent six stupendous weeks in Slovenia taking pictures of castles by lakes for my upcoming art exhibit ‘Reflected Castles.’ In Ljubljana I met a producer who has offered to put out a split seven-inch of my {Alumni Notes} band. Big Brother, and the Sloven­ ian underground rock quartet Sister City. I think I finally under­ stand why you can’t spell Slovenia without the word ‘love.’ And so in the immortal words of the poet Jerry Garcia, ‘What a long strange trip it’s been.’” Talley Scroggs (A) moved to Bennington, Vt., after a half year in Agen, France, where she assisted in running The French Kitchen at Gamont, a 1720s inn. Her friend Louis Kovacs (A), is in the post­ baccalaureate program at Bennington College. Talley works at North Shire Booksellers and plans to start an MBA program next fall. An intriguing “heads up” from Peter Speer (A): “You’re the king of hearts for four years and then you come out into the real world and you’re the two of spades. And there’s no don rags in your new office, and no one wants to read your senior essay. But that girl by the water cooler is awfully cute, and she blushes when I quote Dante, and though she’s never heard of Virgil she swears it sounds familiar. So all’s well and I’m going to Vegas. Feel free to contact me with lucky numbers.” 2002 Margaret Tobias (A) will be attending graduate school this fall at the University of Chicago, enrolling in the Master of Arts in Humanities program. 2003 “I am enjoying Eastern Classics and highly recommend the pro­ gram,” writes Allison Webster (SF).4- Alek Chance (A) and Iva Ziza (Aoi) had a daughter, Emma Katherine Chance. Emma was born on August 10, 2003, in St. Johnsburry, Vermont. {Obituaries} Diana “Danny” Bell Herbert Brent Stallings Diana “Danny” Bell, the wife of Santa Fe tutor emeritus Charles Bell, died March 24 of pancreatic cancer. She was 80. She was born and raised in Darlington, Md., trained as a teacher, and after marry­ ing Charles Bell in 1949, lived with her family in Chicago and Annapolis. She taught first grade in Annapolis until mov­ ing to Santa Fe in 1967. Along with her husband, she was named one of the city’s “Living Treasures” in 1996 for contribu­ tions to the Santa Fe community. “Everything she did was in proportion and infused with order, kindness, and delight,” her family wrote in her newspa­ per obituary. “Whether it was a picnic, or the peaceful sharing of tea, Danny filled all with joy and the sense of her unconditional acceptance of our human foibles.” The family has arranged for two ways for friends to remember her: contributions can be made for the publication of Charles Bell’s poems through the non-profit Lumen Books (40 Camino Cielo, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87506) and also to one of Danny’s charities. La Luz de Santa Fe Fam­ ily Shelter, (2325 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe, NM 87505). Herbert Brent Stallings, class of 1941, died January 8, 2004, in Cary, N.C. He was 84. A native of Baltimore, Stallings played on the college’s football team (nicknamed the “gallopinggoose-eggs”) before intercolle­ giate sports were dropped. His pastor, the Rev. William Green, remembers Stallings bringing his family back to the St. John’s campus several years ago, videotaping his old dormitory room, and fondly revisiting his days at St. John’s. When the college adopted the New Program in r937, Stallings had the option of sticking with the old pro­ gram or starting in the new and spending an extra year at the college; he chose the New Program, Green said. “He has always said that St. John’s really formed who he was,” said Rev. Green. “He really loved talking about the college.” Stallings went on to serve as a lieutenant in the Navy during World War IL After the war, he launched a 30-year career in adver­ tising with the Baltimore News-American. He met his wife, Ruth, on a Chesapeake Bay Cruise. Married for nearly 60 years, the couple had two children who live in North Carolina. {The College- St. John ’5 College ■ Spring 2004 } “He was a wonderful man who loved books,” Green said. Medora Cockey Medora Cockey (A03) died January 3, 2003, after a brief illness. She was 23. Miss Cockey was born in Baltimore and moved to Salisbury with her family in 1983. She attended St. John’s College for two years, then transferred to Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., to finish her studies. She was to have graduated with a fine arts degree in May. Miss Cockey was a talented artist. She loved hard physical farm work, and her favorite summer job in recent years was working on organic farms in Virginia and Georgia. Her sister, Mary, is a member of the Annapolis class of 2004. Also noted: Clayton Davis, class of r938, died Feb. 9, 2004. John Falencki, (A68), died Dec. 30, 2003. Merrill Turner (SF79) died March 16, 2004. Charles T. Westcott, class of 1936, died in July 2002. �{Student Voices} 43 On Grades: How Can Genuine Learning be Measured at St. John’s? BY loHN Peterson, A05 grades? Do any students complain about y grades were never their grades? One can respond to a tutor in something I worried a don rag because he is stating observations too much about. In and offering suggestions, but how does one middle school I earned respond to a B on a piece of paper? As, but in high schoolThe college’s recent self-study, “Liberal where I didn’t always Education in a Community of Learners,” do homework or attend class-I maintained states that the college wants students to a consistent B+, or 90 percent average. “work for understanding and not for These grades were meaningless, I thought, grades,” but acknowledges that students because the work that the A-kids were need transcripts, and therefore grades, for doing to get their grades was out of propor­ life after St. John’s. Grades interfere with tion to a grade’s value. I scoffed at the arti­ the college’s goals of fostering genuine ficial scale of greatness that accompanied learning and cultivating freedom, they the grades: “High Honor Roll,” “Honor distract students, encourage competition, Roll,” etc. I beheved that I was wiser than and are “inadequate as means of evaluating these students, because while they were working hard to slave for top grades at their a student’s success in liberal learning,” the report states. Nevertheless, it says, tutors college choices, I was heading to a place take the “fair determination of grades very where grades didn’t matter and where what seriously.” would really be measured after four years The “Grades and Grading Poficies” sec­ would be the true worth of an individual. tion of the student handbook says that the When I came to St. John’s College, I college “does require all tutors to award let­ found classes to be radically different from ter grades to their students at the end of high school, the teachers much more alive, each semester...and authorizes them to the students more interested and interest­ decide what elements they will take into ing. There were no tests and no homeconsideration and in what proportion.” work-at least not in the high school sense As opposed to the pre-determined system of busywork from a textbook. Why, then, of my high school days, this process is mys­ were there still grades? terious and vague, perhaps even arbitrary. St. John’s is an egalitarian institution What are these “elements” that a tutor may that loves truth and rewards hard work not or may not take into consideration? Class­ with good grades, but with understanding, room participation, attendance, attitude, good conversation, and good judgment. papers, and demonstrations all seem like Could it possibly be true that with all these candidates. However, different tutors may riches around them, students here would be more interested in different things, and be worried about their grades, look them this is something that a proportional grad­ up every semester, and work for them, even ing pohcy, in which various assignments to the detriment of learning itself? are given certain weight in a total grade, During my first semester, I don’t think is designed to alleviate. grades ever crossed my mind-I was having It is unhkely that St. John’s will implement too much fun. I was worried that I did not any pohcy such as this in the near future. talk as much as some of my classmates and One reason is that the more specific we get that maybe I did not study enough. In my about grades, the more it will appear that we don rag, my tutors were nice to me and care about them, and as a result, we will care said some helpful things. This was enough about them more. If tutors needed to discuss for me. grades, they would have to think more about This year, however, I began to think grade-giving and less about teaching. about life after St. John’s and checked my Students would consequently worry more grades. This raised a series of troubling about grade-getting than about learning. questions about grades and the learning Competition would inevitably result. environment at St. John’s: How many other “It’s a weird situation,” acknowledges students check their grades? Students dis­ Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft. “On the one cuss don rags all the time-what about M {The College. St. John’s College Spring 2004 } John Peterson hand we give [grades], and we don’t want them to be some kind of secret document that a student can’t look at, but on the other hand we don’t report them to the student, and we try to play it down. I don’t think it’s hypocritical...It’s trying to foster a commu­ nity where people are really concerned about the depth of each individual student’s self-education-and it really works.” With all the debate about how much to talk about grades, by which standards they are given, and how much they matter to students as opposed to how much consider­ ation tutors have in giving them, my inclination is to revert to my old high school attitude. I begin to suspect that the behavior of the students around me is geared toward getting better grades. I wonder if this or that student has better grades than I, and if so, why. I become taken with the feeling that we are all here to go somewhere else, to get our tickets to graduate school. I begin to resent my fellow students and to think only of myself. Worst of all, I stop all learning and introspection, adopt an air of superiority, and start to think about my future. Only at this point do I realize that the school knows what it is doing: it has foreseen these problems, and in its grading pohcy has tried to circumvent them. It recognizes that grades can be a potential threat to learning, but that they are necessary. If a Johnnie is still worried about the arbitrariness of grades, he only needs to ask himself, “Do my grades reflect anything real?” and he will answer, “More than they did in high school.” That should be enough, and he should go back to his studies. �44 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Greetings! Your Alumni Association and the staff of SJC have heen hard at work supporting the network of Johnnies. I wish I could share in one letter all the projects and possibilities that are emerging from our shared work, but we only have room for three this time. Watch this space for more in the coming issues. Part 1 - Reconnect What ever happened to that interesting woman in my freshman seminar? WTio are the Johnnies living in my state? Is there someone from St. John’s practicing law in my city? How many people were in my class? What is Glenda Holladay’s last name now? Does my favorite waltz partner have an e-mail address? How can I be sure the college has my correct address and phone number? Soon you can answer these and many other questions about alumni around the world. The Alumni Association and the college joined forces to put the St. John’s College Alumni Register online. It will be a great new tool for you to stay in touch with the rest of the college community. To use the Register1. Go towww.stjohnscollege.edu. 2. Select alumni. 3. Select Online Register. 4. Apply for access to the Register. 5. Within a week, you will receive an e-mail with your username and password that will give you access. Then you’ll be searching to your heart’s content. As you use the new Register, we strongly urge you to: • Send your feedback about the Register and the rest of the Web site to Jo Ann Mattson (A87) joanne.mattson@sjca.edu or Roxanne Seagraves (SF83) roxanne.seagraves@mail.sjcsf.edu. • Update and/or complete your own information. The Register is only as good as the information it holds. Please make it most useful by keeping your own data up to date! • Let the college know if you prefer not to have your information appear in the Register. You should have received a postcard asking if you wanted to opt out. There are also places online that you can choose not to have your information appear. • Use the Register as a tool to stay in touch with Johnnies from your era, your campus, your profession, or your locale. Part 2 - Come Home Are you going to Homecoming this year? Please consider making the trip to Santa Fe in the summer or Annapolis in the fall. You will have many reasons to be glad you did. • Seeing old friends and making new ones. • Thanking that tutor who opened your mind to the books (or the books to your mind). • Seeing a rejuvenated campus whether you’re in the East or the West. • Watching a Santa Fe sunset over the mountain or an Annapolis sunset over the creek. • Sharing the unique conversational experience of seminar. • Dancing as if you were ao again. • Munching on burritos or crab cakes. • Welcoming new honorary alumni. • Gongratulating fellow alumni with Awards of Merit for their remarkable lives and work. • Learning about the current state of student hfe and the Program. • Exhibiting and/or observing work of creative and industrious Johnnies who have books to sign (Annapolis) or art to show (Santa Fe). You will be receiving information and invitations from classmates, the Alumni Association, and the college. We look forward to seeing you! Partg - Reach Out The Next Steps Action Team of the Alumni Association and the Career Services offices on both campuses support new alumni as {The College . St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } they venture out into the world. If you’re interested in providing support or in get­ ting a boost yourself, consider reaching out. Among the many opportunities and services: Virgil Initiative: Juniors who volunteer are matched with an alumnus mentor. The two meet periodically and stay in touch through senior year and beyond. The purpose of the relationship is to share experiences and insights about the transi­ tions after St. John’s. Career counseling is not part of the plan, but mentors may have helpful suggestions and resources for the job or educational market as well. (Thanks to Lee Zlotoff (A74) and Tom Krause (SFGIoo) for conceiving and launching this program!) Networking receptions: Several Alumni Association chapters host receptions that bring new alumni and older ones together to share career and grad school informa­ tion. As you might imagine, many other topics come up for conversation and a lively time is had by all. Communities of Interest: Clusters of alumni have shared interests such as psychology, dance, quilting, art, academic research in various fields, law, or educa­ tion. Often these Johnnies don’t have ways to be in touch with each other even when they know they’re not alone. The Next Steps Action Team is planning to launch a network across time and space to get like-minded alumni connected. Internships: A generous grant from the Hodson Trust inspired summer internships for students on the Annapolis campus. Recipients have pursued a variety of activities from arts to sciences to services to professions. The project has been very successful, and plans are afoot to begin a similar program in Santa Fe. We all have transitions to make as we leave the college. These programs and others help make the transition a time for extended learning about how the great ideas are the foundation for happy and productive lives. If you’re interested in participating in any of these programs, either as supporter or supported, please be in touch with Jo Ann or Roxanne. They’ll help you make the connections. For the past, present, and future, Glenda Holladay Eoyang, SF76 �{Alumni Association News} Chapter Update With i8 active chapters meeting on a regu­ lar basis throughout the country, including a new chapter in Pittsburgh, St. John’s alumni have plenty of opportunities for seminars, social events, and cultural out­ ings with other Johnnies. Efforts are also under way in six new areas to develop chapters from reading groups or nurture budding interest in the formation of new chapters and alumni groups. In her annual report on chapter activity to the association board, Carol Freeman (AGI94), reported on an encouraging year marked by active chapters planning innova­ tive events and emerging interest in areas yet to establish chapters. Here are some highlights: • The Santa Fe chapter is now meeting bimonthly, and has formed a steering committee to select topics and plan meetings. • The Boston chapter is thrilled to have read Marcel Proust’s In Search ofLost Time. This inspiring endeavor (5,000 pages) was a project embraced enthusias­ tically by chapter members. • The Annapolis chapter has decided to develop a reading list for several months in a row to attract more of the 500 alumni in the area to seminars. • Inquiries about starting a chapter or reading group are being pursued in Ithaca, N.Y., and the Greater Miami area. In Miami, Johnnies traveled up to three hours to attend recent alumni gettogethers in Miami and West Palm Beach, hosted by Annapolis staff members Barbara Goyette (A73), vice president for advancement, and Jo Ann Mattson (A87), director of alumni activities. • Russ Dibble (SF97) and Kira Heater organized the first seminar, on February II, for alumni in the Missoula, Montana, area. In addition to seminars, Johnnies are demonstrating their interest in socializing with other alumni by turning out in large numbers for crab feasts (Baltimore), picnics (New York), and an annual alumni dinner (Greater Puget Sound), Check the Web FOR Election News The Alumni Association nominations for alumni representatives to the St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors and for directors-at-large for the Alumni Associa­ tion Board for 2005 will be posted on the college Web site atwww.stjohnscollege.edu. Select “Alumni” from the left-hand menu (under the SJC seal), then click on the Alumni Association homepage. A special nominations page will appear among the left-hand menu options that are now highlighted in red. Names, photos (when available) and biographical information about the nominees, as well as infor­ mation on the election process, will be available online on or before August I, 2004. 45 ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, under­ graduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program or New, graduated or not, all alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The Board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan pro­ grams and coordinate the affairs of the Associ­ ation. This newsletter within The College mag­ azine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates Alumni Association news and events of interest. President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary -Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-OutAction Team Chair Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76 Web site - www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml Mailing address - Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Brett Heavner (A89) and Nancy Lindley (A58) at an Annapolis networking reception for students and ALUMNI. CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed belowfor information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-275-9012 BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen 410-472-9158 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon 410-280-0958 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 AUSTIN Jennifer Chenoweth 512-482-0747 Bev Angel 512-926-7808 CHICAGO Amanda Richards 847-705-1143 DALLAS/FORT WORTH Suzanne Gill Doremus 817-927-2390 DENVER/BOULDER Lee Goldstein 720-746-1496 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 NEW YORK Daniel Van Doren 914-949-6811 {The College- NORTHERN CALIF. Suzanne Vito 510-527-4309 SANTA FE Richard Cowles 505-986-1814 WASHINGTON DC Jean Dickason 301-699-6207 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 215-465-0244 SEATTLE Amina Brandt 206-465-7781 PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray 724-325-4151 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Julia Ward 413-648-0064 PORTLAND Dale Mortimer 360-882-9058 SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 619-423-4972 St. John’s College • Spring 2004 } TRIANGLE CIRCLE (NO Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 ISRAEL Emi Geiger Leslau 15 Aminadav Street Jerusalem 93549 Israel 9-722-671-7608 boazl@cc.huji.ac.il �{AlumniAssociationNews} 46 “A LOAF OF BREAD, A GLASS OF WINE, AND ... I AND ThOU.” Sn^ng, Swirling, and Seminar at Stags Leap Wine Cellars BY Mark Middlebrook, A83 Here with a LoafofBread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness And Wilderness is Paradise enow. - FROM Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat^ c. iioo. Nine centuries later, the sentiments expressed in Khayyam’s verse echo each summer in a vine-rich valley watched over by a rocky palisade known as Stag’s Leap. Alumni from around Northern Californiaand perhaps an eagerly welcomed visitor from Santa Fe or Annapolis-rise early on a sunny Sunday morning to prepare our pic­ nic lunches and finish our seminar reading. And then we’re off to the annual Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars picnic and seminars, where we’ll once again be the blessed beneficiaries of St. John’s alumni Warren (A52) and Barbara (A55) Winiarski’s hospitality. The drive from the San Francisco Bay area takes about an hour, and many of us carpool-if only for the pleasure of packing in extra hours of conversation with fellow alumni whom we may not have seen since last year’s pilgrimage. As we head north, fog often lingers on the Bay and even in the lower reaches of Napa Valley, but its cool­ ness provides a lovely contrast to the intense valley heat that will come in the afternoon. We pass through the town of Napa and head north on the Silverado Trail, a road threading up the eastern side of Napa Valley that’s traveled mostly by winery­ hopping tourists and bicyclists. Vines appear-lots of them-as we speed past the now-familiar litany of wineries: Luna (where former tutor Abe Schoener, A82, is now winemaker), Altamura, White Rock, Clos du Vai, Chimney Rock. After a few miles, we see the distinctive notch in the craggy ridge to the east. That’s the Stag’s Leap. Just before the road begins to climb out of the Stags Leap District and the bicyclists start to down-shift, we pull into the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars driveway. To keep track of all the stags in these parts, you need a scorecard-or maybe a punctuation handbook. The “Stags Leap District” (multiple stags) is the name of the small wine-growing region that sits just below the notch in the ridge called Above: Alex Poulsen (SF74) and Daniel Cohen(SF90) Left: Former Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars events coordinator Gabriele Ondine and PICNIC GUEST {The College- St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } “Stag’s Leap” (singular possessive stag). “Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars” (ditto) is the Winiarskis’ winery and home of our annual picnic and seminars. “Stags’ Leap Winery” (plural possessive stags) is an unrelated winery in the district. We bypass the tasting room parking lot and instead take the road that skirts below the white wine fermentation building and around a wooded hill to the small lake tucked behind. There we unload our picnic baskets and coolers, carry them up to the lake’s grassy banks, and spread a blanket on a spot to our Uking-full sun, full shade, or dappled with some of each. It’s a little more civilized than Khayyam’s Wilderness, but with boughs, wine, and books-not to mention a refreshing lake to jump into-it will be Paradise enow for us. Despite the claims of some that our palates are most discerning in the morn­ ing, we defer to the scruples of those who might find earnest wine tasting at 10 a.m. a bit unusual, and instead we sally forth on a vineyard walk and winery tour. We stroll past FAY-a storied vineyard where Stags Leap District pioneer Nathan Fay planted the region’s first Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in 1961-and then into S.L.V. (Stag’s Leap Vineyard), whose grapes catapulted Warren Winiarski to fame when his 1973 S.L.V. Cabernet Sauvignon won the 1976 Paris tasting. We taste some of the grapes and wonder at the winemaker’s techne that �{AlumniAssociationNews} reveals supple, prize-winning wines from these juicy but still tart berries. From the luxuriant but care­ fully-coifed wilderness of grapevine tendrils, we return to paved road and make our way to the civilization of a modern winery: crusher-destemmer machines, fermentation tanks, oak barrels, and bottling lines. Our tour culminates in the spectacular caves, which are home to hundreds of barrels of aging wine, a bronze bear and cub nestled among several of those barrels, a Foucault pen­ dulum, a dramatically lit, chapel-like room designed by Catalan architect Javier Barba. An hour of walking, plus the heady, deep aromas of ferment­ ing wine, have eliminated any remaining scruples, so we make a beeline for the lake. At a table nearby, our host begins pulling corks and pouring tastes. The diligent among us work methodically through the full lineup, sniffing, swirling, and then either swallowing or spit­ ting-depending on one’s lunchtime drinking plans and desired degree of lucidity during the afternoon seminars. We start with Sauvignon Blanc, several Chardonnays, and a pair of Merlots. The simpler wines bear the Hawk Crest name-Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ second label-while the grander ones display the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars name and distinctive “standing stag and tree” logo. We finish with an impressive phalanx of Cabernet Sauvignons, including the FAY Estate, S.L.V. Estate, and occasionally, if we’ve been very, very good, a precious taste of the CASK 33 (a blend of particularly excellent lots from FAY and S.L.V.). Tasting wine is all well and good, but drinking wine is better, so we pour a glass of our favorite and bear it gingerly back to our chosen picnic spot. There we fling open picnic baskets, unwrap deli sand­ wiches or flip open cardboard carry-out containers, and begin to enjoy the happy union of good food, good wine, and good company. Congenial swapping ensues-of victuals, opinions about the wines, opin­ ions about the seminar readings, stories of Liz Travis (SF83) our lives during the preceding year (many of them true), stories of our times at St. John’s (some of them true). All of this eating, bibbing, and creative embroidery under the hot summer sun is arduous work, and some of us reinvigorate with a jump into the lake. At the stentorian bellow of the ceremonial conk shell, we commence the annual chapter meeting. This short but raucous affair typically com­ prises effusive thanks to the Winiarskis and the hard-working winery staff, announcements of upcoming events, a desperate plea by the current chapter president for a successor, and directions to the various seminar rooms scattered about the winery. Despite the unquestioned zeal of St. John’s alumni for seminars, the next {The College. 5£. John’s College Spring 2004 } 47 half hour offers irrefutable proof of the validity of Newton’s first law. Every body assembled there, in its tranquil, well-fed state of rest, does indeed continue in that state of rest unless com­ pelled to change its state by powerful forces impressed upon it. Several of us cajole, plead, and eventually threaten in order to get these bodies rolling towards their seminar rooms. We typically run five simultane­ ous seminars on readings ranging from Plato to the Lotus Sutra to Wallace Stevens to a contemporary political essay, plus one film. An hour and a half later, the seminars disband and we regroup at the Arcade outside the caves for a reception with scrumptious desserts and cheeses, perhaps a sip of dessert wine, and coffee. “How was your seminar?” mingles with other typical post-seminar chat. There is more catching up on the previous year, expressions of wonder that we’re able to enjoy a day like this each year, and the wistful sense that this year’s day is almost done. One more slice of cake or piece of cheese, another round of grateful thanks to our hosts, perhaps a stop in the tasting room to buy a few bottles, and then we’re heading south on the Silverado Trail, back towards the Bay Area. The day’s heat is starting to wane, and sun slanting off the vines makes the early evening sky glow. 1 roll down the window, and the air rushing by seems to sing. This year’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars picnic and seminars have not yet been scheduled at the time of this writing. Please note that reserva­ tions are required, and that we some­ times must limit attendance in order not to exceed the winery’s capacity. See the St. John’s College Alumni Association of Northern California’s Web page for more information and reservations instructions: http://teamrioja.org/sjcaanc/ �48 {St. John’s Forever} Initiating the Young into the Tribe ‘!i4s well you know there is only one com­ mencementspeech. It has been delivered many times and it has many superficial variations, but it always says the same thing. An old man ofthe tribe tells the young men that they are beautiful and strong, that the world isfull ofevils, and that they must go out into the world tofight its evils and keep the vision ofits highest good. ” —Scott Buchanan, Commencement 1952, he commencement rite calls for a memorable speech filled with sage advice on how to go on with the business of life. Scott Buchanan called commencement “the great rite of initiation of the young into the tribe.” Some speech­ es are memorable; some are not. Some focus on history, some on urgent current events. But at St. John’s College the selec­ tion of the commencement speaker always falls to those to whom it is primarily directed, and throughout the years tutors have been heavy favorites in the selection process. Scofield said in his 1950 speech that a Tutors Richard Scofield and the Rev. possible interpretation of the custom of J. Winfree Smith became commencement choosing a speaker from within the traditions themselves. Scofield delivered the commencement speech four times; college is that students “think of the Smith was selected by the graduating class occasion, in spite of its name, as not only looking forward. Since the life that lies five times. Tutor Nancy Buchenauer was ahead of you. . .is more complicated, more selected by the students in Santa Fe in serious, and more precarious than the life 1997, and after transferring to the you are leaving, you could hardly go Annapolis faculty, was asked to deliver the without a backward glance.” dtp 2000 address. T {The College. St. John’s College . Spring 2004 } Tutor Richard Scofield, shown here in 1950, DELIVERED THE COMMENCEMENT SPEECH FOUR TIMES. �{Alumni Events Calendar} Santa Fe Homecoming: July a-4,2004 classes are: ’69, ’74, ’79, ’84, ’89, ’94, ’99. Childcare is available. Friday, July 2 Picnic on the Placita, 5 p.m. Reunion class parties Movie: The Tao ofSteve Saturday, July 3 Homecoming Seminars, 10 a.m. to noon Barbecue, 12-2 p.m. Alumni Art Show opening, 5 p.m. Banquet, 7 p.m. Members of the Denver-Boulder chapter Sunday, July 4 Annapolis GATHERED FOR A SEMINAR LAST WINTER. President’s Brunch, 10:30 a.m Homecoming: October 1-3, 2004 L2I2EEZ1liunni ____ Week i; June 28-July a, 0004 Kierkegaard’s Meditation on Abraham and Isaac Led by David Starr Hegel, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, and excerpts from the book of Genesis. Painting & Reflection Led by Phil Le Cuyer & Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF80) On-campus and off-site painting experi­ ences, gallery tours, seminars. Week2: July 5-9, 2004 Plato’s Republic Led by Eva Brann & David Carl Revisit one of the seminal texts of Western political theory. Don Giovanni & the Operas of Mozart Led by Peter Pesic & George Stamos Once again, Don Giovanni is dragged alive through the gates of Hell. Call the Office of Alumni and Parent Activities, 505-984-6103 Registration, 4 to 8 Career Panel, 6:30 p.m. Homecoming Lecture, 8:15 p.m. After lecture: Wine and Cheese with the class of 2005, Rock Party in the Boathouse Saturday, October a Seminars, 10 a.m. Homecoming Picnic, noon Class Luncheons, 11:45 P ®Afternoon: Autograph Party, Soccer, Gathering of All Alumni, Dance performance in memory of Harry Golding Hors d’oeuvres & wine, 6 p.m. Homecoming Banquet, 7:30 p.m. Waltz/Swing Party, to p.m. Sunday, October 3 President’s Brunch, ii a.m. * Tentative schedule. All alumni are welcome. Reunion classes: ’39, ’44, ’49, ’54, ’59, ’64, ’69, ’74, ’79, ’84, ’89, ’94, ’99. Contact Planit Meetings for special rates at Annapolis hotels. Space is limited for dis­ counted rates; mention St. John’s College when you call for reservations. Phone: 301-261-8284; fax: 919-642-0062. E-mail: kelder@planitmeetings.com. For more information, call the Alumni office: 410-626-2531. {The College -St. John’s College ■ Spring 2004 } Back cover: Reality observers in Annapolis �STJOHN’S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS • SANTA FE Published by the Communications Office P.O. Box aSoo Annapolis, Maryland 21404 D A N IE L H O U C K ( ao 6) ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED Periodicals Postage Paid � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Spring 2004 Description An account of the resource Volume 30, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2004. 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 2004 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 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Borden, Sus3an (managing editor) Behrens, Jennifer (art director) Hartnett, John (Santa Fe editor) Wilson, Rebecca Silver, Joan Kraus, Pamela Miller, Basia Stickney, Carey Russell, George Dink, Michael Engel, Elizabeth Goyette, Barbara Byrne, Brigid K. Maguran, Andra Peterson, John Eoyang, Glenda H. Middlebrook, Mark Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The College Vol. 30. Issue 2 Spring 2004 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6b8d06ce38e6a21ddf56bf9ce5c6de77.pdf 10f3c0274f819bdc99f5ccb9601c60c5 PDF Text Text SPRING . 2- 0 ANNAPOLIS -.. 0 5 �SPRING THE VOLUME 31, 0 THE MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI OF ST. JOHN 'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS • SANTA 2,005 I SSUE FE {CONTE NTS } PACE IO DEPARTMENTS 2 BOATHOUSE REPUBLIC Spending a sabbatical at St. John's gives the president of Randolph-Macon College a glimpse of sports and the Program. PACE 14 BROTHER ROBERT He came as a visitor to learn more about the great books program; he ended up becoming a treasured member of the St. John's community. PACE 8 PAGE 14 18 PROFILES 30 On "Marketplace" David Brown (AGI95) talks business. 34 Newspaper editor Julia Goldberg (SFgr) Annapolis tutor John Verdi points to the writers who most influenced Nietzsche, including Emerson, Plato, and Pascal. likes to make waves. 38 Nathan Wilson (AGio1) unveils shroud mysteries. PAGE 18 44 STUDENT VOICES A Johnnic ponders what it means to be a member of a community oflcarners. NIETZSCHE HAUS In Sils-Maria, a Johnnie revisits the ideas of her senior essay. PACE 28 BIBLIOFILE 21 ALUMNI NOTES WRITERS 23 LETTERS Annapolis tutor Eva Brann shares aphorisms in Open Secrets/Inward Prospects. NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITE PACE FROM THE BELL TOWERS Michael Peters settles in. A new dean in Annapolis. A conversation across generations. Grappling ideas-and more-in Santa Fe. Warren Spector (A81) funds Annapolis dorm. 46 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS ' FOREVER 48 ST. JOHNS 26 CROQUET There's always next year. PAGE 26 ON THE COVER Nietzsche Illustration by David Johnson 2 �{FROM THE {FROM THE BEL L BELL TOWERS} A NEW DEAN IN ANNAPOLIS MICHAEL P ETERS On the Job in Santa Fe It's been a busy six months for Michael Peters, president of the Santa Fe campus. On January 17, he arrived in his office in Weigle Hall, and a few hours later, donned academic robes to deliver his first Convocation address to January freshmen. Then the college's Board of Visitors and Governors arrived on campus for four days of meetings, and the pace has hardly slacked ofT since. In spite of a busy schedule, Mr. Peters has made it a priority to set aside time to get to know students and the Program by sitting in on seminar with the January freshmen. Although he is juggling a great deal of out-oftown travel, he's been able to make at least one seminar a week and hopes to continue with the JFs through most of the summer. He does the reading, sits in the side chairs-as prospectives and other guests do-and takes in the conversation. As a West Point graduate, former career Army officer, and most recently, former executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, he particularly enjoyed the discussions on Thucydides. "There is so much in Thucydides that directly paraUels the world today," he says. " Right now on the global stage we are dealing with many of the same issues and facing many of the same challenges." He also was a member of a senior essay committee on LIBERAL ARTS AND CITIZENSHIP From Mr. Peters' Convocation speech, January 17, 2005 " ....You and I will be participating actively in this intellectual community-a community which believes chat a liberal education is good for its own sake, but is also crucial for citizens of our country and our world if, as former Dean Scott Buchanan wrote in the college catalog from the late '30s, we are to: 'Distinguish fact from fiction, between principle and case, between opinion and insight, between propaganda and instruction, and between truth and falsity.' "These attributes of citizenship are as important now as they were in the dark days prior to World War II. Today, our nation honors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, who demonstrated that the ideas and character of one man can have a profoundly positive effect on many. "It has become almost a cliche to say we are part of an interconnected and complex world-a world that faces profound issues of war and peace, poverty and plenty, disasters, plagues and pestilence both natural and man-made, to name a few. These issues require thoughtful and informed public debate if we are to come up with imaginative and workable solutions. Dealing with these problems makes a liberal education not a luxury, but a necessity. In the individual and collective choices we must all make, bumper stickers won't do and you won't find bumper stickers at St. John's." ♦ {T THE Co LL B . The Brothers Karamazov-one of the highlights of his St. John's experience to this point. Observing January freshmen take their first tentative steps in the Program and participating in a senior's culminating experience gave him appreciation for the growth a student experiences in four years at St. John's. There's also a great deal of work to be clone in cultivating relationships with the community and the state of New Mexico. A step in that direction was hosting the state's Summit on 21st Century Competitiveness on campus. The event attracted state leaders including Gov. Bill Richardson and U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman to the St. John's campus. The schedule for Mr. Peters and his wife, Eleanor, won't slow down much this summer. He'll be busy greeting visitors to the campus who come for Summer Classics, hosting his first Homecoming in July, and getting ready for his October z8 inauguration. At his request, the inauguration ceremony will be simple and without much fanfare. St. John's College . Spring 2005 ) ELEANOR AND MIKE PETERS HAVE BEEN ON THE ROAD, MEETING ALUMNI AND FRIENDS. "There isso much in Thucydides that directly parallels the world today. " MICHAEL PETERS, SANTA FE PRESIDENT St. John's students continue to surprise him with their diverse talents and extraordinary thirst for learning. " I often reflect on these young men and women and what their contributions will be to our world. They're learning, through the Program and the method, to address the most important questions life asks of us-helping them learn not what to think, but how to think." ♦ -ANDRA MAGURAN Shortly after President Christopher Nelson announced that tutor Michael Oink (A75) was selected dean of the Annapolis campus, Dink received both "congratulations and condolences" from his colleagues. The congratulations referred to the great honor it is to be selected by one's peers for such an important position. The condolences-most meant in jest-spoke to the burdens of the job: long hours spent in committee meetings, hiring and tenure decisions, meting out justice in disciplinary issues, and making other difficult decisions that affect the lives of students. It's also not easy to take a long breakfive ye ars-from the classroom. "It's true that tutors regard ourselves as model learners," says Dink. "And there's always the sacrifice of giving up our primary activity for a while. It's probably love for the community as a whole that motivates any tutor to want to be dean. You have the chance to see that St. John's is the best that it can be." Dink looks forward to moving into the dean's position July 1, succeeding Harvey Flaumcnhaft, who served for eight years. " It's an opportunity for a more thorough and deeper involvement with the college," he says. "It's a challenge." He feels fortunate that his predecessor made great strides in his years as dean: in faculty development, support for students, and forging bonds with Santa Fe. "I'm very grateful to Harvey- he's left things in great shape," he says. After spending a year-ancl-ahalf at Harvard, Dink entered St. John's as a Febbie. A high school English teacher had suggested the great books program at St. John's, but at the time Dink believed, "I could get the same thing at any good school." However, in his philosophy classes, Oink found his professors lecturing from notes or teaching their own books. He wasn't reading the books he wanted to read and wasn't encountering many students who were serious about their studies. He returned to Harvard after an unsatisfying first year, but by the middle of sophomore year, his thoughts returned to St. John's. "J spent the reading period for my exams at Harvard filling out the Febbie application," he says. After St. John's, Oink went on to graduate study in philosophy at Catholic University. Five short years after graduating from the St. John's, he had { T THECo . TOWERS} completed the coursework for his doctorate and was back at St. John's as a tutor in Santa Fe. "I knew I would like to be a teacher, and the idea of coming back as a tutor had been in the back of my mind through grad school," says Dink. In the summer of 1980,Dink received a call from Robert Bart, then dean in Santa Fe, who needed to fill a last-minute appointment. Dink flew o ut for an interview and joined the faculty. WHILE MICHAEL DINK (A75) WILL MISS THE CLASSROOM, HE IS LOOK· ING FORWARD TO THE CHALLENGES OF BEING DEAN. In 1984,he transferred to Annapolis where he also served as co-director of athletics, first with tutor Bryce Jacobsen (class of 1942), and later with Roberta Gable (A78). He was then and remains a big fan of St. John's College . Spring 2005 } 3 the college's intramural program. " Intramm·als allowed me to play sports, and I became a pretty active athlete," he says. Dink received a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities that allowed him to spend a year pursuing questions in the works of Plato and a second year leading a faculty study group and delivering a lecture. Dink's three-year term as director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis from 1998 to 2001 was good preparation for the dean's office, he believes. "I t's on a much smaller scale, but the responsibilities are similar-you're involved with other segments of the college community, publications, financial aid, transcripts, being responsible for students. It does give you some sense of what's required in the dean's office." Dink looks forward to working with "all segments of the community, including Santa Fe, supporting younger faculty, and just hoping to find ways to keep things running smoothly." Among the changes scheduled to occur in his deanship is the discontinuation of the Febbie program in Annapolis, with the last class entering in January 2006. (The program will continue in Santa Fe.) Does he have mixed feelings, since the Febbie program allowed him to enter St. John's when he was ready? While it's hard to see traditions go, Dink says, the decision was in the best interest of the students. "Febbies get a truncated version of the Program, and it puts a lot of stress on the students," he says. "In recent years most Febbies have been students who would have come in the fall ifwe had let them." ♦ -ROSEMARY HARTY �4 THE {FROM THE so-YEAR CONVERSATION When women from the first coed graduating class at St. John's returned to the college for a day with women of the current graduating class, we did what we always do at St. John's: have conversations. From a leisurely lunch to a seminar on John KeaLs' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Virginia Woolf's "On Not Knowing Greek" to a dinner at the Boathouse, a steady flow of conversation continued, tying 1955 to 2005 as solidly as the conversation in a freshman seminar ties new Johnnies to Socrates and Agamemnon. Toward the end of the evening, Missy Skoog (Ao5), who helped organize the day's events, spoke of the inspiration the women of 1955provide for women of the current class. It was an inspiration of which I was not much aware before meeting the women from 1955. In my own experience at the college, I have only recently thought of my presence as a woman in addition to my presence as a student. The struggles I have experienced and the ways I have questioned the Program and myself have felt very personal. It is only recently that I have seen the ways I share those struggles with others. Over meals with Barbara Brunner Kiebler (A55), Cornelia Hoffman Reese (A57) and Emily Martin Kutler (A55) , J saw that the uncertainty I'm going through as I'm about to graduate is perhaps a natural result of having a Johnnie's philosophical bent and widespread interests. At lunch, Kiebler told Samantha Buker (Ao5) and me a life story that included four children, graduate courses in mathematics, and a law degree she earned in her 40s. It put my own varied plans in perspective. I'm someone interested in questioning and experiencing, like Johnnies have always been. This interest is clearly what brought the first women to the BELL TOWER S } {FROM college. Everyone I asked said t hey were not aware of making history when they decided to come to St. John's. Though Kiebler said she felt "on display" once she arrived at the college, the decision co attend was based on a love oflearning rather than a conscious effort to change the status quo. Reese said she fell in love with St. John's as soon as she saw that questions and answers were "part of the learning process ... for both the students and the faculty." She said she had often been told in high school, "That's a very good question, Miss Hoffman, and I'm sure you realize why we don't have time to answer it." At St. John's, she encountered a very different attitude toward asking questions. "I felt like I blossomed," she said. "I felt like all my eagerness to learn had a place to go, and a way to get there." Talking to the first women at St. John's was fun and comfortable. We shared the common ground of the St. John's Program, and therefore had a base from which Lo compare and consider our life experiences. Carolyn Banks-Leeuwcnburgh (A55), who couldn't make the event, but shared her memories in a phone conversation, said she believes the Program produces this ease of connection by being "so different and unique, it's timeless." Though much of what I realized that day had to do with the similarity of all women and of all Johnnies, I was also deeply impressed by the courage the first women showed in coming to such a deeply intellectual school at a time when there were doubts on all sides as to a woman's ability to handle such a thing. Women were alJowed to apply to St. John's in 1951 because of several issues, according to Barbara Goyette (A73, vice president for advancement in Annapolis). These included then-president Richard Weigle's commitment to co-education, low enrollment at the college, and a strong interest among women in attending St. John's. When the women did enroJJ in 1951, they came in spile of resistance from some tutors and students. Goyette said, " The men were unsure socially about how it would change the campus, and they were unsure that the women could do the work.AJ1ofthatchanged very quickly once the women came." The women did encounter some prejudice. Leeuwenburgh remembers being Lold in a don rag, in response to the character of her opinions, that she should "go make babies." Reese continued on p. 5 LONGTIME ST. JOHN'S LIBRARIAN CHARLOTTE FLETCHER (HA69, CENTER TH E B E L L hornbcams, loblolly pines, sycamores, dogwoods, red oaks, and maple trees. N EWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS In late March, the Santa Fe can1pus hosted the New Mexico State Summit on 21st Century Competitiveness. The summit brought together senior New Mexico business and community leaders with national economists, industry and policy experts, and federal policymakers to discuss the state's higher education and workforce challenges in the new economy. President Mike Peters gave the welcoming remarks and introduced Gov. Bill Richardson and U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman. The summit addressed one of the state's thorniest problemsthe continuing drain of the state's educated young people to other states. After graduation, the majority of college students in New Mexico tend to leave the state for better-paying jobs elsewhere. In his opening remarks, Peters pointed out that St. John's College actually helps reverse this trend by attracting and keeping college-educated people in the stale. The college recruits students from nearly every state and several foreign countries, yet approximately 25 percent of St. John's graduates remain in New Mexico after finishing their studies. Currently almost 1,000 alumni live in New Mexico. Approximately 31 percent serve as teachers in public and private high schools, as professors at the state's colleges and universities, and in the state's Department of Education. 5 TO WE R S } AP POI NTMENT S In Annapolis: RUTHANDERSON COGGESHALL has been appoint- development field. Arasteh replaces RoBERTA G ABLE (A78), who has moved from the Career Services office co Admissions, where she is associate director. In Santa Fe: P ENELOPE B ENEKOS (SF99) has been named advancement officer. Prior to her return to the Southwest, she taught English in France, traveled throughout the Mediterranean, and worked in development at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. St. John's in Annapolis received a Plant Award (People Loving and Nurturing Trees) from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources for undertaking an urban forestry program several years ago. The inventory counted 118trees on the campus at the time. Since then, another 90 or so have been added, says Blythe ed director of major gifts. Previously she was chief development officer for the National Gallery of Art, where she completed the museum's New Century Fund campaign and redirected the gallery's development efforts to solicit major gifts nationally and locally. She also held leadership positions at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. SrEFANlE TAKACS (A89) joins the college as director of annual giving from Abraham House in the South Bronx, where she was assistant director of operations and development director. Takacs had been a volunteer fundraiser in Philanthropia since 1998 and served as the events committee chair for Woods, the college's horticultur- several years. cation, "Girl Scout/STUDIO ist. The college carefully tracks the health of its trees, she adds. Although the college and community still miss the magnificent Liberty Tree, the campus is rich in American is the new Career Services director in Annapolis. She brings to the college more than six years of experience in a variety of private and p ublic settings in the career 2B Advisor Self-Study Guide." The program was created for older girls age II-r7, a group that often loses interest in ANNAPOLIS ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD SlWtRZAD ARAsTE:11 STUDENTS ELIZABETI-1 V EGA (SFo6) received an Excellence Award from the Girl Scouts for a guide she wrote to help orient leaders of a new national program aimed at keeping teenage girls in valved in scouting. The award is given annually co individuals whose innovative contributions significantly advance the work of the council. Vega wrote a 68-page publi- scouting ♦ continuedfrom p. 4 remembers that some of her male classmates would make a point of challenging women when they demonstrated propositions in math class. Both women chalked this up to a lack of maturity on the part of some of their classmaLes. Reese said that she felt "just a little" hostility that seemed to come mostly from younger men who didn't know how to handle the presence of women. The women, regardless of these difficulties, acquitted themselves admirably. Goyette said, "They surprised everyone. I think they surprised themselves." They returned to St. John's 50 years laLer, confident in the abilities St. John's had given them, ready to encounter another seminar. I hope to carry myself with that sort of grace and ease someday. I hope I am as available to share questions and conversation as all these women did that day. I hope I am ready to aim for the heart of any conversation, as Emily Kutler did when she pursued the true intent of Woolf'sessay. I hope I will walk, as Barbara Kiebler did when she accompanied me to a class on Einstein and Minkowski, unhesitatingly toward any chance to keep learning. ♦ TOP) JOINED 2005 AND 1955 CLASS MEMBERS FOR A SAMANTHA BUKER (AOS) ANO SARAH CROOKE (A55) HAVE MUCH TO TALK CELEBRATION OVER CROQUET ABOUT DESPITE A SO-YEAR DIFFERENCE. WEEKEND. { THE C o COLLEGE . St. John's College . Spring 2005 ) { THE Co LL E c E. St. John's College. Spring 2005 } �6 {FROM THE JOHNNIES GRAPPLE WITH MORE THAN IDEAS Jiu-Jitsu Takes H old in Santa Fe Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a new addition to the martial arts offerings on the Santa Fe campus, but it's become enormously popular in just a few short months. C.J. McCue, who joined the Santa Fe staff as student activities coordinator eight months ago, is an accomplished martial artist whose Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes have attracted more than 30 students and inspired several Johnnies to enterand win-national competitions. During spring break, McCue and seven ofher students o·aveled to Las Vegas. Nevada. to compete in a submission wrestling tournament for no-gi grappling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. 1\vo ofMcCue's students, Alex Kongsgaard (SF05) and Quinn Mulhern (SF07), both blue belts, took first place in their divisions. McCue took second place in the women's advanced ~ division and third place ; in the open-weight ! women's division. z~ ]\1:,::Cue teaches • Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the Gracie style, which was created for self- defense. This martial art relies upon body mechanics and leverage rather than strength, so a small person can win against a bigger or heavier competitor. That's one reason the sport is popular with women, says McCue. There are two types of Jiu-Jitsu: Brazilian, or modern, was developed after 1900, while Japanese Jiu-Jitsu is considered traditional and dates to pre-1900. Like many martial arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu requires a technical knowledge of specific positions, development of physical and mental strength, and the use of strategy. However, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is unique in that most of the techniques involve grappling on the ground. "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners learn how to defend themselves on the ground," says McCuc. " Of course this has enormous real-world benefit as a selfdefense method for both me n and women." The clothing (gt) looks like a traditional martial arts uniform ofloose white pants and jacketstyle wrap shirt secured with a belt. "The gi is a very instrumental part ofBrazilian Jiu-Jitsu," says McCue. "Thegi can be used as a way to control one's opponent." Most of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu techniques involve specific positions. There are takedowns, { THE COLLEGE, {FROM BEL L TOW ERS} self-defense techniques, and striking, but the core of the art involves mental so·ategy. That's part of the appeal to Johnnies. Competitors strive to improve, maintain, or defend their ground positions, along with mastering submissions such as chokes and armlocks. Both Kongsgaard and Mulhern apply themselves with vigor to the martial art, as they have with other endeavors. After Kongsgaard graduated from high school, he walked 500 miles from the CaliforniaOregon border to San Francisco, averaging 2,2, miles a day. In addition to continuing his wrestling training, Kongsgaard ALEX KoNcscAARD (SF05) 1s WRESTLED TO THE GROUND BY QUINN MULHERN (SF07). is an avid cyclist, a rock climber, and a member of the St. John's Search & Rescue team. Mulhern aJso brings intensity and dedication to his training, says McCue. Mulhern's older brother practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and persuaded him to take up serious study. "We would wrestle, and I saw that my brother's submission St. John's Collese. Sprins 2005 } movements were not angry, but graceful and re laxed," he says. He credits McCue, "a great teacher," with helping him win in Las Vegas. "She is able to demonstrate something physical in a way people really respond to," he explains. The psychological aspect of competing is the most difficult, says Mulhern, who practiced breathing and visualization techniques to enhance his performance. "Adrenaline can be one of your biggest enemies because it can cause you to use your energy right away," he says. He credits his winning to feeling calmer. "It's one thing wrestling in class or wrestling with your friends, but another competing in a tournament where you have only four minutes and you can easily forget everything you know. It's a lot of pressure." McCue looks forward to getting more students involved in sports at St. John's. "While some Sc. John's students are not very physically active when they first arrive at the college, they find themselves in a community of like-minded individuals and feel more confident when they discover the benefits of physical activity," she says. "You see students make a connection to something physical-whether it is a martial art, climbing, Search & Rescue, hiking, skiing, winter camping, or intramural activities. They run with it because they've become inspired by all this at a later time in their life. For some it's just the beginning." ♦ -ANDRA MAGURAN TH E B ELL TO WERS} 7 NEw DORMITORY Is A GIFT FROM ST. JoHN's ALUMNUS Spector Hall to Open in January Warren Spector (A81) has given the coJJege a generous gift to fund, in his father's memory, the building of a new dormitory on the Annapolis campus. Spector Hall, as the dorm now under construction will be named, together with Gilliam Hall, which opened last fall, will allow the college to house 80 percent of its students on campus. Mr. Spector, President and Co-Chief Operating Officer of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., a leading Wall Street investment banking and securities trading and brokerage firm, says his gift was motivated by his appreciation for the education he received at St. John's. "St. John's provides a unique educational experience," said Mr. Spector, a member of the college's Board of Visitors and Governors. " Building this dorm will help preserve the intimate learning environment that sets St. John's apart from other liberal arts schools." The college needs new dormitories for two reasons. Overcrowding in existing dorms required the college to convert some double rooms into triples and appropriate a few common rooms for housing. The college also wants to better nurture a community of learners by ensuring that students who want to live on campus can do so. I mpressed by the recent renovation of Mellon Hall's classrooms and laboratories, Mr. Spector was pleased to provide a gift to further improve student life. "The St. John's educational experience is not limited to the classroom. The ability for students to learn from each other is greatly enhanced by living together on campus." Mr. Spector continued, " For me the dialogue with my fellow students was a crucial part of my education. I could not be more pleased to further the education offuture generations by funding the creation of a place for that dialogue to take place." Spector Hall wilJ house 40 students when it opens in January 2.006. The dormitory includes spacious common areas, suite-style rooms, and a tutor's apartment. The building will be named Spector Hall in memory of Warren Spcctor's father, who died in 1990. Philip Spector had forged over his lifetime a AN APPRECIATION FOR HIS ST. J OHN'S EDUCATION PROMPTED WARREN SPECTOR TO FUND A NEW DORMITORY ON THE ST. JOHN'S CAMPUS. "One cfthe most valuable tools I gainedfrom my St. John s education was the abtfity lo think critically. " WARREN SPECTOR, A8I { THE COLLEGE· St. John's Collese · Sprins 2005 } successful career as a contractor who was responsible for numerous residential, commercial, and industrial projects in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. "I very much wanted to find a way to honor my father. It seems fitting considering his long and successful career as a builder that a structure is named for him. It is my hope that he would have been extremely pleased with the results," Mr. Spector said. Ironically, both of Mr. Spector's parents were initially concerned when he announced his plans to transfer from Princeton and start again as a freshman at Sc. John's. " It did not take long for my parents to see that I thrived in the environment of St. John's College," commented Mr. Spector. "By the time I graduated, they were big fans of the St. John's education and were pleased that I did not go to college anywhere else." One of several St. John's alumni working at the top of the investment field, Mr. Spector credits the college with providing him with skills that have helped him succeed in the fastpaced and ever-changing world ofWall Street. " One of the most valuable tools I gained from my St. John's education was the ability to think cri tically," said Mr. Spector. "In the highly analytical and technologically sophisticated world in which we live, the ability to think on one's own and make sense of the seemingly endless data that exists should not be underestimated." ♦ �8 {LETTERS} {LETTER S } VARIED VIEWPOINTS I must respond to Mary Campbell Gallagher's rejection of Martin A. Dyer' s diversity initiative. Ms. Campbell's principal objection is that Mr. Dyer relies on the premise that different "life experiences" will somehow enrich the college's seminars. She insists that he "present proof." Well, I can-and so, I believe, can any St. John's alum. ....Anyone who has gone through four years of the Program knows that people bring their "life experiences" into the seminar room. Male, female, veteran, gay, married, black, Mormon, elderly, handicapped, Orthodox Jewish-can anyone be so naive as to believe that such factors don't influence how we approach a text? This doesn't mean surrendering to subjectivity. But it does mean expanding the Annapolis campus beyond affluent suburbs of Washington-Baltimore and New York City, the base for the student body when I was a student. No one is advocating affirmative actionthat is, preferential treatment to someone because of his or her background. But the college effectively makes decisions all the time about the makeup of the student body by the way it recruits and where. If the college makes a concentrated effort to increase diversity, it can only result in livelier class discussion by including more and varied viewpoints. STEVE WEINSTEIN, A95 ON DIVERSITY I agree with three statements in the letter from Mary Campbell Gallagher (A6o) published in the winter 2005 issue of The College: (1) "all men are fundamentally the same ...."; (2) "All men are educable without regard to the peculiarities of their ethnic and racial backgrounds;" and (3) " ... students' racial and ethnic characteristics [make] no discernible contribution to their being able to read and think well." I disagree, however, \.vith other assertions. I do not believe that the Opportunity Initiative is inconsistent with the college's mission of providing a liberal education. Although the college makes its unique program equally available to, and welcomes everyone, its recruitment efforts have not been equally successful in attracting all segments of the population. A major purpose of the initiative is to determine the reasons for this failure and to work with the Admissions office in devising corrective measures. Our goal is to broaden the college's appeal to people who do not now seem to understand learn to function well in both, to speak and act according to the expectations of each. They can competently participate in and contribute to ongoing St. John's dialogue seen through the lens of upper middle-class people of European heritage. But to feel safe enough to share the particular lessons life has taught them and to relate their own unique backgrounds to the topics and readings being considered in seminar would require the safety of numbers and the college community's appreciation of the richness to be gleaned from different heritages. I know college recruiters, with the support of alumni of color, are making good-faith attempts at increasing the diversity of students and faculty. I hope they arc successful for the sake of all students. that its program is also intended for them, not change either the program or admission policies. The great books are indeed teachers, and close reading of them and good logic arc the principal means by which conversation is advanced. Other factors also play an important role. "[P]eculiarities [borne] of...race and ethnic backgrounds" are among them, as are differences in economic status, religion, nationality and personal life experiences...My views of freedom and justice, for example, are affected by the fact that I am black, am two generations removed from slavery, and grew up in Baltimore in the 1930s and 40s and attended college in Annapolis when racial discrimination and segregation were still the way of life. Blacks were denied basic opportunities.... I suggest that interactions among students both in class and in their day-to-day social lives are a vital part of teaching and learning. In other words, the encounter of individuals, separately and in concert, \vith the great books is indispensable to St. John's unique education. MARTIN PATIENCE GARRETSON SCHENCK, POETIC PLANCK I enjoyed Anna Perleberg's poem "Relativity" in the Winter 2005 issue of The College. As " Relativity" did mention haiku in the last stanza, Joffer one ofmy own in response: Late autumn Reading Planck In the cold room ... A. OYER, AS2 SHARING LIFE LESSONS LUCIA STAIANO-DANIELS, SF04 A recent letter suggested that diversity has nothing to do with learning at St. John's; that, on the contrary, it is the books that are our teachers. I disagree. If we learned only from the books, students could sit in their rooms and read them by themselves. Rather, it is the exchange of ideas that leads us to enlarge our understanding of what the books can teach us. An African-An1erican student who has been stopped by the police for "driving while black" understands the relationship between justice and power differently than the daughter of a judge who sits beside him in seminar. Someone who grew up in a working-class church with a ministry to the poor understands the parables ofJesus differently than someone from a place of worship attended by the privileged. A Muslim reads Genesis differently than either a Christian or a Jew. These differing backgrounds and perspectives can greatly enrich the exchange that takes place around the seminar table. The challenge for the college is to attract sufficiently large numbers of students and faculty from diverse backgrounds to affect the culture of the college. Members of minority groups have learned to live in two cultures, that of their ethnicity and that of the dominant group they have encountered in school and other public venues. They { 1' n ll Co LL E c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005 Cuss OF l'.959 WEIRD SCIENCE ... .Infatuation, it seems, is frequently the outcome of a close encounter with Dr. Einstein's work, but I think we would aJJ agree that St. John's College strives not only to expose its students to the works of great thinkers, and to impress upon its students the importance of giving those thinkers their due, but also it strives to equip its students to be critical of what those thinkers have to say. Education, Plato reminds us, involves entrusting the cultivation of your soul to another, so it is only prudent to exercise some caution (Protagoras 312c-313b). As a theory ofrelativity, Dr. Einstein's work should be properly understood as one of reciprocity. ...A strict interpretation of relativity, however, is no longer tenable. Relatively well-known experiments with muons and atomic clocks have demonstrated tha t "clocks" moving at high speed do slow down. Here is where things get peculiar. A strict interpretation of relativity would require that people riding on high-speed airplanes see the clocks down on Earth slow down. When the travelers return to their earthbound comrades, there should be a grand argument as each group asserts that ) the other group's clocks were rwming slow. Instead, there is agreement: the travelers are younger than they would be if they had stayed at home, and the difference is more or less what Dr. Einstein's equations predict. It is, then, a matter of fact, that relativity effects are not reciprocal. Oddly, then, experiments of this kind demonstrate that there actually is such a thing as absolute space, for we obviously can decide who was moving and who was standing still by seeing whose clocks were slowed and whose were not. Further, until someone can find a place where clocks run faster than they do here on Earth, relativity actually supports the claim that the earth is absolutely at rest. But wait! It gets stranger: if the Earth is at rest, then, since we see the sun , moon, stars, and planets moving across the sky, the evidence suggests that everything revolves around the Earth. And jL1st to top it off, if everything revolves around the Earth, then, since the universe is now regarded as infinite, there is no reason not to regard the Earth as the center of the universe. Oh! The progress we've made! At this point, the door stands "vide open to supplement Dr. Einstein's theorywhich indeed, provides nothing beyond what Aris to Ile would label a formal causeby reintroducing the aether as the material cause, and so take a step towards developing an account on the level of the efficient cause (which is what any of the natural sciences, as studies of how the material world works, should strive to achieve). It would be most mysterious , however, to use the very theory that killed the aether to resurrect it. Weird science? You'd better believe it. But, at some point somebody will feel emboldened to declare it to be nonsense, and, at that time, there will be some need for clear heads who can distinguish the baby from the bath water. We all, I think, not only hope, but expect that St. John's will be the institution o f higher learning where those heads get clarified ... }OHN NEWELL, A86 __________ -'-'-.;;.;.;. EINSTEIN OMISSION Your capsule biography of Albert Einstein on the inside cover of the [Winter 2005) issue omitted two critical facts. The first is that Einstein was a Jew. Although this omission can be excused because it is a matter of general knowledge, it is widely assumed that because Einstein was never a "religious" Jew his Jewish heritage was of merely accidental significance until the Nazis decreed otherwise. 9 l CAN IDENTIFY ONE OF THE STUDENTS IN THE OCTOBER CALENDAR PICTURE.. .JANE D'AGNESE (A74) IS STRIDING UP TO THE QUAD AFTER LAB. LOOKING AT THE PICTURE, AND JUDGING FROM HER ENTHUSIASM, l CAN STILL HEAR HER SAYING, "CHESTAH, CHESTAH, ARE YOU GOING TO THE PAHTY?" (YouR CAPTION ABOUT SEMINAR AWAITING IS WELL-INTENTIONED, BUT I LIKE MY STORY BETTER.) BEHIND HER IS POSSIBLY ME, THOUGH THE DRESS DOESN'T RING A BELL SO l WILL GLADLY CEDE TO SOMEONE ELSE'S BETTER MEMORY AND IDENTIFICATION. SrrTING IN THE FOREGROUND IS, I'M PRETTY SURE, PATRICK D'ADDARIO (A7x), OTHERWISE KNOWN ASP-DAD. -DEB Ross, A74 I do not think so. The Bavaria of Einstein's youth was hardly a hotbed of tolerance. Not only was the young Einstein exposed to anti-Semitism; even ifhe and his family were not "believing" Jews, he grew up surrounded by believing Christians receiving mandatory religious education . .. .It is fair to suppose that this experience as an intellectual as well as ethnic outsider contributed to Einstein's ability to "think outside the box," his ,villingness to explore counter-intuitive models of the universe. Second, the biographical sketch totally omits the fact that Einstein was a committed Zionist. Despite his principled disapproval of ethnic nationalism, Einstein recognized that Jews could not be fully accepted citizens of European ethnic states, and needed their own hom eland where they would not be merely tolerated guests in an alien culture. Well before Hitler came to power, Einstein helped raise funds to buy land for Jewish settlement and to support the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After the war he pleaded for the creation of a Jewish state, and in his old age was offered (and declined) the largely-ceremonial presidency of the State oflsrael. It is important to remember that even such a universalist and hlLmanist as Albert { 1' H E Co L LE c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005 Einstein insisted on the importance of a Jewish state for the preservation of the Jewish people and their unique contribution to human culture. KEVIN SNAPP, SF72 CALENDAR MYSTERIES REVEALED The May photo in the 2005 Philanthropia calendar was taken in '72 or '73. That's me, third from the left with the scraggly hair and beard, with my leg up on the bench. Kit (Kathleen) Callender (SF73) is to my left, and Bill Blount (SF73) is seated to her left. Beyond that, I'm guessing-it's embarrassing not to remember everyone's names. My sons will get a real kick out of seeing their papa "back in the day." PtTER MEADOW, SF73 The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/ or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College magazine, St. John's College, Box z8oo, Annapolis, MD 21404, or by e-mail to rosemary.harty@sjca.edu. ) �IO {ATHLETIC S } {ATHLETICS} ''Bein.g out on the Severn River at dawn . .. is about as close to heaven as you wtll ever get. " BOATHOUSE REPUBLIC BY ROGER H. MARTIN Roger Martin, president of Randolph-Macon College in the team. Everyone." Leo seems to be looking directly at me, Ashland, Va., spent a semester at St. John :S lastfall. His goal perhaps because I stick out in this crowd of youngsters. I am not an was to experiencefreshman year at the college, in part to gain ordinary freshman, but a college president on sabbatical. I decide to go out for crew. Since I cannot live in a freshman some insight that might be helpful in shaping the residence haJJ, crew will provide the chance for me to have contact freshman-year experience at his college. Martin sat in on with students outside of the classroom and give me an opportunity freshman seminar andjoined the crew team. In November, he to explore the unique connection here between academics and joined competitors 40 years younger at the annual Head of athletics. the Occoquan Regatta. His experience broadened his views On September 7, about 60 students turn up at six in the morning about college sports. for the first crew practice. I recognize some of chem: Julie, Justin, reshman orientation ends at Iglehart Hall, the college's ancient gymnasium. One hundred of us are greeted on this withering August afternoon by athletic director Leo Pickens (A78). We sit on the floor in a wide semicircle as this man of modest build and piercing eyes looks over us in silence. I sense that we arc in the presence of a sage. We are not seated in a gymnasium, but rather in a sacred building- a temple, Leo explains. He talks about how athletics was as much a part of Greek culture and society as political discourse and debate and tells us chat athletics must therefore be taken seriously and with reverence. After describing the intramural sports and activities at the college, Leo says something you would not expect to hear from an athletic director: "Skill and previous experience are not required here at St. John's, just tlzumos. Passion." As he says "tlzumos," he pounds his chest. He concludes: "Everyone who shows up will be on { T u E Co LL Ec E . Victoria-all members of my freshman seminar. No one is saying anythi ng, and the eyes of many are glazed over, probably from latenight reading. Leo, also the crew coach, wears blue thermal overalls, a red sweatshirt that says "Johnnies" in white letters across the front, and a well-worn baseball cap. I suspect he knows what is going through our minds at this very moment. We are all wondering why any sane person would get up at five in the morning to spend two hours engaged in punishing physical exercise, often in foul weather. "I can promise you," he says, "that being out on the Severn River at dawn on a crisp fall morning, watching the sun rising from the east and the geese flying to the south as eight oars move together in perfect unison over the glistening water is about as close to heaven as you will ever get in this life." We don't have Jong to wait. Next morning we all march down to the dock. The sunrise over the Severn is spectacular. The novices, including me, climb into an 18-person training barge. As we row up and down College Creek the poetry of Homer's Odyssey, the book we are now reading in seminar, provides a balm for the pain I begin to feel in my lower back. St. John's College . Spring 2005 ) THU/IfOS- PASSION- IS WHAT L EO P ICKENS DEMANDS FROM HIS ATHLETES. { THE Co LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005 ) �I2 {ATHLETICS} {ATHLETICS} The images and voices cfthe great books are everywhere~ in the Boathouse as we!f as on the Severn River. ROCER MARTIN When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more we hauled the vessels down to the sunlit breakers first .... The crews swung aboard, they sat to the oars in ranks And in rhythm churned the water with stroke on stroke. And churn the water we do in a boat vaguely similar to the Pentekontor that brought Odysseus and his crew to the ends of the world. I am in first position in the barge and directly in front of me sits a limber 17-year-old freshman. Mike, the assistant coach, who is standing in the stern at the tiller, yells out, "Everyone in the catch position, oars square and buried." Not knowing what the catch position is, I lean back as far as I can-which is not very far-and my oar immediately fouls the oar of my rowing companion who is leaning very far forward. The result is a loud noise and a huge splash as we start rowing. The novices practice in this way on College Creek until we become proficient enough to row in a proper eight. Over the next several weeks, my rowing improves and as it does, I blend in with the young men in my boat. I am no longer a college president, I an1 just another novice learning how to row. I keep my mouth shut, I observe, and I listen. Most student-athletes leave their studies behind when they go to practice. Not at St. John's. The images and voices of the great books are everywhere, in the Boathouse as well as on the Severn River. It is now 6:30 in the morning and it's pitch dark. We are rowing up the river to the start of our race, past the Naval Academy bridge, past the Route 50 bridge. A month from now, we will race against other colleges on the Occoquan Reservoir in Northern Virginia, and our practice races have taken on a new intensity. The sky is studded with stars, still bright enough to be seen above the dark purple hew of the Chesapeake's eastern sky, and there isn't a cloud to be seen. Bobbing sailboat masts look like black sticks in the distance, { TH E and I can imagine the port of Argos, and Agamemnon and Menelaus leaving for Troy with the Greek armada to win back Helen. Our own armada of two eights, two fours, and a single quad docs a river turn just beyond the Route 50 bridge and at Leo's command we race back to the end of the Naval Academy seawall, a distance of some 5,000 meters. A gray-blue storm cloud suddenly appears and empties its moisture into our low-lying shells, requiring the coxes to bail madly as they call out their commands. At the finish, in complete exhaustion, I notice the geese Leo Pickens promised several weeks ago, eight of them (like the number rowing in our boat), flying directly overhead toward Virginia, honking loudly as they wing their way south. The vision suggests to me that we will do well at Occoquan. October is upon us. My seminar is reading Plutarch's Lives of lite Noble Grecians and Romans, and my boat continues to improve. Today, us our four racing shells approach the Naval Academy bridge, rowing at a rather hectic pace over the usual 5,000-meter course, we see an armada of yellow Naval Academy shells, approaching us from downriver. Laughter comes from one of them as it passes to our starboard. The midshipmen are getting a kick out of seeing this rather motley collection of}ohnnics. And who can blame them? There they are, in their clean white t-shirts with "NAVY" emblazoned on the chest, and dark blue shorts, all looking extremely fit and athletic. Here we are, some of us in multi-colored t-shirts, some obviously overweight, others rather skinny, some men wearing earrings, others sporting tattoos, and one very tired 61-ycarold guy with a red beard rowing in the numbertwo position. This scene causes me to ponder Plutarch's biographies of Lycurgus and Solon. As the leader of Sparta, Lycurgus is architect of laws which are austere and unyielding. In Athens, where Co LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005 EVEN IN THE SHELLS , CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE BOOKS PERSIST. } Solon is the lawmaker, individualism is honored. Sitting in my shell and watching our two very different crews passing each other on the Severn River, I see how two philosophies of society exist side-by-side in Annapolis: St. John's, devoted to diversity and pluralism, as Athens; the Naval Academy, with its focus on loyalty to the corps, uniformity, and order, as Sparta. Our training continues as November and the Head of the Occoquan approach. I am amazed not only at how hard my teammates practice, but also how the great books arc ever part of their chatter. Before launching our shells, I often hear students talking about seminars, tutorials, or the Friday lecture. Even in the boats, where crew is not supposed to talk, the great books cannot be denied. Our extremely capable cox is out of commission for a few weeks, so a loquacious sophomore replaces her. While our regular cox is all business and hardly ever talks except to give commands, her substitute offers a running commentary on everything from his favorite movies to college gossip to the current topics in sophomore seminar. "Do you know what my tutor told us last night at seminar?" he asks crew as we row out of College Creek towards the Severn. His seminar is reading the Gospel of John. "He said that because he first read the Bible in Greek he thought that the first words of John were, 'The origin was the principle' rather than, 'In the beginning was the Word.' " As we round the seawall and head toward the Route 50 bridge, now rov,ing at a fairly fast pace, his commentary regresses. He is now talking about the Phoenicians. "Do you know why the Phoenicians were the fastest rowers?" We are stumped. "Because they had nubile Phoenician women to row home to." I find this piece of information intriguing until, off to my port, I hear Leo Pickens yelling at me from the skiff, "You're not focused Roger. Snap those legs back. Square the oar. Drop the blade." On November 6, the morning of the regatta. Leo assembles the team in the back of the Boathouse. "Are you all ready for the Festival of St. Occoquan?" he asks the assembled group. "OK, now listen up. I have something important to say. First, I want to commend all of you for the time and devotion you have given to this sport. No matter how well you perform this afternoon, you should all feel a great sense of accomplishment." He continues by providing some interesting statistics. "Those { TH E ON THE SEVERN AND IN ~ -........... SEMINAR, RocER MARTIN ( CENTER) SAW DEDICATION. of you who are the grizzled veterans have put in 90 hours of practice, the novices 80. And you've done this while being students in an incredibly demanding academic program. Few athletes competing at Occoquan this afternoon have had to contend with the incredible academic load all of you carry. You should feel extremely proud. You have achieved perfection. I pronounce this boathouse a republic." In just six words, Leo says that we have come together as a team, each doing his or her part, but each contributing to the good of our community. Unity, one of the ideals of Plato's Republic, has earned Leo's highest praise.We are not only rowing much better, but we also care about each other. And there is a spirit-a team spirit-that is very special. Clearly, we are far from perfect in our rowing ability. But we really are, figuratively if not in reality, a republic, and everyone understands exactly what our coach has just said. The race itself is a blur. My boat does reasonably well, losing to the University of Maryland by only six seconds but beating three other universities. However, before the day is out, J witness C\vo contrasting scenes that speak to intercollegiate athletics both in America and at my adopted college. As my wife and I walk down the hill toward the launching docks just before my race, I overhear a coach lecturing the women on a large university team who are preparing to race. "You didn't get a medal last year, girls. It was a real embarrassment to me personally and to the university. So are you going to screw up again this year or win something?" I don't hear the rest of this speech as I continue walking down the path, but I see discouragement in the faces of the crew. As I return to the parking area, I witness a more pleasing scene. Seated on the ground and leaning on a boat trailer, one of our team captains is reading an essay by Thomas Mann for preceptorial. Nothing, not even Occoquan, is more important than Thomas Mann. This is the way intercollegiate athletics ought to be. ♦ Co LL E c E. St. John's College . Spring 2005 } �{THE {TH E TUTORS} T U TOR S } FAITH, FRIENDSHIP, AND TEACHING Brother Robert Smith u sail devoted to SL John:SBY ROBIN WEISS (SFG186) rother Robert Smith (HA90) traces his personal history-spanning 90 years-from his childhood near the Golden Gate Bridge, through adolescence in wine country, to adulthood when, as a Christian Brother, be stoked the fires of his passion for educational reform: first at St. Mary's College in Moraga, Calif., then at St. John's in Annapolis. "I just learned from a woman we both knew that Jacob Klein told her that once I came here I would never leave. This has turned out to be true," he says, reflecting on his appointment to St. John's in 1972. For Brother Robert, the Program is perpetually new. "Each person is asking their own questions; that is the heart of education," he contends. "There's a new conversation every time. You see the repeated miracle, each year, of how students develop, with a renewal of life each time." To generations of Johnnies, Brother Robert has served "as practical advisor, career counselor, spiritual guide, almost Any mentor-like role," says tutor emeritus Elliott Zuckerman (HA95) . No one has been so unswervingly devoted to the college, to the seminar in particular, and, personally, to [former Annapolis dean] Jacob Klein." During his graduate school years in D.C., tutor Michael Dink (A75) enjoyed Brother Robert's standing offer of a guest room in his Market Street apartment. "At breakfast," Dink recalls, " I did my best to keep up my end of the conversation, regardless of what kind of night I had.. ..These talks helped me to keep a sane perspective on the sometimes trying world of graduate school." { THE Devotion to faith, friendship, and the practice of teaching underlie Brother Rober t's story, which began in a "very interesting part of Oakland," home to a flood of German refugees fleeing the persecution of Catholics under Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of the German Empire. "At the beginning of the Prussian takeover, Bismarck made life very difficult in Germany. A lot of these people, specifically Franciscans, were aware of California because that order had missions there." Brother Robert explains how these "highly educated people started a parish in what was then the edge of Oakland. Now it's deep in Oakland but the parish is still there." He remembers orchards near his grammar school, where German nuns taught using methods "in advance of Catholic schools anywhere." "I benefited from that. I grew up in that parish and that sch ool, and I'm very grateful. It was far-seeing, a wider outlook," he says. At a Christian Brothers high school in Berkeley, he met the brothers and liked them. "I wanted to do what they were doing-so I joined them." In the fall of 1930, while a novice, he picked grapes and was p art of the group who moved the Christian Brothers Winery to their 400 acres in Napa Valley. During Prohibition, because it was legal to sell alcohol for religious pur poses, the ,v:inerywas allowed to stay open. "As recently as 15 years ago, over half the brandy in this country was our brandy," he recalls. Today, with their winery closed, the Brothers keep a small hospital on this land high in the hills above Napa, but rent the remaining acres to Stone Winery. Founded in France in 1680, the Christian Brothers (an order of teachers who are not priests) spoke to the needs Co LL EGE. St. John's College. Spring 2005 ) FOR 33 YEARS, BROTHER ROBERT HAS REMAINED "UNSWERVINGLY DEVOTED" TO ST. J OH N'S. { TH E Co LL E GI!. St. John's College . Spring 2005 ) �I6 I7 {THE TUTORS} {THE T UTORS} "THE BROTHER" BROTHER ROBERT SMITH, SAY of the working poor as these HIS FORMER STUDENTS, "MADE people made the transition HIMSELF THE BEST OF FRIENDS." from rural to city life. According to Brother we were at war and various Robert, the founder saw "a people said: 'You'll eventucrying need to provide free ally get into this war, and it education," which allowed won't be a good thing for for "the very beginning of you.' " Instead, in 1943 he the possibility oflower-class went to Laval University, in people rising." In this time Quebec, where he studied of Louis the XIV, with finanphilosophy. cial support from nobility, He doesn't regret that choice. " It the Brothers initiated radically new turns out they were right." He schools, which were French rather remembers studying with people than Latin-based. These schools who had started at Louvain and were for shoemakers, shipbuilders, had to leave. " Laval was extremely and other working people who deslively. There were refugees from perately needed the basics of math, BROTHER ROBERT SMITH , TUTOR other European countries," creatreading, and writing to survive in ing an exciting mix of teachers and the cities. The movement started in students. Rheims and quickly spread to Paris, After returning to St. Mary's as a teacher, Brother Robert Avignon, and Rome. continued work on his dissertation: liberal arts from the Almost two centuries later, when Pope Pius IX asked point of view of St. Thomas Aquinas, completed and pubBrothers from France to serve in California, they were lished in 1947. A grant allowed him to spend the following reluctant to go. " In effect, the Pope gave a polite order to summer at Edinburgh University. "I studied, amongst get us there, and we've been there ever since," Brother other things, Hume," he admits, laughing. " He's not my Robert says. "We had to do things we didn't do in France," favorite philosopher, but he came from that university. So I such as teaching Latin and Greek to a more affluent populahad a good taste of him there." tion, that oflawyers, doctors, and priests. "We had to scrape In 1953, after a year in Rome, he was back at St. Mary's around and find teachers who were competent," he says. teaching large lecture classes. "We already had seminars, Thus arose St. Mary's College in 1863, which the but these lecture classes were the usual ones. At St. Mary's, Brothers took over in 1869 and run to this day. After attendwe always had our eye on new needs and new ways of doing ing St. Mary's as an undergraduate, Brother Robert taught things, and that connects ,vith St. John's." in a Sacramento high school for a number of years, a Innovation at St. Mary's had much to do with a layman requirement of his order. teaching there, James L. Haggerty, who was acquainted He recounts that, when he joined the order, there with the original committee who went to the University were ten thousand French Brothers as opposed to three of Chicago in pursuit of "the ideal form of education." thousand non-French. He'd grown to love French and, for Brother Robert tells how the partial successes at Chicago, graduate work, wanted to attend Louvain, in Belgium, "but "You see the repeated miracle., each yea0 cfhow students develop. . " { THE Co LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005 } Annapolis tutor Howard Zeiderman worked with Brother Robert in many environments. "The most memorable ti me I spent with Robert was when he accompanied me to participate in a Touchstones program we had in prison. He and I and six others joined 12 inmates for a go-minute seminar. That day the men had selected a text in Touchstones, a selection by St. Theresa of Avila, on prayer." Brother Robert didn't wear his collar and was quicl for the beginning part of the conversation. But after about five minuLes, Zciderman recalls, Brother Robert began to talk about forgiveness. "The men were transfixed. None moved when the warning bells sounded, and Lhe guards finally came LO move them along to their lunch," Zeiderman says. "As we left, they referred to him as brother-a title of friendship. However as the months passed, each time I came into prison, they asked about Robert and referred to him as Brother Smith. Finally they simply began to ask after 'the Brother,' a phrase no one had ever heard them use before. Ile simply, even when looking like the resl of us, became BroLher Robert." ♦ such as changing the undergraduate structure but preserving departments, didn't satisfy Scott Buchanan and others working with him. So, at St. John's in Annapolis, "We started anew here, eradicating traditional departments and transforming the lecture system to education through conversation. At St. Mary's, Haggerty introduced changes, as far as he could, such as reading original sources and implementing the seminar. " He talked to all of us about the wonderful thing that was going on at St. John's. We sent people to St. John's to look at it," Brother Robert remembers. "We became closer to St. John's." In the fall ofx956, St. Mary's received a grant to explore possibilities for educational reform. Haggerty, initially responsible, became ill. "Somebody had to run it, so I was put in charge all the sudden," says Brother Robert. "All I knew was St. John's. By that time, I had visited a number of times." Visits were sweeter due to Raymond Wilburn, a former St. John's dean, who befriended Brother Robert while Wilburn was stationed at a naval pre-flight school, located on the campus at St. Mary's during the war. Wilburn wrote letters for Brother Robert "to be nicely treated" during his visits. He recalls one trip in particular, when he attended a seminar taught by Jacob Klein. " I was overwhelmed by it, so I made a point of getting to know him. We became friends and we remained friends until he died." While in charge of the new project at St. Mary's, Brother Robert called on Klein, Richard Scofield, and others for help. He describes "bold projects," such as bringing in people from outside St. Mary's to examine each senior on his essay. " I would not do that again. I was matching important {T H E Co L L E people, sometimes, with very ordinary students. I thought every student should have the same chance." He spent his sabbatical year of 1964 in Venice studying Rabelais. "Rabelais despised the system under which he was educated and decided to get free of it. I've read him, cover to cover, many times." After Brother Robert returned to the states, Klein invited him to give a lecture. " I enjoyed it," he says. "I think the students did, too. I was more rambunctious than I would be now." He admits to quoting Rabelais "in all kinds of unseemly ways that I wouldn't do now... " But after lecture, " Klein told me I would probably be invited to teach here." And he was. Students of his first class, a junior seminar in 1966-67, made him an honorary member. He corresponds with some of them to this day. " By committing himself as a teacher to thinking together with his students about what matters to them, Brother Robert has made himself the best of friends," says Steve Werlin (A85). " It has also led him to surprising places. He can speak well of Aristotle, Montaigne, and Baudelaire, but also about the Talking Heads." Now a teacher himself, Werlin relies on Brother Robert's advice: "Start where the students are." For the remainder of the 1960s, Brother Robert returned to his duties at St. Mary's. " I had to put the new project in good enough shape" before getting permission to transfer. But when the time was ripe for Klein's prediction to come true, Brother Robert telephoned Klein, asking, " Does it make any difference to St. John's if I come this year or next?" " It makes a difference to me," Klein replied. ♦ c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005 } �I8 {ON {ON NIETZSCHE} Ig N I ETZSCHE} "Ourfavorite author.s are .simply those we cannot escape. " JOHN VERDI, TUTOR NIETZSCHE 'S FAVORITE WRIT ERS BY JOHN VERDI t is probably true that all of us ought to read more books by those authors with whom we deeply disagree , because only they have the power to force us to rethink our comfortable ideas. Most of us, however, do not do so, but instead gravitate to those authors in whose books we recognize our own thoughts expressed more fully and convincingly, or so we would like to think. In any event Nietzsche cautions us against reading any author "of whom it is apparent that he wanted to produce a book," but urges us to read " only those whose thoughts unintentionally became a book." (The Wanderer and His Shadow , I2I) Perhaps we should trust no idea at all {T n E that comes to us while we are reading; as Nietzsche says, "only ideas won by walking have anyvalue." (Twilight ofthe Idols, I, 34) Still, Nietzsche himself read widely, and while we may not always find his interpretations of his predecessors accurate or fair, he certainly did h ave his favorite writers, those in whom he heard echoes of his own insights and struggles, or who represented to him types of their age, distillations of the thought around them, or who entered the great conversation with a destructive impulse, in an attempt to refashion thought after their own image. Our favorite authors are simply those we cannot escape, because they are too close to us, for better or worse. Our favorites Co LL E c E. St. John's College. Spring 2005 } READING NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITES GIVES US MORE INSIGHT INTO A PUZZLING AUTHOR, SAYS TUTOR JOHN VERDI. {T tt s Co LL s c £.St.John's College. Spring 2005 } �{O N NIE T ZSC H E } {ON N I ETZSCHE} 2.0 reveal aspects of ourselves that might otherwise remain undetected, and so it can be valuable to reflect on them. For a similar reason we might better understand what Nietzsche means to us-what Nietzsche ought to mean to us-by asking who the writers were that he could not leave behind. Nietzsche's pantheon of favorites is large, and I have chosen only a few and not necessarily those who exerted the most influence on him. In making this selection I am, to be sure, revealing a favoritism of my own. HERACLITUS In the fragments of Heraclitus Nietzsche found a man who was willing to live without the metaphysical comfort given by belief in things that persistently endure. 0wqmjJuLorraorcavra peL, ouoev µevu: Everything changes, nothing remains steadfast. Nietzsche says that around Heraclitus he culture that after Socrates, Plato, and Jesus, becomes "pale and ungraspable," even "immoral." (Daybreak, 103) Nietzsche's praise ofThucydidcs makes me wonder if, in the famous dialogue between the Melians and the Athenians over the fate ofMclos, the historian even means for us to ask whether it is the one or the other who are right. Might the moral question be exactly the one Thucydides wants not to raise? As if to suggest this, Nietzsche asks a rhetorical question: " Does one reproach Thucydides for the words he put into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors when they negotiated with the Melians on the question of destruction or submission?" (Will to Power, 42.9) The Athenians argue from power, yet don't we find their words compelling, if not decisive? P LATO felt "altogether warm and better than anywhere else. The Nietzsche could never escape Plato. His relationship with affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; saying "Yes" to opposition and war; becoming, along with a radical repudiation of the very concept of being-all this is clearly more closely related to me than anything else to date." (Ecce Homo, IV, 3) Throughout his life Nietzsche considered himself a disciple of Heraclitus. While St. John's does not try to inculcate this reverence in its freshmen, we do ask them to translate many of his fragments in the language tutorial. Their depth and power, contained in such brief, aphoristic compass, invariably proves a remarkable springboard for reflection on the depth and power of all language. him and with Socrates often reads like a rocky love affair. On the one hand he praises, saying: " One can conceive philosophers as those who make the most extreme efforts to test how far man could elevate himself-Plato especially" ( Will to Power, 973) and "What is needed above all is an absolute skepticism toward all inherited concepts (of the kind that one philosopher perhaps possessed-Plato, of course-for he taught the reverse)." ( Will to Power, 409) On the other hand he considers what has derived from Plato to be a sickness. "My cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides, and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli, are related to me closely by their unconditional will not to deceive themselves and not to see reason in reality." (Twilight of the Idols, V, 2.) Nietzsche praises Plato as "the most beautiful growth of antiquity," but one who invented "the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far... the pure spirit and the good as such." (Beyond Good and Evil, 2) Nietzsche also complains that "since Plato philosophy has been dominated by morality." {Will to Power, 412.) Philosophy has lost the ability to blur the boundary between good and evil, in the way that Nietzsche believes Thucydides could do naturally, to the extent even of denying that morality has any role to play in our understanding of human actions. Plato and Socrates represent for Nietzsche the triumph ofreason and dialectic over intuition and instinct. Nietzsche, however, struggles to make clear that "one does not make men better when one represents to them that virtue is demonstrable and asks for reasons." T HUCYD IDES T hucydides is another program author Nietzsche considered a favorite, because Thucydides "takes the most comprehensive and impartial delight in all that is typical in men and events and believes that to each type there pertains a quantum of good sense: this he seeks to discover." (Daybreak, 168) While this reason for his love of Thucydides might seem at odds with his praise for individuality and transcendence, and his beckoning to the " Overman," themes that pervade his later work, still Nietzsche often wonders "what might yet be made of man" as a species (Beyond Good and Evil, n8), andhow"the type 'man'" can be enhanced. (Beyond Good and Evil, 2.57) He believes that in Thucydides we see the "last glorious flower" of " that culture of the most impartial knowledge of the world," a { TH E Co LL e c; E . St. John 's College . Spring 2005 ) (Will to Power, 441), which is what he thinks Plato and Socrates do. If our favorite writers ought to be the ones that do us the most good, then perhaps we ought to include Plato in our list of Nietzsche's favorites, though Plato did not give him the sort of comfort we often seek in our favorite authors. But Nietzsche rarely sought comfort. 2.I NIETZSCHE RARELY SOUGHT COMFORT IN THE WORKS HE READ. Nietzsche thought that honesty was the one virtue left to "free spirits," among whom he counted himself. "So few writers are honest that one ought really to mistrust anyone who writes." (Schopenhauer as Educator, 2,) In Montaigne, however, he found the most ~ honest of writers. Mon- 8 taigne's willingness to explore his own character and the prejudices with which he himself reads and writes is what impresses and stimulates Nietzsche most. "Since getting to know this freest and mightiest of souls, I at least have come to feel what he felt about Plutarch: 'as soon as I glance at him I grow a leg or a wing.' " (Ibid.) Montaigne's honesty also infuses what Nietzsche considers his other admirable quality: "a cheerfulness that really cheers ...with certainty and simplicity, courage and strength ... as a victor...for there is cheerfulness only when there is victory." (Ibid.) Montaigne hides nothing and because he is deeply interested in the world as it is and as it has been reflected in great books, he serves for Nietzsche as a kind of Thucydides of the soul. them both, and for this Nietzsche loves him. " He has taught me such an infinite amount-the only logical Christian." (Letter to Georg Brandes) At the age of 16 Pascal wrnte a treatise on conic sections, a text that marks the beginning of his very fruitful work in science and mathematics, and which students at St. John's read as sophomores. T hen at the age of 31 he experienced a conversion and devoted the rest of his short life to religious matters and to introspection . Nietzsche consider s him "the most instructive victim of Christianity." (Ecce Homo, II, 3) According to Nietzsche, Pascal carries Christianity to its logical conclusion, "selfcontempt and self-abuse" ( Will to Power, #2,52,), a condition in which "everything is sin, even our virtues." ( Will to Power, #786) In such a condition reason, too, is corrupt and faith is needed for every kind of kno,ving. Furthermore, in his writing Pascal seems to share some of the honesty that for Nietzsche characterizes Montaigne. "One should not conceal ...how our thoughts have come to us. The profoundest and least exhausted books will probably always have something of the aphoristic and unexpected character of Pascal's Pensees." (Will to Power, #42.4) Both writers tell us not only what they think, but how they came to think so, which can be enormously supportive for those of us who struggle simply to try to think a few good thoughts. PASCAL H EIN RI CH H EINE Nietzsche sees personified in Pascal the conflict between science and faith. While Nietzsche attacks both, Pascal.felt Heinrich H eine was a German poet, cnuc, and writer of Jewish heritage who converted to Protestanti sm for MONTAIGNE { TH B Co LL E c B. St. John's College. Spring 2005 } �{O N NIET ZS CHE} 2,2, { A LU M NI VOIC E S} BEYOND THE BOOKS practical reasons. Nietzsche admired his work immensely throughout his life, and wrote of him: " T he highest conception of the lyric poet was given me by Heinrich Heine . ... He possesses that divine malice without which I cannot imagine perfection ....And how he employs German! It will one day be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German language." (Ecce Homo, III, 4) In Heine can perhaps be found the seeds of two of Nietzsche's most famous pronouncements, the death of God and the eternal return of the same. In The History ofReligion and Philosophy in Germany, H eine writes: "Do you hear the little bell ring? Kneel down. They are bringing the sacraments to a dying god." (Book II) And in his Last Poems and Thoughts, we find this: " However long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again." (We also find the eternal return suggested by another poet Nietzsche admired, Friedrich Holderlin, in his unfinished play, The Death ofEmpedocles. Empedocles speaks: "Go, and fear nothing. Everything recurs./ And what's to come already is complete.") R ALPH WALD O E MERSON Perhaps the writer Nietzsche held dearest from early in life to late, and the one he returned to again and again, is an American, Ralph Waldo Emerson . Nietzsche read Emerson (in German translation) while a student at Schulpforta, and after he lost his much-annotated copy of Emerson's Essays some years later, he soon replaced it. While in the end the differences between the two men may be greater than their similarities, there is no question that Nietzsche found much to admire in Emerson's views of nature and history, of the role of genius in human culture, and of the paradoxical character of good and evil. The first edition of The Gay Science quotes Emerson's essay " History" in an epigraph. "To the poet and sage, all things are friendly and hallowed, all experiences profitable, all days holy, all men divine." What Nietzsche finds in Emerson is a thinker who, like Heraclitus, sees the natural world as shot through with impermanence. "There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees." (Circles) He finds a man who recognizes that "man .. .is that middle point, whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason." (Spiritual Laws) H e finds a writer who acknowledges that "we do not see { TH E directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors." (Experience) Nietzsche also discovered in Emerson someone who was willing to say: " I would gladly be moral ... but I have set my heart on honesty." (Experience) In general Emerson's skeptical attitude toward custom and conventionality is thoroughly Nietzschean. Of both thinkers one might say (as Nietzsche does say of Schopenhauer by citing Emerson): " Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned." (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator; Emerson, Circles) A N EC L ECTI C LI ST While I promised only to give my favorites of Nietzsche's favorites, I ought also to mention some of the other writers Nietzsche admired, though his attitude toward most was ambivalent. The list is eclectic. There are the great aphorists: La Rochefoucauld, Lichtenberg, Chamfort, Leopardi. There are the German giants: Kant, Goethe, Hegel, Schopenhauer. There is Spinoza, the "purest sage," who because he denied free will, teleology, and the moral world order, also stands "beyond good and evil." There are the Eastern influences, especially Buddhism, which Nietzsche came to know largely through his reading of Schopenhauer, and Zoroastrianism, founded by the Persian, Zoroaster, or Zarathustra. (Could Emerson's description of Zarathustra in Character have influenced Nietzsche's development of his version of the character?) And then there is Dostoevsky. Nietzsche considered his discovery of Dostoevsky in 1887 to have been "one of the most beautiful strokes of fortune in [his] life." (Twilight of the Idols, IX, 45) I wonder what twentieth-century writers Nietzsche would have esteemed, but then I realize that hardly one has not been affected by him to some degree. Would not the literature of the last century be to Nietzsche a mirror in which the reflected image, while perhaps distorted, would nonetheless be a familiar one? ♦ John Verdi is a tutor in Annapolis. Co LL E c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005 ) Revisiting Nietzsche in Sils-Maria BY JENNIFER A. DONNELLY, A96 - - - • he rituals of opening questions, seminar and don rags vanish after graduation from St. John's. But the night the bells of McDowell Hall tolled my class's submission of our senior essays, an aphorism by Nietzsche, on whom I had written my essay, seemed co ring out like an opening question to the rest of our lives. " What good is a book," he asks in The Gay Science, "that does not even carry us beyond all books?" As is often the case with Nietzsche, the formulation is enigmatic: we know that the man who articulated it was an avid reader, a prolific writer and a professional philologist, and we notice that the format used to question the value of books is, well, a book. But for us, students of the "great books" program, the teasing becomes almost a taunt. What good are these books to which we devote ourselves for four years? And what does it mean to be carried beyond them? After seven years of being nagged by these questions, I made a journey to what could be considered their source: the Nietzsche Haus in Sils-Maria, the remote village in southeastern Switzerland's Engadine valley where the philosopher spent several summers and produced some of his most notorious works. Despite having poured my heart into my senior essay on Beyond Good and Evil, I had not pursued further studies on Nietzsche or in philosophy. On that first visit, however, I lovingly toted my careworn copy of that book, its marginalia ranging from smiley faces to question marks to "Yes!" The house in which Nietzsche used to board now shelters a small museum, library, and archive that present elements of his life and ideas, as well as some aspects of the remarkably rich literary and artistic history of the region (which drew authors {T II E Co LL E c E. THE VIEW FROM JENNIFER DONNELLY'S ROOM IN THE NIETZSCHE HAUS, WHERE THE PHILOSOPHER STAYED REGULARLY IN THE I88os. from Rainer Maria Rilke and Hermann Hesse to Anne Frank and Pablo Neruda). When co-curator Mirella Carbone mentioned that a few rooms are allocated to artists, scholars, and writers, I wondered whether the Engacline's reputed "champagne air" had gone to my head. The prospect of unbroken space and time for reflection stretched out wide and inviting like the glacier-topped pea.ks, temperamental skies, and glassy lakes that inspired Nietzsche's idea of"eternal return." So return I did. One year later, the toy-like RhiitischeBahn train was carrying me up an unending succession of misty switchbacks, steep terrain that Nietzsche somehow covered in a horse-drawn carriage. This stay in Sils-Maria was to last a month. Although I St. John's College. Spring 2005 } �{ALUMNI VOICE S } {A LUMNI VOICES} was eager to reread Nietzsche in the environment that had so powerfully inspired him, it wasn't my intention to make a pilgrimage to his ghost. Rather, having recently completed a master's thesis on art museums in Paris, which for five years had been home, I was mainly seeking distance from everyday life in order to WTite and think about something else, such as where my next steps might lead. My room in the Nietzsche Haus turned out to share one wall with that of its more famous resident. It also bore the type of Spartan furnishings upon which he had insisted-little more tha n a single bed and a WTiting desk-although I had the benefit of electric lamps and a sink instead of gas lanterns and a washstand. I soon determined that my ends were best achieved not by sitting at that desk, but by setting out into the mountains framed by the window above it. As I climbed the trails, one panorama wouJd unfold into the next and high-altitude valleys would come into view; peaks previously hidden would rise up, compelling me to continue moving, often over snow fields and glacier streams, in hopes of glimpsing whatever Jay beyond. Just so, fresh perspectives on my life down in the "flatlands" (to borrow Thomas Mann's phrase from The Magic Mountain , set in nearby Davos) suggested themselves. The insights sometimes evaporated, but other times they REVISTING N I ETZSCHE SENT DONNELLY BACK TO P ARIS WITH NEW APPRECIATION FOR THE PROGRAM IN GENERAL. l evolved into realizations about how I had wound up where I was and resolutions about how to proceed forward. The sound of the German verb for "to hike," wandern, aptly captured this dual motion of rambling across slopes and " .. the texu on the Program create a sort ofmental landscape through which we Johnnies-and all those who reai debat~ and write aboutthegreatbookshave earned thepassport to wander. " J ENNIFER A. DONNELLY, A96 {THE Co LL E c E . John's College. Spring2005} meandering through thoughts. Furthermore, so resounding is the echo between Nietzsche's writings and the Engadine landscape that the hiking paths-wanderwege-turned out to give as direct an access to his ideas as did the wellstocked shelves of the Nietzsche Haus library and the Biblioteca Engiadinaisa. Trail guidebooks quote the philosopher on the scenery (he described a lake as " milkgreen ") and designate his favorite trails (rarely too steep, because of his fragile health). At the tip of the Chaste peninsula jutting into the serene lake of Sils, where he dreamed of living in "a sort of ideal dog-kennel," a boulder is engraved with a passage from Zaratlwstra: "AJl joy longs for eternity...." On one hike, the words fit the scenery with an exactitude that was downright eerie. Takjng a break, listening to cowbells ringing through the valley, I opened On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life. "Consider the herd before you," the book begins, t I launching a discourse on the dangers of historical memory by describing a herd of grazing cattle. Off the trails, the magnetic gcist of the Nietzsche Haus and its centrality in the Engadinc's cultural and intellectual life encouraged the conversations that, as all Johnnies know, round out reading and reflection. I met a Scottish professor from the University of Hawaii writing the preface to his translation of Zarathustra, a Ziirich screenwriter, and a Swiss-German novelist. Even the library seemed to hum with the whispers of the absent authors of weighty dissertations sent from all corners of the globe like travelogues from the territory of Nietzsche's thought. The image of those heavily footnoted theses loomed in my mind when co-curator Joachim Jung asked me to explain my link to the house's namesake. As I rendered into clumsy German a 20-year-old's interpretation of Nietzsche's "philosophy of the future," I wondered whether my unmediated reading of that book was merely a straying into a thick forest, and my senior essay for St. John's a valiant but inexpert attempt to plot my haphazard steps back through it. I reread that essay, after descending to the flatlands of Paris, for the first time since handing it in that cold January night in Annapolis. Since my focus had been morality, religion, and dogmatism, the ending surprised me: "Art," I had concluded, "is beyond good and evil. ..." Though I would no longer dare to defend this proclamation as earnestly as I might have at my senior oral, I like to consider it a portend to my later experiences of studying and working in the field of the visual arts. This perspective on my study of Nietzsche at St John's leads me back to my opening question: what is the value of studying the program books? Writing a senior essay on Nietzsche certainly did { THE not make me an authority on his philosophy. But reading his work in the Engadine years later reminded me that the texts on the program create a sort of mental landscape through which we Johnnies-and all those who read, debate, and write about the great books- have earned the passport to wander. The books (as well as the musical scores, the scientific papers, and the mathematical texts) can inform our decisions, spark new ideas, and color our experiences long after our formal studies end. And we need not become experts on a book or its author in order to be instructcd, entertained or even annoyed, any more than we need be Alpinists to hike up a mountain. As for defining my next steps, walking through Nietzsche's mountains convinced THE MOUNTAINS T HAT I NSPIR ED NI ETZSCH E me that reorienting GAVE DONNELLY N EW INSIGHTS INTO THE oneself is a process PHILOSOPHER'S IDEAS. that never ends. "Der Weg ist das Ziel, " ran an ad in a paper I read over morning coffee at the Nietzsche Haus: the path is the goal. The real challenge is not to stick to a narrow trail but to keep climbing with all the strength in our limbs and hearts in search of the most breathtakjng views. ♦ Notes: Nietzsche's description ofthe lake as "milk-green" isfound in Eugen E. Hiisler's Engadin, Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 2001. His favorite trails are described in Paul Raabe 's Spaziergange <lurch Nietzsches Sils-Maria, Arche Verlag AC, Zurich-Hamburg, 1994. Nietzsche's description of his retreat as a "sort ofideal dogkennel" is mentioned in a letter to Carl von Gersdorff, 28 June 1883, cited in The Nietzsche Haus in Sils-Maria, by Peter Andre Bloch, Calanda Verlag, Eng. trans. Albi &Julia Rosenthal. Co LL E c E. John's College. Spring 2005 l �26 {C R OQ UE T} {CROQUET} NAVY PREVAILS! Cold and Rain Fatl to Dampen Spirits at the 23rdAnnual Croquet Match BY ROSEMARY HARTY eforc the match started, the only thing to grumble about was the weather: unseasonably cold, windy, patches of rainthe kind of weather that calls for abandoning the picture hat and sun dress in favor of a down coat and jeans. Nevertheless, the crowd of alumni, students, and townies approached 500. They enjoyed the party under umbrellas, tents, and blankets. But then, the unthinkable! With the score tied 2-z, a Navy team edged past Chris Mules (Ao6) and Tristan Evans-Wilcnt (Ao7) after the Johnnies tried a risk)' move and ended up "staked out" by their opponents. In hockey, it was the equivalent of sitting in a penalty box while the winning team scores on a power play. Jn basketball, it was like watching a three-pointer swish through the net with your best player on the bench after fouling out. It was a well-played, competitive, exciting croquet match-just what the two teams who took the field were hoping for. The Mids emerged from Woodward Hall to Queen's "Under Pressure." The theme from The A-Team played as the Johnnies came out dressed like characters from the movie Napoleon Dynamite, in badly stenciled white t-shirts that said "Vote for Pedro," short-shorts, and geeky headbands. The two teams were tied for most of the afternoon, with St. John's clinching one of the final games when senior Cara Lammey hit a winning stroke. "I knew it was now or never ifl was going to play a match-I also know they needed a token girl," she explained. Imperial Wicket Nick Whittier (Ao5) had nothing but praise for the Navy team. Having beaten Navy in an intercollegiate competition a few short weeks before, Whittier wasn't expecting an upset. " Some of their best players had an ei,.traordinary game, and some of ours had one or two off shots-and that's all it takes," he says. "I think the Navy team is excellent." Overall, St John's has won r8 matches co Navy's five wins. The last time Navy upset the Johnnies was in zoor. Navy's captain, Adam Todd, declared himself "stoked" over the win. { T H E Co LL£ c £ • St. John's College . Spring 2005 MIDSHIPMEN ADAM TODD (LEFT) AND ALEX PLUMER GREET NICK WHITTIER (Ao5, RIGHT) AND JOHN GERARD (Aos) FOR A FIERCE BATTLE. "It was a great match," he said. "The Johnnies came out and played an excelJent game." The Navy team of Dustin Wood (next year's captain) and Eric Watt succeeded in "staking out" the Johnnies by hitting a rover ball, a move the Johnnies had just tried unsuccessfully. That forced the Johnnies to sit out two rounds, allowing Navy the win. Navy fans rushed the field in triumph. Did the Navy team put in extra practice this year? "We practiced less because of the bad weather," he said. A few days after the match, Todd was unable to say where the Mids planned to display the Annapolis Cup, the thrift-store trophy awarded the winners of the match. " I didn't even know there was a 'cup,'" he said. "I had always thought it was just a myth." ♦ } SANTA FE CHILI SAVES THE DAY Alumni traveled from as far away as California to attend the an nual Croquet match against the Naval Academy, and their spirits were only slightly wilted by gloomy weather and ignominious defeat. The weather didn't stop a group of Santa Fe alumni from pulling off a pre-Homecoming reunion, or deter a grou p of young Annapolis alumni from pitching a te nt and enjoying a banquet of potato-leek soup, vichyssoise, and salmon. Tanya Hadlock-Piltz (Ao5) flew in from Los Angeles to see her friends- all of whom were dressed to the nines. "This is homecoming for us," said Hadlock-Piltz. The Santa Fe reunion class of zooo used the annual party to stage a preHomecoming gathering in Annapolis. Many alumni live on the Ease Coast, so croquet gave them an impetus to get together in case they can't make it back to Santa Fe this summer. T he group consisted ofr4 alumni from the class. and even though their plans were somewhat compromised by uncooperative weather, they had a great time catching up, said Alex.is Brown (SFoo, EC03). The group rented lodgings in the historic district and had Horseman's Haven green chili, "a much-loved and missed commodity from Santa Fe," shipped to the Annapolis alumni office before the event. Their plan was to invite any Santa Fe alumni and current students (a group of about 20 made the trip) whom they met during the croquet match to a Saturday-evening barbeque. When the match was postponed to Sunday because of threatening weather, they partied amongst themselves, ate more salsa, and joined the Waltz party later that night. All alumni got to sample the hoc stuff on Sunday at the alumni tent. "Evcr)one was very happy to have had this opportunity to get back together," says Brown. "Some ofus hadn't seen each other in six years.'' Amina Khattak (SFGI95) flew in from Norther 1 California, bringing Annika, 3, and CyT,1s, r4 months, to introduce them to John me croquet. "I try to come out every year, but this is their first match," she said. ♦ CLOCICWISE: ANNAPOLIS '04 GRADS IN THEIR FINERY; MEGHAN HUGHES (SFoo) AND HER BEAU, PATRICK; LAURENT MERCERON (Ao8); (Ao7). AND JUDITH TORGERSON, MOM OF ERIC PHOTOS BY MATTHEW BARRICK { TH£ Co LL£ c E. St. John 's College. Spring !1,005 } �28 OPEN SECRETS/I NWARD P ROSPECTS: REFLECTIONS ON WORLD AND SOUL By Eva Brann Paul Dry Books, 2.004 n her latest book, Annapolis tutor Eva Brann has collected observations and aphorisms written over more than 30 years. Open Secrets/ Inward Prospects divides into two sorts: observations about our external world well known to all but not always openly told, and sightings of internal vistas and omens, wherein Miss Brann looks at herself as a sample soul. In the preface to this beautiful volume that fits perfectly in one hand, Miss Brann describes her manner of composition: "I wrote these thoughts down on about two thousand sheets, two to three thoughts per paper, and I kept them in some used manila envelopes, the earliest of which bore a postmark ofI972." Most of the sheets lacked a notation of when and where they were written, she added. "Whether about 5,000 articulated notion per person per lifetime is about average or over or below I cannot tell; they certainly stacked up high." Miss Braun's instructions for approaching the book are these: "Open anywhere and if it irks you, try another page. This book can be long or short-As You Like It." Any Johnnie who has been lucky enough to enjoy a conversation ,vith Miss Brannin seminar or outside of it-will understand why this little book is a gem. For those who haven't had the pleasure, these interesting thoughts-a sample of which are provided below-wiJJ offer a glimpse of the experience. Some people's chatter, God bless them, is actually self-expression, but for others it's self-sacrifice on the altar of sociability to join in, and betokens not so much interest in what is being said as interest in the mere expression of interest, that is, the desire to show civility-and to look each other over. Sometimes it gets screamingly boring, and then you catch a glimpse of one of these others feeling likewise-and start a real conversation. {BIBLIOF I LE} {BIBLI OF ILE } maunder on for a long, long time. When the last judgment is ready to be made we'll be Jong gone. To love your country is to love it openeyedly, sometimes for its flaws, sometimes with its flaws, and most often in spite of its flaws. It's not so different from personal love. The heroism of maintenance is severely underrated. It is the resistance to human and natural eno·opy- that cosmic downward trend (which Lucretius symbolized in the fundamental fall of his atoms), that tendency toward deterioration and featureless homogeneity that will obtain if the world is left alone. (In Washington State I Ltscd to see a dentists' billboard saying "Ifyou ignore your teeth they' ll go away.") But it isn't only nattue and humanity in its natural course that needs to be kept going against time's grain; we also need a counterinsurgency against mindless novelty. Between entropy and innovation-that's where my heroes a.re at work. "Vacation" is a sad word, the vacancy of time after the press of business. "Leisure" is a lovely word, the freedom of time for longbreathed projects. No one has sufficiently said what a feeling is. I tis pathos, something passably suffered, affect. Yet it is also motion, being moved out of oneself, emotion. No more do we know what pleasure is, especially psychic pleasure: It seems to be the aboriginal accompaniment, not so much reaction as concurrent commentbut every analytic description covertly involves the word "pleasant." All the definitions I've read of feeling or pleasure are either diversionary or circular: Even my trusty Heritage Dictionary can do no better than to lead me from feeling to affect and from affect to feeling. And the definitions given in books circumvent saying what passions are by telling how they arise and what they're good for-as if origin and effect were what is wanted. Miss BRANN's OPEN SECRETS COVERS TOPICS INCLUDING MUSIC , INTIMACY, MEMORY, AND IMAGINATION. Many of us feel ourselves to be living on the cusp of time: Great questions are about to be settled: Is nature infinitely transformable, or does she collapse if her own Jaws are used too intrusively against her? Is human nature indefinitely malleable or does it ttrrn monso·ous when pushed too far? How much virtuality can the human imagination absorb before it loses its own actuality?, etc. I don't think anything wi II be concluded in the short run: Both nature and humans will accommodate to more impositions than anyone imagined and rebel at less provocation than one would have thought, and that way things will { THE Co LL E c E . St. John 's College. Spring 2005 "Questioning" this or that is an act of covert aggression. Question-asking is an act of persistent love. ) P ROFILES IN TERROR: T HE GUIDE TO M IDDLE EAST TERRORIST O RGANIZATIONS By Aaron Mannes (AGI97) Rowman & Littlefield, 2004 incc global terrorism emerged in the 2.ISt century, it has spawned dozens of shadowy groups with elusive leaders. Aaron Mannes (AGI97) sheds light on 20 terrorist organizations in the Middle East and the regional groups that are affiliated ·with them in his book Pro.files in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations. Mannes, who wrote his handbook for journalists, researchers, and those who work in counterterrorism, describes aspects of each terrorist group, including leadership, ideology, financial support, targets and tactics, and areas of operation. "The modern terrorist phenomenon really started when the age of media began. It is political theater," says Mannes, who is careful to distinguish modern terrorism from other insurgencies throughout history. "Terrorists play off the nature of our modern, wired society and use mass media to spread fear and their agendas. Terrorists legitimize violence. They say the society is so awful that violence as a whole is appropriate." When beginning his research, Mannes was fascinated by what he calls "asymmetrical warfare," and says, "First-world countries such as the United States are unbeatable, but terrorism has emerged as part of a vast equalizing process." Looking to the future , Mannes predicts more terrorism. "There are different evolutions - the terrorism that achieves a goal, such as the Madrid train bombings that effectively got Spain to pull out of Iraq. And there arc the catastrophes that wreak major havoc, violence as a goal in and of itself." Mannes was inspired by his tutors at St. John's to pursue his interest in public policy and writing. "All my tutors were terrific," says Mannes, "but Leo Raditsa (now deceased) helped me even after my graduation from St. John's. He taught me about the importance of freedom, liberty, and governments that protect and preserve that. Governments that undermine this are viscious." Mannes served as director ofresearch at the Middle East Media Institute in Washington, D.C., from r998 until 200I. He currently works at the University of Maryland's "Mind Lab," where he models terrorist networks. ♦ During times of public stress, like war, certain mental illnesses and suicides are said to decrease. That's surely not an argument for the redemptive power of war but an illumination of the human condition in peace: Normalcy is the most stringent tester of sou.ls. A PUBLICATION OF JINSA PRESS AARON MANNES' HANDBOOK DETAILS 20 TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST. "Open anywhere and ifit irks you~ try another page. " Contrary motions: The young at their best are intensely introspective but all their dreams are for the world. The old a.re in fact rooted in that world but their meditations turn inward. -Like passing ships, they send tenders across and board briefly, bringing news and victuals. Less fancifully, coming and going, we've got things to tell each other. EvA BRANN, TUTOR Childlike and childish: the ever-young at heart and the willfully infantile. The first are quirky but lovable, the second just irritating. Some looking into themselves come to the limit and say, "I am the ground." Others see no end and say, "It hath no bottom." But perhaps you shouldn't search in the soul but through the soul. "A friend is another self." If so, why bother? One ofmc is enough. No, it's just because souls are never transparent to each other v-.rithout remainder that they see each other at all. Mutual opacity keeps us two, together but unmerged. We humans a.re temporally rooted in the world, atemporally in the soul. Good communities mediate these two realms of the secular and the transcendent: Their members live their daily life mindful of something beyond. { THE Co LL E c E. St. John 's College. Spring 2005 Do my colleagues see themselves, mutatis mutandis, as I see my sclf?-a being of dubious gravity, urgently perfectionist about small things and dilatory about great ones, an everlasting amateur frivolously suspicious of expertise, kept callow by the luck of life that has preserved me from chronic tragedy, extensively introspective in leisure rested from responsibility-an old woman with an unconscionably young soul? ♦ ) �{ALUMNI {ALUMNI PROFILE} PROFILE} THE HosT OF "MARKETPLACE" TUNES IN David Brown (AGJ95) takes a liberal arts approach to business news BY PATRICIA DEMPSEY mid Brown (AGl95) says the long oral tradition in radio is still vibrant and vital. "There's more time on radio to engage in the art of this tradition, and there's more room for nuance." Brown is speaking from the Frank Stanton Studios in Los Angeles, Calif., just a few hours before he goes on the air to engage millions oflistcncrs with his agile conversation as host of "Marketplace," public radio's national series about business and life. There's a rustle of paper as an assistant slips an urgent message under Brown's nose, but right now his focus is elsewhere. His meandering Southern speech downshifts, and Brown, who once customized and sold Harley-Davidson motorcycles, relaxes into a conversation about road trips. "When I think of favorite road trips, one that stands out was the road trip of the summer of '95, from Boston to Annapolis to attend the Graduate Institute," says Brown. "I was working in Boston for Monitor Radio at the time; Monitor is the public radio broadcast produced by the Christian Science Monitor newspaper. They offered me this gig to host and I said, 'Hey, I'm happy to do this hosting gig but this program at St. John's is important to me.' "Brown asked for the summer off to finish his Graduate Institute studies. " I t is so vivid in my mind, when I was finally crossing the border into Maryland and feeling so happy to be heading south of the MasonDixon again. And Annapolis as a place has such resonance for me." A native of Georgia, Brown lived in Annapolis in the early 1990s when he worked as Washington, D.C., bureau chief and chief national correspondent for Monitor Radio and Monitor Television. In one of those happy I expand your perspective, you can see that each point of view in fact is true." "I also think quite often of Tocqueville's Democracy in America," says Brown, who owns three copies of Tocqueville's book and keeps one on his bedside table. "When I look at the domestic scene, so many of his observations hold true today, such as the religiosity of Americans, the role race plays in the American consciousness, the tension between rugged individualism and civic duty, so many of the things that made Americans peculiar creatures in Tocqueville's time continue to define us on the world stage today." Of his three editions of the book, Brown says "one is a precious, dog-eared volume with my class notes, another is an inexpensive paperback I can pack up and take along as a casual read, and the third is a library edition.' " Brown offers another insight that he culled from reading the great books. "I think about art and science, how radio brings these together and how at St. John's, the concept of art versus science, and the melding of the two, was part of the curriculum discussion ," says Brown. "Here in radio, you have storytelling-the art of telling-a-story-part of radio-and then you also engage in the science, the journalism, getting the facts right. This is what we do here at 'Marketplace.' I t's a liberal arts approach to looking at business," says Brown. "At 'Marketplace' we have what we call 'front-yard stories' that touch a deep chord, such as an issue of democracy and justice. What's at stake when there's a courthouse shooting in Atlanta? We look at the social phenomena, the context shaping the backdrop for the events that are shaping the business news. Then there are 'backyard stories' on topics like bond prices that are not big on curb appeal, but need to be included. Then we mix it up-this is what makes us unique." ''.[fyoufree your.se!f expandyourper.spective~ you can .see that each pointefview in/act is true. " DAVID BROWN (AC195) accidents that make a journey memorable, when Brown was living in Annapolis he stumbled upon St. John's, a perfect match for his appetite for intellectual discovery. " I was searching for something to keep me mentally charged and stimulated," says Brown. At a political function in Annapolis, Brown met a recent GI grad. "He was enthusiastic, incandescent even, about his experience at St. John's. So I met with [graduate admissions coordinator] Miriam Callahan-Hean. At that time the Graduate Institute was housed in Mellon Hall and we walked around and I remember thinking, 'This is extraordinary-there are conversations about conversations going on here.' " The ideas Brown encountered in his conversations at St. John's find a forum in his distinctive radio show today. "I ate it up. I loved it. The reading, the being exposed to ideas I wouldn't have exposed myself to if left to my own devices," says Brown. "I'm not a math person, but not a week goes by that I don't think about Lobachevsk.--y and Euclid and parallels. You can see it, visualize it-the parallel lines into infinity. I remember thinking, 'This is not possible. How can these mutually exclusive ideas-Euclid's classic definition of parallels and Lobachevsky's vision oflines infinitely approaching each other-both be true?' "says Brown. "This opened a way of seeing things for me in journalism. If you free yourself, { THE Co LL EC & •Sc.John's College, Spring 2005 } Brown recalls the skepticism surrounding "Marketplace," when it was a new show. "In 1989 there was this cheeky upstart business program that everyone said would fail," says Brown. By 2000 Brov-m, who had just graduated from Washington and Lee Law School, was recruited to be senior producer of American Public Media's "Marketplace," and du ring his tenure the show garnered several awards, including the prestigious Peabody Award for excellence in journalism. By 2003, Brown was host, a challenge he relishes. "There is something that happens every day between 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. when we go on the air. I'm no CPA, so I have to synthesize this, present it in an interesting, engaging way co tell it to our listeners. There's a pressure, but it's a good pressure, and you spin out the story. It's exciting, challenging, thrilling," says Brown. "When I go home, I get calls from friends and they say, 'That made so much sense. I'm so glad you put it that way.' That makes it meaningful for me-that I got through, communicated. St. John's prepared me; all the underlying conversations prepared me." Brown is another hour closer to going on the air, but he has one more story about the GI. " Of the four GI segments, I put off math until the last semester. Lobachevsky, the logic, I wrestled with it. One day I was having coffee with [tutor ': ..he [Mr. Kutler) knew I was .straining. He told m~ 'You 'fl.see this. You 'fl get it. Give it time. ' " DAVID BROWN (Ac195) { THE Co LL E c E. St. John's College. Spring 2005) DAVID BROWN WORKED BRIEFLY IN TELEVISION, BUT PREFERS RADIO. "IT'S BEEN SAID 'THE PICTURES ARE BETTER IN RADIO' ANO IT'S TRUE." emeritus] Mr. Kutler. I think he knew I was straining. He told me, 'You'll see this. You'll get it. Give it time.' He was right. It was a loving, reassuring gesture. He could see I was looking for an intellectually challenging experience. 'You might really love law school,' he said to me.'' He knew I was interested in talking about ideas. He knew I was wondering, 'Where do I go from here?'" Fortunately Brown ended up at "Marketplace," adding intellectual spice and artful conversation to evening commutes. ♦ �{ALUMNI 1935 "1 'm very proud to have been a II graduate ofSJC," writes MELVILLE L. B1SGY£R. "I'm a very old man now (91+) and as I look back, those four years are among the highlights. The memories of my fellow students, the wonderful profs, the staff, the old buildings, my dorm-Pinkney Hall-the bell rope running through a classroom atop McDowelJ, the library, the gym, the proms. Is the Sugar Bowl still in town? The connict with Hopkins in '35, the front campus, the old Liberty Tree, which I know is now gone. The All-American lacrosse teams-all part of a wonderful memory. A biologyzoology class of four students and two profs-wow-other memories we won't discuss, but think about with many a chuck.le. All the best." s. WOODMAN is "still practicing law here in upstate New York and traveling quite a bit to Jtaly and Australia in my spare time. Would like to hear from any classmates who are still around." R ICJWlD Ii I { A LU M N I NOTES} Q UITE IMMERSED (class of1955) received the "Conductor of the Year, 2004" award from the Illinois Council ofOrchcstras. He is now conductor laureate of the New Philharmonic and Du Page Opera. He has accepted the _ ~ _ ~ artistic directorship of the opera program at North Park University in Chicago and is quite immersed in composilion and painting. ♦ - - - - AROLD B AUER - 1950 1943 has been thinking about the college, particularly about the reading list, and especially about Proust. " It seems to me," he writes, "that since my time, the Program has improved with the two years of Greek and French, the greater emphasis on writing and laboratories without Humphreys' sha1..-y floors. The one disimprovcmcnt has been the dropping of Proust from the fourth year. Swann's Way, although a part of a larger whole, is a complete work in itself. The author of a recent article in The Atlantic Monthly found it incredible that one can graduate from Harvard without reading Shakespeare or Proust. How can a 'great books' program not include Proust? It is time to include him again." M ILTON P ERLMAN "My wifeof 56 years, Phyllis, (we were married two weeks after graduation under the Liberty Tree) and I will be moving to a Quaker-sponsored continuing-care retirement community, Kendal on Hudson, on July first," wTites P ETER D AVIES. "It is close to New York and Riverdale, so we will continue to enjoy theater, concerts, dining, and city life, and friends in Riverdale. We stayed with that Republican, GERRY H OXBY (class of1947); argued into the night last August while in Ohio campaigning for John Kerry! I'm still representing the United Nations at Safer World (a British think tank) and working on a conference in July on preventing armed conllict." : The eldest son of O SCAR L OUIS L ORD, Lance W. Lord, an Air Force four-star general, has been made Commander of Air Force Space Command. 1944 LINDSAY CLENDANIEL writes, "I am happy to represent other alumni who, like myself, didn't graduate from St. John's but from other institutions, yet consider St. John's my alma mater!" { TH E Co LL£ c E. A tribute from Eo LYNCH: "My belief is that St. John's is one of the finest educational houses in the country. I did not graduate-I completed two full years and did not return. I came to St. John's from high school. My classmates were men who had attended other colleges, gone to the war and returned to St. John's to be enlightened and truly free. I was intimidated by their vast knowledge of the world and the things in it. Anyway, I guess I wasn't the brightest bulb in the lamp, nor the most energetic. I love St. John's, and I always will. I will never regret my time there." R OBERT G. HAZO FREDERICK P. D AVIS: "We 3-Ds in the low desert of Southern California (son David, wife Rita, and self) still plug along respectively at a Riverside Nursing Home (broken, infected legs), Rita on full-time oi,..-ygen, and I without a driver's license-revoked! But church volunteers have supplied us with food and rides to church, etc., since this cruel blow of the OMV on November 2.4, 2.004. St. John's College. Spring 2005 } is the most reliable and strongest expression of real love." JAMES and AMY (class of1959) JOBES are both retired. An1y serves as an occasional supply priest in Massachusetts. They have three grandchildren now, in Massachusetts: Amanda, 4; in Georgia: Elijah, 2., and Sophia, 1 month. is still writing political books entitled Minorily Rufe. "It goes slowly but well. Publishing articles in the metropolitan newspaper here and in the Washington Report on the Middle East on doings in the Middle East, especially Iraq and Lebanon. Gave my annual lecture on "Love" on Valentine's Day to undergraduates. Attendance was good. Women outnumbered men by 2, or 3 to 1, surpTising since maternal love our regular lives and welcoming friends in these more spacious quarters." M ARYFRANCES McCtrrCHAN is retired from the National Park Service. She lives in Annapolis, is learning to play the flute, and has three grandchildren. She's also looking forward to her class reunion in 2.008. "I have finally found the Great Hall ofSJC here in Santa Fe and attended a wonderful concert by Joan Zucker last week. Now that I know where it is, my wife and I will attend more concerts," writes MICHAEL TRUSTY. 1 959 H ARVEY and MARY (class of 1958) GOLDSTEIN are planning ahead. "Members of the class ofr959 are already starting to plan for our 50th reunion-log on to the class of '59 Web page on the alumni site for the continuing story." 1960 USAF, is enjoying retirement. "Marie and I are thoroughly enjoying life in the slow lane. After many years of high-stress/high-travel jobs, having time to read, soak in the spa, shoot pool, frequent auction and estate sales, and generally do whatever I want, whenever I want, is wonderful! The only downside is the great blue heron that eat our fish, and the deer that eat our shrubbery. COL. JOHN J. LANE, 1953 1949 I Lately "Seniors Helping Seniors" (for a price) have taken Rita and me to see doctors, get haircuts, etc., throughout this valley. But at 60 miles, Riverside is out of their range. It's over three years since we've seen David. Rita and I shall never forget SJC, where we met at St. Anne's Church. I obtained a classic liberal education." CECILY SHARP-WHITEHILL writes: "Along with the seminars my colleagues and I conduct several times a year for senior executives of professional service firms on the topic of management of PSFS (this is a five-day course and qualifies as education, not just training), I continue to consult for firms on the topic of business communications, both spoken and written. Having wearied of relatively long, gray winters and snow shoveling, I moved permanently to Osprey, Fla., immediately south of Sarasota. It's delightful here." 1966 "On December 10, we moved into our new house designed by us and our architect," reports J ULIA B USSER OU PREY. "It has been an exciting, but all-consuming project, and we now look forward to resuming { THE 33 N O TES } 1968 ELIZABETH A. D OBBS (A) writes: "I have an article coming out in the Chaucer Review on an allusion to Ovid's Narcissus and Echo story in The Franklin's Tale. It's called 'Re-sounding Echo.'" G. K EENS (SF) is a professor of Pediatrics, Physiology, and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and a member of the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology at Children's Hospital, Los Ange les. "I was recently appointed Director of Pediatric Subspccialty Fellowship Education at Children's Hospital," he writes. "I have crested a year-long course in scholarship skills (research methodology and proficiency in teaching), which emphasizes small-group interaction rather than reliance on lectures. I conduct research in pediatric respiratory disorders and am investigating an innovative hypothesis that the cerebellum has a majoT role in control of breathing." THOMAS CllARL£S B . WATSON (A) writes: "Anya Watson graduates from Connecticut College this year and has been awarded the Rolex North American Our World Undergraduate Scholarship for 2.005, presented at the Explorers Club in New York City in April 2.005. It provides a year's funding for undersea research (and a Rolcx watch). Her undergraduate major was marine biology with a minor in Russian and European studies (age 2.1). Ivan most recently reports from Kyrgyzstan for NPR after recent travel to Iraq, Beirut, Turkey, Iran, and other newsworthy locations (age 28). Michael, an avid scuba and windsurfing enthusiast, is working on Martha's Vineyard. Other alumni are encouraged to look us up in Connecticut and Martha's Vineyard." "Hello to H ENRY CONSTANflNE (A) and his beautiful wife, Christine," writes STEVE H ANFr (A). "Thanks for the iospirational message-see you at the reunion." LIVING HISTORY - (SF74) continues to direct the Public H istoTy program at New Mexico State University. His book ,_ ON H UNNER Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth ofan Alomic Communily came out last fall from the University of Oklahoma Press. His program at NMSU has published :_ • books on Santa Fe and Las Cruces and conducts living ._. history events from the Spanish Colonial and Great Depression era. Mary Ellen, his wife, is finishing a graduate degree in nursing, and t heir son Harley is a first-year student at Seattle University. ♦ Co LL E c £.St.John's College. Spring ~005 } i �34 {ALUMNI NOTES} {ALUMNI SUSHEILA H ORWITZ (SF) writes: "I'm still alive and still a member of Madonna House. I spent the last seven years in a small city in eastern Russia. I loved the people there and would love to retllrn." LIFE AT THE ALTERNATIVE Julia Goldberg (SF91) and the Santa Fe Reporter keep an eye on the city BY ROSEMARY HARTY here's a great deal of hard work, long hours, and modest compensation attached to the work Julia Goldberg (SF91) docs as editor of The Reporter, Santa Fe's alternative weekly newspaper. So on a recent winter's night, she was at peace with relaxing her journalistic ethics just a little to accept a free ticket to a sold-out lecture by linguist Noam Chomsky. Goldberg has always loved language, and there's no better outlet for someone in Jove with words than the satisfying grind of putting out a weekly newspaper, especially one as feisty and in-your-face as The Reporter. A life-size stand-up ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer, adorned with Goldberg's press pusses, overlooks the piles of newspapers, files, and other materials stacked all around Goldberg's office. After five years as editor, she's had time to get comfortable in her job. Her path to The Reporter was a simple choice. " I wanted to WTite, and I didn't want to leave Santa Fe," she explains. Like many Johnnies, the Philadelphiaarea native was guided to St. John's by a high school teacher who recognized Goldberg's love of books. She loved the language in the Program, especially ancient Greek; however, " junior math almost killed me," she says, shuddering at the memory. She became a music assistant and delved into journalism by editing The Moon, the student newspaper, during her junior and senior years. Established in 1974, The Reporter is one of the oldest independent weeklies in the country. Given away free in boxes all over town, it has a circulation of 21,000 and a core of dedicated readers. "We have a great relationship with Santa Fe, and we're really considered a part of the city," she says. On the other hand, Goldberg adds, "we're always struggling to break even." As editor Goldberg oversees two reporters, a full-time art director, a part-time assistant director, and a dozen or so freelancers. 'Iwo other Johnnies currently work for the paper: Andy Dudzik (SFGI92) is the publisher; Jonanna Widner (SFGloo) is assistant editor. Many Johnnies have been on staff or freelanced for the paper. Even when Goldberg's reporters are young and green, they share a passion for breaking news stories and digging imo complicated issues. "I'm working with really smart people," she says. "We've broken a lot of stories in the last year and a half." "The Short Life of Jimmy Villanueva" revealed that the county jail violated the --- constitutional rights of prisoners by failing to treat their health problems. "Soldier's Heart" probed the psychological problems soldiers faced on their return from Iraq. And a shocking lack of services for autistic children in New Mexico was exposed in "The Lost Ones." Goldberg has won numerous awards from the New Mexico Press Association and the National Federation of Press Women. She created and directed the Hip-Hop Voter Project, designed co inspire young Hispanic residents in New Mexico to vote. The R eporter provides an importanL alternative to the local daily, the Santa Fe continued on p. 3 5 organic garlic farming. Visitors are welcome at s Dodge Corner, New Vineyard, Maine." (SF) has a short story in the online journal VerbSap: http://verbsap.com/2oo5mar/sarai.html. "Just got home from a threeweek wine and nature trip to New Zealand," says LELIA STRAW (A). "Love the Kiwis and their homeland. We were there over the U.S. election though, and they're all mystified by the outcome." 35 WORK AND PLAY ARCO ACOSTA (A82) sends a hello to all his 1 973 (SF) reports: "My daughter INDIA C L ARK (SF01) and Challem Clark are now living in Budapest, Hungary, in a beautiful apartment right over Vaci Utaca, the main pedestrian street. They are having a blast and perhaps will stay longer than the original six-month plan." INDIA WILL IAMS SARAH (GANCIIER) SARAI NOTE S } 1 974 and R ANDY P ENDLETON (both SF) have news: "We are delighted to announce the marriage of our son, W ALKER (A99), to R.Ac n EL V EDAA (SF99) in April." M AllTHA "unique and talented" classmates: "I have many great memories of our college years and hope the best for you all and your families. I continue to examine my life daily. Work is: legal, filmmaking, public school teaching K-12; Play/other: WTiting, guitar, music, recording, chess, basketball. Personal: divorced. Peace and Prosperity to you allplease call when you're on the West Coast."♦ (A) directs, supervises, and interprets MRI examinations of the brain and body at 30 sites in 12 states. "I teach and lecture on brain development, brain imaging, and brain pathology at Georgetown University and elsewhere. My four wonderful children never cease to amaze, amuse, confound, and inspire me as they display the intricacies of brain development to me, up close and personal." JOIIN REES 1 975 C YNTIIIA Swiss (A) has been elected to president of the Maryland/DC Chapter of the American String Teachers Association. "I have organized statewide certification exams for young string players," she writes. "I also schedule workshops on Suzuki String Teaching Technique. Our chapter published a newsletter called Stringendo, and I have contributed several articles." I RVINC WILLIAMS (A) is "moving to the country estateroom for a pony-in July to start continuedfromp. 34 New Mexican, says Goldberg. "They cover what's happening; we try to be progressive," she explains. Part of the paper's job is to provide a guide to enjoying Santa Fe, with special sections on restaurants, art galleries, recreation, and just living in the city. The process of putting out a weekly paper starts each Wednesday morning, with a critique of the current paper. Goldberg and her staff brainstorm new story ideas, identify a cover story, and plan what they need to report on in the coming weeks. On Thursday, they start working on a preliminary layout, Sunday Goldberg spends editing the cover story, and Monday and Tuesday are "slam days," as the final stories come in for editing, headlines, and fact-checking. Tuesday THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN HER COMMUNITY KEEPS J ULIA GOLDBERG AT THE REPORTER. {THE Co LL E c E. St. John 's College. Spring2005} night is the press run, and on Wednesday it starts all over again. The Johnnies and other reporters who work for Goldberg tend to get good training at The Reporter. But they soon head off to New York or other cities where their editorial skills can earn them a better salary. After interning at the Phi/,adelphia City Paper, the New Mexican and The Reporter, Goldberg earned her master's degree at the University of New Mexico. "J:re 've broken a lot of .stories in the last year andaha!f" JULIA GoLOBERC (SF9:r) { THE Co LL E c E. St. John 's College. Spring 2005 } She acquired valuable experience at one of her first jobs, the Rio Grande Sun, where she covered county government, politics, and schools. It gave her a sense that an aggressive local paper is an important tool of democracy. "You need to ask questions, and you need to listen carefully-a lot like what we do at St. John's." In between deadlines, Goldberg manages to get time off to enjoy the beautiful city she's living i n. She enjoyed a recent Community Seminar at St. John's and vows to get up the hill more often to enjoy campus events. But even with the long hours, it's hard for her to imagine giving up the work she does at The Reporter. There's always another story to tell. " I can't say the perfect opportunity isn't out there, but right now, I can't imagine a better job." ♦ �{AL U M NI NOTE S } {ALUMN I 37 NOT ES } I Beginning April I, MICHAEL will be serving as the regional minister for Northwest Connecticut, responsible for oversight of about 50 United Cht1rch of Christ congregations. C IBA (A) MAUYELLEN LAWRENCE (SF) has finished her subspecialty training in infectious diseases at the University of New Mexico and is practicing medicine in Santa Fe. She writes, "It may be that, at last, 1 have completed my formal medical training!" " I've been eagerly scanning the class notes for 21 years now, so thought it was about time I made a contribution," writes } ACK A RMSTRONG (SF). I live in West Chester, Penn., of all places, with my wife, Ca1·men, and kids Michael (16) and Emily (8). I am happier than I ever expected or deserved. I'm printing ballots for a living, and writing stories for my soul. I also have a theatre with Carmen, the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival, which is the 800-pound gorilla of hobbies. l miss you all." ANNE M CCLARD (SF) reports 1980 " I am delighted to let everyone know that I am now the proud mother of Emily Sierra," writes Gmu GLOVEU (SF). "She came to live with me from Memphis, Tenn., and I will be ever grateful to her birth mom for helping me create a family. Can't wait for you all to meet her at our next reunion." that NOAH MCC LARD LEDBETTER (SF02) and DAGNY CHICOINE-STANGL (SF01) were married in July 2004. STEVEN T. R EYNOLDS (A) writes: "Landry Tait Anders Reynolds joined the gaggle August II, 2004. The family and the garden continue to thrive." medical staff on January r, 2005. He will serve as president for two years. He was previously the medica 1staff vice president for two years and has been the laboratory medical director for four years. Thia is currently working with President William Harvey to build a proton therapy radiation oncology center at Hampton University. She has also recently been invited to serve on the Board of Directors for the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics Program Committee, and the Combined Theory and Experimental Collaboration for Quantum Thermodynamics. Nothing but good news from KATII EIUNE RowE (SF): "I am still a preacher in the Episcopal Church and still in a Denver suburb. I'm still a speech and language pathologist, and still in love with my husband, Phil, and my two ch ildren. I'm also still glad that I went to St. John's." 1985 writes, "I continue to practice law in Baltimore and am pleased to announce that I have recently set out on my own. Having my own practice has allowed me to do the cases I want to do, spend ANNA L. D AVIS (A) ERIN MCVADON ALBRlGHT (A) welcomed his first grandson, Patrick Alexander, into the world one year ago. News from BARRY H ELLMAN and CYNT111A " TwA" KEPPEL (both A): Barry became president of Mary Immaculate Hospital GoozILLA PHASE STEVEN CRAMER (A) is an attorney in private practice in New York City. He lives in Maplewood, N.J., with his wife and two daughters, the youngest adopted from China in December 2004. - - ife is "good and busy" for A LEX (AGI93) and ELLERMANN. Alex works in the national security field, flies C-13os in the Navy Reserve, and is working toward his second master's with the Naval War College's Distance - - - - • Education Program. Vanessa practices Jaw with a Georgetown firm that specializes in class actions. Son Alex, 5, is going through a Godzilla phase at the moment, "which is pretty fun," they write. ♦ V ANESSA (A93) .J { THE 1: Co LL E c E. S1. John's College. Spring 2005 ) more time on volunteering and pro bono cases, and most importantly, better balance the demands of work and family. My husband, Richard Gordon, and children, Aaron (IO) and Rachel (6), and l are all well and would love to hear from any and all Johnnies passing through Baltimore." TE1uu K. LUCKE'IT (SF) worked for GE for a long time but left for Honeywell in 2002. "I lived in L.A. for one year, but moved to N.J. a year ago to become vice president of Business Planning for HON. I'm hoping to move out ofN.J. back to points west as soon as possible, but time will tell. Beautiful Carolyn is 12, now and a true joy, was diagnosed with diabetes in 2001, but we manage. We grew weary of corporate nomadic life and bought a piece of Santa Fe to call our 'home away from home.' Ping us if you are either here or there: terri.luckett@ honeywell.com." is vice president of operations at a mid-size software company in Maine. " It's quite exciting and very busy," he writes. " I am happily married to a woman from Maine who makes me laugh a great deal. For those of you who remember my interest in music, I wrote an orchestral piece around 1995-96 and went to the Czech Republic and had it performed at a workshop for orchestral composers. It was really fun. Haven't written a note since!" K ENNETH MARTIN (A) 1986 MELISSANETfLESHI P Br-.J',EDICT (SF) writes: "Since July of 2000 I have been director of finance at Santa Fe Preparatory School, released her thu-d album, Live at Blues Alley. Her Web site is: www.mclaniemason.com JOHNNIE FRENCH TESTED - ATRICE MCSHANE (SF02) was on her way to Africa earlier this spring: " I spent the two-and-a-ha lf years after graduation in Portland, Ore., working at a Montessori preschool. I got ants in my pants, shifted direction, and applied to volunteer for the United .... States Peace Corps. I was accepted and leave for Burkina Faso, Africa , on March 17' An unusual way to spend St. Patty's Day, don't you think? I'll be there for over two years, teaching secondary math to Bw·kinahe high school students. Let's hope my SJC French rises to the occasion! I am mighty excited and would be more than willing to discuss the Peace Corps application process/experience with any prospective vo lunteers. Or just write to say "hey, you!" patsymcshane@ hotmail.com." ♦ just down the hill on Camino Cruz Blanca from the Santa Fe campus." 1989 "After many years in San Francisco, I've been in Denver for a year, spending much of my time practicing Tibetan Buddhism," writes LARRY SEIDL (A). "I've been remiss in my alumni activities, though I saw many shining faces at reunion number ro in '96. Twenty is just around the bend. A warm general hello to the community in general, and the class ofr986 and my tutors in particular." BURKE GURNEY (SFGI ) is married with two children: Kyra and Elise, ages 15 and 13. "I am an assistant professor at the University ofNcw Mexico in the Department of Orthopedics, Rehabilitation, and Physical Therapy. I teach physiology, orthopaedic evaluation and treatment, professional ethics, and gerontology. I am an avid traveler, reader, skier, and parent." JAN UNDERWOOD (SF) is working as a Spanish instructor. AL1ZA S HAPIRO (SF) was recently engaged to David Mandel. 1990 JOHN SELLERS (A) is "married to Becky Woods and teaching grades 8-12 math and science, including chemistry and physics-challenging." THE RFV. M'N SLAKEY (SF) is now priest-in-charge at St. Matthew's Episcopal Parish in Ontario, Ore. is a fuUtime blues artist, writing and performing original blues-rock material as lead electric guitarist and vocalist for the Melanie Mason Band. She also performs and records traditional acoustic blues as a solo artist. She recently KEN TuRNBULL (A) writes: "My wife, Leslie, and Tare both lawyers in Washington and are enjoying our seven-month-old daughter, Fiona." Co LLB c E. ' (SF) and her husband arc pleased to announce the birth of their first child, Emma Lee Ward, born on January 4, 2005. J ENNIFER R YCIILI K 1991 is a 2004 winner of the National Poetry Series award, and her second book, Starred Wire, will be published by Coffee House Press. ANGIE MLINKO (A) N ICOLE l<ALMANOR LEVY (SF) writes, " l n August 2004, I gave birth to our first daughter, Eve Simone Levy. She's the apple of our eye! My husband, Rob, and I moved to the North Shore of Boston last year, to Swampscott, which is a small town next to Salem-the Witch Capital, and Marblehead-a sailing capital. A fon destination with some cultural treats! 1 am working on a master's in Jewish studies. Got through Jewish mysticism, now working on a translation of portions of the Book of Exodus. I wish I could go to more alumni events, it's been great connecting!" MELANIE M ASON (A) { TH E Alrnapolis to sec his wife, SARA ScnROEOlNGER (A92), he is logging lots of frequent-flyer miles on bt1siness trips to China, Thailand, and Malaysia. 1993 The commute to work for K u1n HECKEL (A) got a lot longer in early September 2004, when he took a position ,vith Border Concepts in Charlotte, N.C. When he is not traveling back to St. John's College. Spring 2005 } 1994 JANIE BOSWORTH (SFGI) and GEORGE F. BING HAM (SF66) were married July 3, 2004, at the Audubon Center in Santa Fe. Between them, they proudly share six children and seven grandchildren-with another one on the way. finished writing his dissertation in May 2004 and spent the summer backpacking in Montana. " T hiked across the Bob Marshall Wilderness once, enjoyed the experience, and went back for a second passage," wTites Kroll. "Walking through the long eveni ng light of summer in the northern Rockies is not to be missed. The bears keep things interesting, too. Talso spent numerous days floating the Bitterroot and Clark Fork Rivers, drinking beer and formulating a master plan. I completed my Ph.D. in Wildlifo Biology from the University of Montana in December 2004 and accepted a position as a research scientist with Wcycrhaettser Corporation in Federal Way, Wash. I am responsible for habitat plann ing for the company's Wester n timberlands, as well as general wildlife research and operational support. I would enjoy hearing from anyone, and I am anxious to jump-start ANDREW }. K ROLL (A) I I I I �{ALUMNI NATHAN WILSON {ALUMNI PROFILE} (AGl01) UNVEILS SHROUD MYSTERIES BY PATRICL\ DEMPSEY ike many Johnnies, Nathan Wilson (AGlor) is unwilling to walk away from an ino·iguing question. Five years ago, Wilson became fascinated with the origins of the mysterious Shroud of Turin and began to wonder how the images ofJesus on the cloth-believed by some to be authentic-could have been faked. Ultimately, with a few simple tools Wilson demonstrated how a medieval might have forged the images on the shroud. His simple experiment showing that glass, paint, and sunlight could have been used to create a "reversed" photonegative image sparked a media frenzy, with Wilson appearing on shows including ABC's World News Tonight. Wilson (profiled in the Summer 2.002 edition of The College for his parodies of apocalyptic novels) ruminated over two questions: how do we know the dark image was imposed on light linen at all? Further, how could a forger in the Middle Ages lighten linen without chemicals, paints, or dyes? "A negative image can be easily produced using only large pieces of painted NATHAN WILSON THEORIZES THAT C H RIS D AVI S and CARMEN (both SF) write: "CHARLIE B REW and P AT BOHAN, it's high time you stopped reading so much Kafka!" H ERIJIIG SUNLIGHT TRAVELING IN AN ARC OVER PAINTED CLASS CREATED THE 3-D IMAGE ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN. glass," explains Wilson. "In the Middle Ages, glass was commonly made in large sizes: six-by-eight feet or even nine-by-five. It was made in a long cylinder and unrolled into a sheet as early as the noos, a technique perfected in the 12.oos and r3oos. As the Shroud is roughly 14 feet in length, two pieces of glass would be necessary, both at least six feet long. The image of the front of alumni activities in the Puget Sound area. I can be reached at ajkroll64@hotmail.com." English, Italian, and Latin, and where Greek and Sanskrit are offered as electives. PATRICK SCANLON (SFGI) will be resident clirector of School Year Abroad's Italy campus in Viterbo, Italy. SYA Viterbo offers a one-year classics curriculum for American juniors and seniors in homestays. He and his wife, Linda, and their four children return to the central Italian town (population 60,000) where Pat had taught English for two years previously. Now he'll oversee a program that requires GREG WATSON (SF) writes, "l live in Washington State on a beautiful island with my dog, Rusty, and wife, Karen. During the week I am employed as assistant harbormaster at a local marina, and on weekends I teach sailing in Seattle. So I am still using my captain's license. Also, I am getting ready to embark on a trip to Costa Rica with Solar Energy International, where we will work with locals installing renewable energy power systems." { TH E Co LL E c E. the man would be produced beneath one and the back of the man beneath the other." How would the forger create the three-dimensional shading? "By painting an image on the top side of the glass," says Wilson. "This leaves a gap where the sunlight traveling in a 180degrec arc could penetrate at angles that produce the 3-D shading." Wilson used white oil paint to create images on eight different window panes and placed them over coarse linen in the sun. The paint blocked the sunlight from bleaching the darker cloth, but everything around it was bleached white. The results, Wilson believes, point to one possibility for how the shroud was faked. He detailed his experiments in an article published in the journal Books and Culture: "What I have done is crudely demonstrate that such an image could easily be produced in a matter of weeks by wicked men with no scruples, a little imagination, and a little more skill." ♦ 1 995 JEROME DuFFY (SFGI) is working as an elementary school teacher at the Chinese American International School in San Francisco. ALICE BROWN and GREG HODGES (A) are happy to announce the birth of their second child, Silas Wister Hodges. "We are also pleased to announce the completion of Greg's doctoral thesis, "An Ethnography Study of Lucan's Bellum Civife," which has St. John's College. Spring 2005} arrived after a gestation of many years and has earned him a Ph.D. in classics from Ohio State University. We arc teaching and in the thralls of Babydom in the Great White North, and loving it. Fond thoughts of all!" CAMERON GRAHAM (SF) has moved from South Carolina tO the Defense Languages School in Monterey, Calif. "I am a specialist, and I will most Iikely be there for a couple of years;• he writes. "In the army, I received an award for top physical program at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, and now I am studying Arabic." D AVID MALLEY (A) writes: "T didn't graduate from St. John's, but my short time there is a treasured memory. For that, I am always grateful." H EATHER (AGI) my new company and will serve as my launching pad for my next year of helicopter flying," reports KI RA K. ZIELINSKI (SF). "Happily, no more tourists. I'll be flying as a utility pilot, which means construction and firefighting all over the western U.S., just as Pericles would have done had he not been occupied with a higher calling. Same e-mail: Hcrme5@juno.com." and C HRIS NOR.DLOII (AGI96) welcomed Nicholas Nordloh into the world on Dec. 24, 2004. (A) and AolUENNE (JAK0WSKI) RUIJENSTElN (A96) have lived in the Washington, D.C., area for five years, the last three in Frederick, Md. Adrienne teaches at the Maryland School for the Deaf, and Peter commutes to an In tern et networking job in Northern Virginia. Their big news is the appearance on the scene of Jonah Chester, by far the littlest Rubenstein currently extant. Born just shy of Halloween 2004, Jonah has made a splash among his admirers. Blue-eyed and dark of hair, he is considered by his father to be "quite handsome." Two-year-old beagle "Elway" is said to be " adjusting well" to the newcomer despite occasional lapses in respect for the property rights of others. P ETER "Did I mention I'm engaged?" writes APRIL I0AWALTERS (A). "Getting married October r, 2005, to Travis Hopkins and J'm keeping my name. Also, I've been working at MICA as the writing studio coordinator almost as long as I attended SJC!"' 1996 }ILL C111U!,'flNE NIENIIISER (AGI ) writes: " T was recci:itly promoted to director of strategy at Mind and Media, Inc. in Alexandria, Va. Last Friday I had my first piano lesson since 1984. Upon leaving the music store, I slammed my finger in the car door. So far there is no appreciable difference in my playing ability, despite the swelling! Hah ! " 1997 DAVID CANNELL (EC) dropped a note from Japan: "Hidcko, the three boys, and I are in Tokyo for the next year or two on a Japan Foundation fellowship, praying it's enough to see us thr9ugh the remainder of my doctoral program (UC Irvine). My thesis is on Matsuo Basho and haikai poetry in late seventeenth-century Japan. Meantime, we're just enjoying being here. The cherry blossoms have come and gone-in a matter of days! Can't wait for the next sumo tournament. Would love to hear from fellow EC grads and know what's going on in their worlds." "I'm proud to say that I've used up Las Vegas and am now off co Tucson, which is the home of { THE Co LL E c E. NOTES } 39 "My company, North Star Games, is starting to pick up momentum," writes DOMINI C C1tAPUCHETrF.S (A): "Cluzzle has won several prestigious awards as a great family game and our next game, Trivia Casino, was picked up by a larger game company. It looks likely that both games will be available at national outlets for the 2.005 holiday season! If so, I will finally get a paycheck after 12 months of working for nothing except a dream. WES DONEHOWER bought an apartment in DuPont Circle so we have been hanging out a bit recently. Give us a call if you're in the area and we'll get together: 202-2536070." 1998 News from ALEXANDRA D .E. BOOZER (A): "Jam happy to announce that I was ma rried to Daniel Giguere ofWindham, Maine, on September I9, 2.004. Last year I received my doctorate in clinical psychology from George Washington Univers ity, with a specialization in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. We are currently living in Holmes Beach, Fla., where I am working towards obtaining Florida psychology licensure. I would love to hear from any old friends or to link with other students/alumni with an interest in practicing psychology. I can be reached by e-mail at: alexandra_FL@ hotmail.com." (SF) is teaching fifth-grade math. He and his wife, Sara, are pleased to be homeschooling their four ch ildren. "This summer we will be flying to England, where we will be learning to build wooden boats." D AVID BRADEN St. John's College. Spring 2005 } MA'ITH£\V C. JOHNSTON (SF) sends greetings to his long-lost classmates. "After stints as a teacher, a college admissions counselor (at SJC of course), and a theology student, I'm pleased to report that I'm back at St. John's in Santa Fe, working alongside the assistant dean to improve student activities and services. My wife, A.NNE"ITE P RA.PASI RI (SF04), and I are expecting a baby in mid-April and, ifwe can negotiate home prices here, plan to stay in SF forever. Drop me a line if you're in town or needing the inside scoop on SJC developments. I can be reached at 505-424-3292 or mjohnston@sjcsf.edu." 1999 RACHEL VE0AA (SF) and WALKER P ENOLEOON (A) were married April 16, 2005, at St. Mary's College in Moraga, Calif. 2000 ANNE MCSHANE (A) is finishing her first year at law school at NYU. 'Tm spending the summer at Nebraska's ACLU. If anybody wants to chat about going to law school, feel free to write me at annecarolmcshane@ yahoo.com." BENJAMIN SHOOK (SF) writes: " I'm making beautiful furniture with a hint of Danish and Asian influence. Visit www.bcnshook.com to see my work." DE8EllNJERE } A.NET T 01Ul£Y (AGI) is in Seoul on a Fulbright fellowship, studying premodern Korean literature in �40 {OBITUARIES} {ALUMNI NOTES} "A GIFT FOR FRIENDSHIP": REMEMBERING STUART BOYD preparation for her dissertation research in the Department of Comparative literature at Penn State University. BY LYNDA MYERS TuTOR, SANTA Fe DAVE P ROSPER (SF) moved LO Oakland and bas a new job. "I also have a stack ofblack-andwhite Eexlebots comic books; if anyone wants one. let me know. Life is pretty sweet." 2002 ALANA and JOEY CHERNTLA (both SF) had their second little girl, Rose Isabella, on Feb. 25. "Our first, Sadie Pearl, will be 2 in a few weeks. Besides enjoying our intense domesticity, Joey runs a daycare, and I work in publishing and tutor homeschoolers in Euclid." 2003 NATE and REBEKA H (NEE Go·rrtOB) EAGLE (both A) are serving as Peace Corps volunteers in Cameroon, West Africa. They arrived at the end of September for training in agroforestry and moved to their pose, the town of Poli, in December. Their service will end in December 2006. You can view photos and a blog and find out how to get in touch at monadology.net. KYLIE LIEBERMAN and ZEPJ-!Yll (both SF) planned to be married April 30, 2005, in Las Vegas, Nev. See their Web site, zheartk.com for pictures and contact information. R ENNER 2004 ENJOLI COOKE (A) is beginning her second year as a postbaccalaureate fellow at the National Institutes of Health. "I'm beginning the graduate school application process and am planning to attend a Ph.D. program in molecular biology." RHO DA FRANKLIN (A) and }All.ED 0 1mz (AGI05) were married December 18, 2004, in Annapolis. LAURA MANION (A) was featured as a "profile of the month" on the Web site of the Mississippi Teacher Corps. The corps is a two-year program that recruits recent college graduates to teach in critical-shortage areas in the Mississippi Delta, in exchange for a full scholarship for a master's in curriculum and instruction from the University of Mississippi. Manion teaches ANNAPOLIS SENIORS COMBINED ENTREPRENEURIAL SP! RIT WITH ALTRUISM BY CREATING A"WOMEN OF !l.005" CALENDAR TO HELP RAISE MONEY FOR THEIR CLASS GIFT. THE STUDENTS PLEDGED MONEY TOWARD PURCHASING LOBACHEVSKY MANUALS POI\ ALL SENIORS NEXT YEAR. THEY HOPE THEIR GESTURE WILL INSPIRE OTHER CLASSES TO DO SOME· THING SIMILAR, WITH THE COAL THAT ALL LAB MANUALS CAN BE GIVEN TO STUDENTS. THESE TASTEFUL CALENDARS (MAY zoo5-MAY 2006) CAN BE PURCHASED FOR $10 THROUGH THE ADVANCEMENT OFFICE IN ANNAPOLIS: SEND ACHECK TO ALEXANDRA FOTOS, ADVANCEMENT, P.O. Box 2800, ANNAPOLIS, MD 21404. seventh- and eighth-grade English at a middle school in Arcola, Miss. TATIANA HAIUUSON (A) was married to Rob Harrison on June 28, 2004. RYAN R.lSING (A.GI) is attending the University of Kansas School of Law, where he hopes to graduate on their fast track in two years, rather than three. He is at work on a novel that he hopes to be the first in a ninevolume series. ♦ { TH E C o LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005 } WHAT'S UP? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you're doing. The next issue will be published in October; deadline for the alumni notes sect.ion is August 15. Cla;;snotes posted to the college's online community will also be included in The College. IN ANNAPOLIS: The College Magazine St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 2r404; roscmary.harty@sjca.edu IN SANTA FE: The College .Magazine St. John's College u6o Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu When Stuart Boyd retired from the college in 1988, he was presented with a scroll that read: To Stuart Boyd, Artist, writer, healer ofsouls, lover ofknowledge, and teacher ofthe Books: A testimony to lzis contribution ofover 22 years to the intellectual and convivial delights ofthe College. "He was a man... we shall not look upon his like again. " His humanity, wit, common sense, and love of life were celebrated again at a memorial held on the Santa Fe campus at the end of January, a week after he died of a heart attack at his home near Can1busavie, Scotland. Mr. Boyd joined the faculty of St. John's in 1966, when the Santa Fe campus was still in its infancy. In the words of his wife, Nan, "At St. John's Stuart found his spiritual home." Before coming to the college Mr. Boyd had already led a rich and varied life. He was born on January 3, 1922, in Aberdeen, Scotland. In his memoir, The Wind.swept Child, he describes his childhood in Scotland between the two world wars as a precious, fragile, and fleeting time. When World War II interrupted his graduate work at Aberdeen University, he volunteered for the Parachute Regiment and saw active service in Sicily and North Africa before being wounded and captured at Arnhem in the Netherlands in September 1944. (The story of that disastrous mission is recounted in the book The Bridge Too Far.) He spent the remainder of the war in prison camps near the Polish-German border. After the war, Mr. Boyd completed his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology, taught at several universities in the UK and the United States, and eventually joined the faculty of New Mexico Highlands University, where he became chairman of the Psychology Department. At Highlands he met Robert Bunker (then chairman of the Highlands' English and philosophy deparonents and now tutor emeritus of St. John's). Ralph Swentzell (now also tutor emeritus) was a student of both and what the Confucianists would callJen or benevolence for his fellow man." Mr. Boyd's intellectual interests spread quickly as he taught through the Program and he became a loved and respected tutor. Mara Robinson (SFGI83), a former member of the college's Board ofVisitors and Governors, first met him in a Community Seminar, later studied with him in the Graduate Institute, and became a close friend. "Stuart was a brilliant, inspiring teacher and a charismatic man whose classes always overfilled with students cager to 'sit at his feet' and learn," she recalls. " His knowledgeable and entertaining leadership won over, not only many students through the years, but an enormous number of townspeople as well." Faculty colleagues remember Mr. Boyd as something of an iconoclast, as the faculty meeting min Lites he wrote as faculty secretary in :r974 show. According to Mr. Swentzell, " Stuart, although loving the formal, was always strongly sensitive about tendencies toward pompous elitism or hypocrisy. He valued straight, honest talk-preferably accompanied by wit and eloquence, both of which he had in abundance." Tutor Jorge Aigla remembers the way Mr. Boyd welcomed him to the faculty: "Twenty years ago it was my good fortune to be paired with Stuart Boyd for my first freshman seminar-a wonderful way to be initiated into our educational venture. I soo n learned with Stuart to read honestly, carefully, sensitively; to respect the authors, to laugh with them (I never managed to laugh at them, as Stuart occasionally did), and to appreciate the insights and awakening of our students. His common sense, wisdom, advice, courage, and sense of honor were a great h elp to me." In the early days of the Santa Fe campus Mr. Boyd's gift for friendship and his capacity for fun were cohesive forces among the faculty. recalls a seminar co-led by "these Lwo most philosophically exciting professors. I think it had to do with science and religion, or maybe it was existentialism. Students talked about Stuart's frequent exclamations in class whenever Bunker would hint at the possibility of God's existence, something to the effect that he 'didn't see any need for Easter Bunnies running across his systematic reasoning.' " In 1966, Mr. Boyd and Mr. Swentzell, encouraged by Bob Bwlker (who had come to St. John's the year before), joined the fledgling Santa Fe faculty. Mr. Boyd served both as a tutor and as campus psychologist. As Nan Boyd observes, "Stuart always managed to find time, and the right words, when someone was in distress or in need of wisdom. I know there are students without number who have cause to be grateful to him, not only for his role as a tutor, but also for getting them through emotional problems to graduation in one piece." Ralph Swentzell adds, "What I most admired in Stuart was his blunt honesty and genuine humani ty. He had a great capacity for sympathetic compassion, continued on nextpage STUART BOYD WITH FANG IN DoRNACH, SCOTLAND. { THE Co LL E c B. St. John's College. Spring 2005 } �{OB I T UA RI ES} continuedfromp. 41 According to Torn Harris, tutor emeritus, "Stuart helped us form such strong bonds.. .we all resonated with his warmth and care for us. Did we not dance beautifully and wildJy then! With uncontained energy we danced on into the night! He always had a wonderful laugh. I hear it now." Nan Boyd adds, 'Tm perfectly sure everyone of you remembers occasions when the room was almost lit-up by his laugh and general merriment-there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he enjoyed more than a gathering of good friends exchanging stories and making each other laugh." Mr. Boyd had a distinctive, very Scottish presence on campus. Many remember his military bearing-not quite a swagger-when he arrived at waltz parties in full regimentals. Even after 2.0 years, he found the bright sun of New Mexico oppressive and lamented the chill and clamp of home. Rumor has it that his favorite philosopher remained fellow Scot FACULTY M EETING MINUTES, SANTA FE: AN EXCERPT Nov. 21, 1974 Stuart Boyd, Faculty Secretary Dean Ncidorf, presiding, judging a quorum to be present, asking for and receiving, approval of the minutes of the previous faculty meeting (noting the objection by Mr. Jones, whose presence and words had been reported but whose absence and silence were the facts, ru1d the correction by Mr. Venable who suggested that something had been "evoked" from Mr. Sacks, not "invoked" as reported nor "provoked" as intended) invited Mr. Steadman to justify his request that a special faculty meeting be called for Saturday, November 2.3, a request to which Mr. Steadman responded with zest. Mr. Ncidorf then linked this specific event with a request for Faculty discussion of the suggestion that Facul ty Meetings not be held at the time which had been agreed on and which had become the tradition, i.e. Thursday Afternoon, but that we tinker with this arrangement, to find extra time so that discussions could last even longer. Drew wondered out loud if time could not be saved by streamlining our procedures. Robinson reminded the Faculty that the AT 72, MR. B OYD DONNED HIS PARATROOPER'S SUIT FOR A JUMP IN THE NETHERLANDS. David Hume. When Mr. Boyd retired from the college, he and his wife returned to raison d'etre for establishing the Thursday Afternoon Faculty Meeting was to protect Saturdays, and that to meet on Saturday morning would see the remorseless, insidious, and irrevocable engulfment of all the hours of daylight and sunshine, in accordance with Parkinson's Law. Dean Neidorf finally pronounced that the thought of rescheduling anything seemed to involve great difficulty and pain, that tradition must be respected, that he would call Thursday afternoon Faculty Meetings at l p.m. instead of1:30 p.m., and that he would do what he could to streamline the meeting procedures. The Dean then asked for comments on the recent All-College Seminar. There were enthusiastic responses from some who felt that it brought together those who would otherwise not be so brought, with consequent excitements....Robinson, noting the excitements that some had experienced, wondered if all seminars could not be of this nature. The Dean paused, then remaiked that of course such a suggestion could be countenanced, but that he was sure in his experience of the Faculty that even in the event that a majority approved such an idea, that that same majority would reject taking any action. There was some further conversation about seminars and books, in which was heard the {T H E Co LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005 ) 43 {OBITU AR I ES } Scotland and settled in a small village near the northern coast, cold and rainy enough to satisfy even him. There he read, gardened, worked on his memoirs, and painted in acrylics, something he had begun doing while at St. John's. In addition to enjoying quiet activities near their home, the Boyds traveled extensively and returned several times to Santa Fe, where he gave lectures on topics ranging from Shakespeare to T.E. Lawrence. In 1994, at the age of 72., Mr. Boyd together with several other survivors of the Arnhem mission repeated their parachute jump over the Netherlands to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem and to raise money for the Airborne Forces Charities of his regiment. Mr. Boyd voice lingers on for many friends like Jorge Aigla: "When Stuart retired in 1989, he asked me to take over his office. In that space, I still sometimes hear him laughing, telling me (and us): 'ALL is well, my boy, andallSHALLbewcll! '" ♦ predictable, conditioned suggestion that Pavlov be expunged from the senior reading list. Dean Neidorf reported that the Annapolis Faculty, in response to student sentiment, was considering whether or not to abaJ1don the practice of awarding honors. After a lengthy silence, Harris and Jones asked qu estions of Dean Neidorf, wondering ifhe meant the Annapolis campus of St. John's, and ifhe meant there was consideration of whether or not to award honors at graduation, and received solemn assurances that all was as he had said. The Dean went on to say that the graduating class on the other campus had registered the complaint that the system of awaiding honors was oppressive and offensive. Mr. Sacks remarked, somewhat cryptically, that the oppressed should not feel oppressed.... The discussion about honors continued, with considerable time spent on Descartes aJ1d "warm, effusive feelings" and other comments which flew too fast for this reporter to catch either their significance or their relevance, terminating in a masterly synthesis of Greek ru1d Christian worlds by Mr. Long, who urged us to think of honors as like some Olympic Garnes to which many were called but few chosen ... ♦ MICH AEL C. S LAKEY, C LASS OF 1985 Michael C. Slakey, Annapolis class ofI985, died of cancer on January 30, 2.005, in Lannion, Brittany, a region of western France. He was 42.. Michael met his wife, Victoire Devaud Slakcy, a French citizen, in Washington, D.C., and they spent most of their married life in France. Michael had a full life as a painter and musician, and as an organic farmer especially devoted to the care of his land. He leaves behind his wife and three children, Theo, Fay, and Yarrow. H e is the son of Marion and Thomas Slakey, a tutor emeritus and former dean of St. John's, and the brother of Tom, Jr. (SF81); Bill (SF88); and the Rev. Anne Slakcy (SF88). "Michael had an exceptional capacity to take pleasure in what he was doing at the moment, whether it was in the hard work of cutting his own trees with an axe and smoothing planks with an adze, weeding and planting his garden, sitting and playing his guitar or his Irish flute, or painting," his father wrote. M UNTt;F. 8U UIIJAJLY, JK., CLA:>i> ot· 1947 Monte Ferris Bourjaily, Jr., who had been the publisher and editor of Globe Syndicate since 1977, died Jan. 4 at his home in Front Royal, Va., after a heart attack. Mr. Bourjaily was born in ClevelaJ1d, Ohio, and raised across the country as he accompanied his journalist parents on their assignments. He served in the Army Signal Corps in Europe during World War II. Early in his career, he was a reporter for a newspaper in Floyd County, Va., and worked in the U.S. House of Representatives radio gallery. From 1952 to 1966, he worked for Army Times as an associate editor and author of the " Kibitzer's Corner" column. He then was an executive assistant in Washington for the Oklai1orna-based architectural, engineering, and planning furn of Hudgins, Thompson, Ball and Associates. Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Marietta Dake Bourjaily of Front Royal, Va., and six children. MARGARET NEUSTADT RANooL Maigaret Neustadt RaJ1dol of Baltimore, who was married to former St. John's Dean John 0. Neustadt, died at her home in Baltimore in December 2.004. She was 83, and had been a longtime civil-rights activist in the city. She was well known for her work with Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc., the Maryland Commission on Human Relations, and American Civil Liberties Union. MI CHAEL TOBCN, FORMER BVGMEMBER Michael E. Tobin died April 2.1, at the age of 79, at his home in Tesuque, New Mexico. He served as a member of the college's Board ofVisitors and Governors from 1994-2000. Mr. Tobin was born in Philadelphia. He lettered in fencing and soccer at Central High School. He attended the University of Pennsylvania until he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served in Europe. After the war, he remained in France to study classical piano. Although mus ic remained one of his passions throughout his life, Mr. Tobin returned to complete his studies at Penn's "Wharton School of Business. He inoved to New York to launch a career in finance, later joining the firm of Arthur Young and Company. There he worked in bank and securities consulting and became partner in charge of the Chicago and Western offices. As president of the Midwest Stock Exchange, he pioneered automation for the exchange, making it the second-largest market in the U.S. by dollar volume. He later became chairman and CEO of the American Bank and Trust Company of Chicago. That bank became the sponsor of a program that sent teachers in Chicago's Paideia program (which introduced Socratic seminars to public-school classrooms) to the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. Throughout his life, Mr. Tobin was actively committed to the arts, and when he moved to Santa Fe, he became an ardent supporter of the Santa Fe Symphony. He also continued to cultivate a lifelong interest in world history and Western literature at St. John's, where he took part in comm unity seminars. Mr. Tobin is survived by his wife, Judith Brown Tobin; his children Michael, Jr., Allegra Love, and Corey; a stepson, Brett Sylvestri and wife Virginia; and four grandchildren. EMIL MAsSA, FlUEND OF T HE MEEM LIBRARY Dr. Emil J. Massa, who died in October 2.004, took an interest in St. John's College as early as the mid-197os. Perhaps he fust visited on one of his regular trips to Santa Fe to attend the city's world-famous opera. By 1992., Dr. Massa had included the Meern Library in his estate plan. Now, his bequest {T H E C o LL E c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005 will fund an endovm1ent for maintenance of the library's collections. Dr. Massa settled in Denver, Colo., as an orthopedic surgeon in 1960. Born into a first-generation immigrant family in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, he attended Dennison College in connection with his military service, followed by medical school at Northwestern University. Dr. Massa was keenly aware of the value of a good education-not only professionally, but spiritually as well. Following his formal schooling, he became an avid reader and bibliophile of broad and formidable intellect, drawn especially to the humanities ru1d liberal arts and sciences. Dr. Massa was always questioning, confronting his ideas with those of others and trying to discern the best way to live. He found it in his appreciation of fine workmanship of all kinds-books and the craft of bookbinding, art, music, fine automobiles, and wine-but most of all in his ongoing personal search for truth. No great idea, he believed, can flourish without serious conversation, one of the highest activities in which humans can engage. To enter the conversation in earnest, we must know what has been said already. For this, as Dr. Massa knew, the best education is a study of the greatest books ever written. A LSO NOTED: FRED ALEXANDER (class ofi937) , December 2.2., 2.004 LurH ER BLACKJSTON (A68), January 18, 2.005 MICHAEL B LUME (A78) , February 7, 2.005 } A.MPS H. C 1moERS (SFGI70), October 9, 2.004 WJLLL\M C. H ALL (class of1946), December 18, 2.004 ROWLAND ALFRED JONES (class ofx949), February 2.1, 2.005 GEORGE L YON, JR. (class ofx940), January 14, 2.005 D UNCAN M CDONALD, former An napolis tutor, January 2.4, 2.005 ERICH NUSSBAUM ( class of 1945), March 18, 2.005 HAROL D OAV1 0 Runm (Ao4), December 2.004 DEBORAH MICAEL TIIIELKER (A79), April 17, 2.005 J AMES TINDALL (class ofi949), March 2.4, 2.005 ) �44 COMMUNITY F OR T H E S AKE O F Miss HucHEY-COMMERS LEAVES ST. JOHN'S WITH A PASSION FOR COMMUNITY EDUCATION. LEARNI N G , LEARNING FOR T H E SAKE OF COMM UNI TY sv Ea,,. Hucttsv-COMMEas, A05 hroughout.high school my image of college was a place where people came together to explore the knowable world with gusto; I envisioned lively discussions and a feeling of fulfilJment when I turned in each assignment. I was interested in a kind oflearning that would involve my whole being- that would inform not only which answer I put dovm on the test but also teach me how to live in a more thoughuul way once I stepped outside the classroom. And I was interested in sharing this kind of learning with other people who were engaged in the same activity. I was fortunate to find St. John's. As an underclassman what I loved most about the Program was the discussion. How well I remember staying up until one in the morning after my first seminar talking with my hallrnates about the character of Odysseus in Homer's Iliad, or, much later, my euphoria after reading Plotinus, who, in his way of speaking about God without personification, gave me just the insight I needed to begin to talk about the word of God in the Book ofJohn for my oral examination. I learned what an amazing thing it is to have a really good seminar, in which the conversation takes its own course, free of any student attempting to determine its direction, and in which something completely new and unexpected is clarified out of the chaos of my own reading. Long after the newness of St. John's wore off, I continued to find myself in unexpectedly thoughtful conversations, often in the lunchroom with someone I didn' t know, or with the girls on my hall while brushing teeth after seminar. Many of the books we read deal with the question of what it means to live a good and virtuous life. Reading and discussing these T books changed, among other things, the way I thought about my future. When I came to St. John's, J knew that I wanted to be a teacher. In my previous teaching experiences, I had enjoyed helping students discover the fun of learning, and showing them that they were capable of more than they had believed. After coming to St. John's and reading so many books that applied directly to my life, I became interested in finding a way of teaching that would provide students with the opportunity to make the clear connection between what they were learning in class and their lives outside of school. Before, it had seemed enough for me to help students bring themselves as whole people to their learning, and what I had hoped to accomplish as a teacher had rested in empowering individuals by helping them enter the world oflearning; now I saw it was equally important that they turn back to their daily lives as snidentsthat they thus learn how to live thoughtfully as well as learn vibrantly. Teaching enlarged its scope then; I came to see it as the work of strengthening a society. As a resuJt, I became interested in the Waldorf School, which is based on the writings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. The summer following my sophomore year, I was fortunate to get a Hodson internship to work in a Waldorf School for the remainder of their school year. In the process of giving its students a balanced education, including art, music, and handwork, the Waldorf School also seeks to awaken in students an awareness of themselves as a part of a social and natural whole-and to prepare them to make thoughuul decisions about the way that they act as citizens of this whole. In addition the Waldorf School is an example of the way that philosophical ideas can be implemented in the world. It turned out that it { THE Co LL E c E. St. John 's College. Spring aoo5 ) provides an education much like the one that Socrates describes in the Republic, the education of the future philosopherk.ings: certain kinds of music arc played and stories told based on the students' level of development. The summer after my junior year, I received another Hodson grant to intern with the Nelson County Museum of Rural History in central Virgina, where I learned about the work of educating an entire community. Dttring the internship, J helped lead an oral-history workshop for fourthand fifth-graders, in which we invited senior citizens to be interviewed on tape. Everyone benefited from this experience: the older people were happy to share their stories and spend time with the students, and the snidents showed surprise and pleasure at what the seniors told them about life during the Depression. History became real for these students through conversations with their elders, once again demonstrating the importance of dialogue to meaningful learning. I believe that such dialogue is not only important for education but also essential for seeing oneself as part of a larger whole- as a citizen of a locality where one's actions have a direct and tangible effect on the community. Since becoming a student at St. John's, I have been impressed by how much learning depends upon interaction with other people. One night in seminar, toward the end of the semester, I felt weighed down and found myself participating little in the discussion. I was stopped after class by another student who asked me my thoughts on the conversation. I expressed my frustration, and we shared anecdotes about the tension we felt while sitting in seminar, often caught between interrupting the flow of conversation and wanting to clarify a particular point for ourselves. It was so 45 { ST U D ENT V OI CES} {STUDENT VOIC E S} refreshing to talk to a classmate like this that I began to speak more vigorously and to feel more impassioned about our seminar. When I returned to my room that night I had gotten my energy back for the Program. There is something amazing about the power of conversation. Not only do we uncover ideas and get co ask ourselves questions we would never have thought about on our ovm, but we are also able to discuss the learning process itself, to realize what is standing in the way, and above all to become connected once again with our passion for learning. When we learn through dialogue, our relationship to learning is not distinguishable from our relationship to ocher people. Through that human relationship, we are able to pursue truth and knowledge as whole beings. In the Republic Socrates divides the soul into three parts: the highest is the intellect, the lowest, the desiring part, and that which connects these is the spirited part, or thumos. When I said at the beginning of my talk that I wanted to bring my whole self to learning, I meant that I wanted the spirited part of me to be just as involved in the conversation in its own way as the intellectual part. Spiritedness not only asks but embodies the question, "Why is this important to me?" Even in the most abstract discussion, something must be at stake for the conversation to live and breathe, for us to find ourselves in it. That's the thing about St. John's- through our interaction with the people around us and, by means of the texts, with the great thinkers of our culture, we enter into learning with all parts of the soul and we discover that there is little chat does not interest us. At St. John's we call ourselves a community of learning. My time here, as well as my summer internships, has driven home for { THE CoLLBCE,St.John'sCollege,Spring2005} me the truth that in order for either to be ftilly what it is, community and education must not be separate. Thinking along these lines, during my fall and winter breaks this year I have worked with teachers, students, and community leaders in Nelson County to design a program for high school students in which they will learn about the workings oflocal government by conducting research, attending meetings, discussing issues, and writing articles for the newspaper about what they are learning. Starling this fall, I will coorclinate the program for a year; beyond that, I am excited about making community education the focus in my career. Indeed, I am indebted co St. John's for helping me find such a strong focus for my career as a teacher. When my parents told me they would be unable to help me pay tuition at St. John's, I began to fill out application forms for as many local and national scholarships as I had time to apply for. I knew that St. John's was the right school for me, and I believed that somehow it would be possible for me to go. I was extremely fortunate in chat a Ruritan club, a local church, and a private foundation assisted me at different times. At first it seemed awkward co be receiving money from others; however, after the first time that I went to the Episcopal church service to thank the parish for its help, the experience of being a scholarship recipient changed. When I stood up to telJ the congregation about my work at St. John's and saw so many smiling faces looking back at me, I realized I was not alone in my endeavor, financial or academic. It is easy for us to consider our education as something we obtain ourselves, for ourselves. What I've realized in the course of talking with my sponsors is that this is not true. An education is brought about through the efforts of many people and if all goes weJJ, many people will be the beneficiaries of that education. To put it more strongly, an education is a gift from a community to a community. I've come to the place of being able to accept help with deep gratitude, joyfuIJy looking forward to the time when I can give back, and aJJowing the boundary between myself and my community to become less distinct. ♦ �{ALUMNI AssocrATION NEws} FROM THE ALUMNI AssoCIATION PRESIDENT • • • Dear Alumni, • Even at St. John's College, technology changes quickly. Last year, the college and the Alumni Association instituted an online register, which provided little more than contact information for alumni from both campuses and all programs. Thanks to all of you who registered for your commitment and patience during a bumpy implementation process. This year, the online register is being replaced with an Online Alumni Community, a user-friendly, flexible, and powerful tool to help you connect with fellow alumni in many different ways. This new virtual community offers: • Powerful search features to help you find and connect with other alumni. The site is designed to allow alumni to conduct a search for special networking-for example, look for alumni working in the Jcgal field in New York City. As more alumni become • • • • • • Phoco galleries from special alumni events, such as chapter picnics, outings, and Homecoming, can be posted here. It is a wonderful and flexible tool for staying connected with others and with the college, and we' ve only begun to use just a fraction of the features available. One area ripe for development is a Career Services section that allows Johnnies to learn of job openings, post resumes, and advertise positions that are just right for Johnnies. If you're concerned that the list could be used for "spamming," don't worry: the system has safeguards built in to avoid alumni or unauthorized users from creating lists from the system. Your friends can only reach you through the Online Community if you have registered as a member. As of May, close to r,600 alumni have joined the community, with our younger alumni really taking the lead. It only talccs a few minutes, and approval is most often automatic-so do it today. You should also encourage your friends to register, so you can reach them through this virtual "Johnnie homecoming." members, this search feature will be more helpful. Announcements for alumni and other college events around the country. Member forums where you can start a conversation or enter one in progress. Information about Alumni Association chapters' contact information and activity schedules. Faculty listings from both campuses with e-mai l addresses. " Meeting space" for special groups of alumni. One current group is Military Family Alumni, for alumni who are either serving in or associated with the military. Mary Ruffin (Ao4) started the group after marrying a Naval officer. "Personal space" where you can share information about yourself with ocher alumni, including your personal page, buddy list, web log, photo album, and resume. Class home pages, class notes, and e-mail lists to help you stay in touch with members of your class. Alumni notes from The College magazine will be posted here, and classnotes you submit through the online community will also be printed in the next edition of the magazine. Instant messaging. A process that allows you to easily upload your photos of special events (a wedding) or special people (the new baby) to share with your classmates. It was a busy year for Alumni Association chapters across the country, with the usual mix ofhmchcons and receptions, potlucks, picnics, and seminars. (With or without a potluck, Johnnies still turn out for a seminar.) Here's a look at what's happening: • Albuquerque had six seminar/ potlucks; Austin had IO seminars, Baltimore enjoyed five seminars and hosted a networking seminar for juniors and seniors with the Annapolis and Washington, D.C., chapters. • The revival continues for the Boston chapter, which reported an "excel{T tt & Co LL E c e . St. John's College. Spring 2005 GRANT PRESERVES GYM PLAQUES le talces 2.0 laps around the suspended wooden track in Iglehart Hall to complete a mile. That gives determined joggers and walkers ample opportunity co read the plaques lining the wall of the gymnasium in Annapolis, reminders from past generations of}ohnnie athletes that every sport requires the best effort every time. Thanks to a grant from the Alumni Association, the plaques look better than they have in years: 23 of 38 plaques in the collection, commemorating the alumni of the years 1871-192.8, have been cleaned and restored. The association provided a grant for the work, which cost $3,800. These plaques are of both nostalgic and historic value to alumni, being among the very few publicly displayed relics of the college's postCivil War through post-World War I period. A ss O C I A TI ON N EWS } The class of 1889 left behind the motto Respice Finem- "look to the encl." The class ofr916 was a bit more Spartan in its athletic philosophy: Aul Vince,-e Aut Mori- "co conquer or die, death or victory." The Latin phrases embodied by those athletic teams of years past represent a time when St. John's competed with the likes of Navy and Johns Hopkins in football and lacrosse, and usually won. Lofty values that transcended athletics were also emblazoned on the plaques: Omnia Vinci, Veritas, "truth conquers all things," declared the class ofr927. The plaques were cleaned and oxidized to a dark statuary finish, with an architectural coating applied. "Now you can really sec chem- even read the names-and from the court floor no less," says Athletic Director Leo Pickens. "Until the cleaning they were just like dark holes on the wall. The details on many of them are almost architectural and quite lovely." ♦ 47 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John's College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and eve ms of interest. President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary-Barbara Lauer, SF76 'freasurer- Bill Fant, A79 Cetting•tlze-Word•OutAction Team ChairLinda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76 Mai/i,,gaddress-Alumni Association, St. John's College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or n6o Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. To register, go to: www.stjohnscollege.cdu; click on "alumni" and follow the directions from there. For the past, present, and future, Glenda H. Eoyang President St. John's College Alumni Association lent" year with 13 well-attended seminars, many of which attracted new faces. Boulder enjoyed a poetry/ reading potluck along with 10 seminars; Chicago had seven seminars, and there were six seminars-one with dinner-for the Greater Puget Sound chapter. • As one of the largest chapters, New York is very busy: five seminars, seven movie nights, a reception picnic, and a holiday party. The chapter expanded its Web site significantly this year. • In Northern California, eight seminars and a seminar/picnic at Stag's Leap; one seminar and one outing to the Philadelphia Sha.Jcespeare Festival for Philly, and 12 seminars for Pittsburgh. • In Portland, alumni have been meeting regularly since October and have had AROUND THE CHAPTERS {AL U M N I four seminars since July. A tea party and six seminars took place in Santa Fe, six in Southern California, r2 in the Twin Cities, where the chapter completed a yearlong plunge into the theme of ""Who are we as Americans?·' • A highlight for the Washington, D.C., chapter was "A Day in the Country," hosted by Sharon Bishop (A65), with Eva Brann leading a seminar. The chapter will return this spring to Bishop's country place for another day in the country with a great book. • In seven other areas, reading groups are considering organizing chapters, or the association is reaching out to alumni to gauge the interest in getting a group of Johnnies together. ♦ - COMPILED BY CAROL FREEMAN, AGl94 } PLAQUES LINING THE WALLS OF IGLEHART H ALL ARE GLEAMING ONCE AGAIN, THANKS TO AN ALUMNI AsSOCIATION GRANT. CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni actfrities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE BALTIMORE Bob & Vicki Morgan Deborah Cohen 505-275-9012 410-472'-9158 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon 410-280-0958 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 AUSTIN John Strange 210-39 2-5506 Bev Angel 512,-926-7808 CHICAGO Rick Ligh tburn lightburn@ earthlink.net DALLAS/FORT WORTH Suzanne Lexy Bartlette 817-i21-9rx2 DENVER/BOULDER Lee Katherine Goldstein 72~46-1496 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST.PAUL Carol Freeman 612,-822-3216 { THE Co LL E c E. NEWYORK Daniel Van Doren 914-g49-68rr PORTLAND Lake Perriguey lake@law-works.com NORTHERN CALIF. Deborah Farrell 415-i31-8804 SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 619•423-4972 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 215-465-0244 SANTA FE Richard Cowles 505-986-1814 PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray 724-325-4151 St. John 's College. Spring ,ioo5 } SEATTLE Amina Brandt 206-465"'7781 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Elizabeth Eastman 562,-426-1934 TRIANGLE CIRCLE (NC) Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 WASHINGTON, D.C. Jean Dickason 301-699•6207 WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Julia Ward 413-648-0064 �{ST. JOHN'S FOREVER} "COEDS INVADE ST. JottN's" n the fall of 1950, the faculty of St. John's College voted to admit women the following year. As Richal'd Weigle later recounted in his book Recollections ofa St. Johns President, the vote was to be kept secret until the college's Board ofVisitors and Governors t0ok up the matter. One eal'ly plan suggested the possibility of establishing a women's college with the St. John's PI"ogram. The enrollment of women was in pal't a response tO the college's difficulty in building enrollment and achieving financial stability. But the overriding reason, Weigle said, was that women wanted to be here. When the news leaked out shortly after the boal'd's approval of the matter, he wrote, "students were in an uproar. A protest meeting was held in the Great Hall of McDowell ...just before students left for Christmas vacation .... Students believed that discussions in serninal's and tutorials would suffer and that women were not up to the rigors of the St. John's Program," Weigle wrote. The banner headline in the Evening Capital was set in type just a bit smaJ ler than the news of a big development in the Korean Wal'. It read: "Local College to Offer Program to Limited Number of Girls." A yeal' later, the Washington Post greeted the arrival of women with a photo spread and the headline, "Girl Students First to Enter Old College." The article quoted some male students as saying, "we were afraid... that they were going to be a bunch of giggly girls, only interested in the Naval Academy." The men, the article concluded, were pleasantly surprised to note that the women took the rigors of the Program as seriously as they did. This fall mal'ks the 50th anniversary of the 1955 graduation of those pioneering women. Several members of the class are expected back for Homecoming in Annapolis this fall, where their role in forever changing the face of St. John's will be celebrated. ♦ { TH E Co LL E c &• St. John's College . Spring 2005 FEMALE STUDENTS LEAVE CLASS IN MCDOWELL HALL WITH TUTORS AND CLASSMATES, DATE DUE I } I �S!JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS• SANTA. f'& PUBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P. 0. Box z8oo ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND z1404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED PERIODICALS POSTACE PAID � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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/. Title A name given to the resource The College, Spring 2005 Description An account of the resource Volume 31, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2005. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher 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 2005 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 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Harty, Rosemary (editor) Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor) Hartnet, John (Santa Fe editor) Behrens, Jennifer (art director) Borden, Sus3an Goyette, Barbara Hughey-Commers, Erin Maguran, Andra Mattson, Jo Ann Naone, Erica Weiss, Robin Martin, Roger H. Verdi, John Donnelly, Jennifer A. Myers, Linda Hughey-Commers, Erin The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/adcc1470ad38ef61f7b78f3b1facaed1.pdf 56aaeb1113d04427dcfe1a75686489f3 PDF Text Text The College S p r i n g St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Newton And Motion 2 0 0 6 �On Newton arlier this spring, the BBC launched an international poll to find the world’s favorite quotation. Lao Tzu’s “A journey of a thousand miles . . .” came in first, but a contender was this famous line by Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants.” The quote can be found in a 1675 letter by Newton to Robert Hooke, a talented physicist and one of the original fellows in the Royal Society. Interpreted by many as a modest acknowledgment of the contributions of others (Kepler and Galileo among them), Newton’s comment might also have been a sarcastic barb aimed at Hooke—a short man—who took issue with many of Newton’s findings. Several biographers suggest Hooke and Newton peppered their correspondence with subtle insults. Hooke would later accuse Newton of plagiarizing his ideas when the latter published the first volume of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1686. Newton was so incensed by Hooke’s charges that he threatened to withhold publication of the two remaining books. The astronomer Edmund Halley, a man of great means, eventually funded the printing and distribution of the Principia. The Royal Society claimed to be low on funds, though some say Hooke had something to do with that. The father of modern science was the son of an illiterate farmer who died three months before Isaac was born in Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire in 1643 (on Christmas Day according to the Julian calendar). Born premature and not expected to live, Isaac suffered a difficult childhood. He was taken from school and set to farming and, being unable to put his books away to watch the sheep, he failed miserably. He was released from farming to attend Cambridge, where he helped pay his way by cleaning the rooms of professors and fellow students. His brilliance noted, Newton later won a fellowship that provided financial support. But when the plague struck the city in 1665, the university was closed. Newton went back to the farm, where he immersed himself in mathematics and contemplation. Not long after his return to the university, he was named Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a professorship currently held by Stephen Hawking. Newton was said to get so caught up in his work that he would neglect practical matters such as grooming and eating. He never married and had few friends. His personal behavior was so odd that in recent years two British researchers proposed that Newton (along with Einstein) may have had Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by obsessive dedication to a particular task. Newton left Cambridge in 1696 to take up a position, first as Warden and later as Master, of the Royal Mint. Although these duties interfered with his scientific research, they made him a wealthy man. In 1704, Newton published the Opticks. He was knighted in 1705 by Queen Anne, becoming the first scientist so honored. He died in March 1727 in London. Johnnies interested in revisiting Newton and his great discoveries in mathematics, optics, and motion in the solar system might enjoy Let Newton Be! A New Perspective on His Life and Works, published in 1988 by Oxford University Press. E —RH The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty, editor Patricia Dempsey, managing editor John Hartnett (SF83), Santa Fe editor Jennifer Behrens, art director Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Jason Bielagus (SF98) Barbara Goyette (A73) Caroline Knapp (SF99) Andrea Lamb Andra Maguran Jo Ann Mattson (A87) Erica Naone (A05) Chris Utter (A06) Robin Weiss (SFGI86) Kelly Wilson (SF09) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �Spring 2006 Vo l u m e 3 2 , I s s u e 2 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 10 “With a Clear and Single Purpose” d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • • • A $125 million capital campaign seeks to address the most important priorities of St. John’s College by building the endowment and strengthening the Program for many years to come. 14 Newton and Aristotle page • • • • • • page 14 Victoria Mora is Santa Fe’s new dean Annapolis dedicates Spector Hall Mike Peters among the sophomores A spring break to remember Tutors study Proust, Upanishads Retirements and appointments The $10,000 short story Experimenting in Santa Fe Senior gifts: a lasting legacy letters 20 history 9 A conversation on the Principia and the Physics, between two tutors of starkly different backgrounds, provides a rich vein of inquiry. An 1811 alumnus was at the center of some of the most important issues in 19th-century American political life. 30 16 “Ever the Teacher” page Tutor William Darkey (class of 1942) recounts memories of more than six decades at St. John’s College, from being a student in Annapolis to serving as dean of a fledgling campus in Santa Fe. from the bell towers Bibliofile Randolph Runyon (A71) decodes Montesquieu’s Persian Letters. Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla publishes a new volume of poetry. page 16 30 alumni notes P RO F I L E S 28 Journalist Lydia Polgreen (A97) tells the world about Africa’s suffering and hope. 40 Croquet: 32 Aman Cholas (SF98) saves Western forests. 36 Fiddler crabs fascinate Denise Pope (SF89). page 37 It was the Cold War all over again. 46 tributes alumni voices Aboard the Makulu, Todd Wilson (AGI00) connected inner-city students with the wider world. page 40 42 48 on the cover Isaac Newton Illustration by David Johnson alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} A Love of the Program Victoria Mora is Santa Fe’s Next Dean Tutor Victoria Mora has been selected by her fellow tutors to serve as the next dean of the Santa Fe campus, effective July 1, succeeding David Levine (A67) in the post. The first woman and the first native New Mexican to become dean in Santa Fe, Ms. Mora joined the St. John’s College faculty in 1992. Her appointment as dean became official with approval by the Board of Visitors and Governors on April 24, 2006. For any tutor, the decision to leave the classroom for five years is a difficult one to make. “I love teaching, and not teaching is going to be a huge sacrifice,” she says. To keep in contact with students, books, and ideas, Ms. Mora is planning a Dean’s Seminar Series to be offered periodically, and will set aside time each day for a Dean’s walk to maintain daily contact with students. Balancing the responsibilities of the dean’s office with her priorities at home may also be a difficult adjustment. But Mora takes on the job with a great deal of support from her husband, Tomas Fernández, a retired educator. They have two young children, Marisol Fernández y Mora, 10, and Alejandro Fernández y Mora, 6. The family also includes Tomas’ sons, Antonio, Miguel, and Luis Fernández, all “twenty-somethings finished with college and on to wonderful families and careers,” Ms. Mora says. “I know I will have to figure out how to balance the enormous demands of the college with what I take to be extremely important—family. If not for my husband, who will be holding down the fort at home, it would have been nearly impossible for me to consider” accepting the appointment, she says. “Administering our rich academic program will be challenging enough, and we are facing tremendous opportunities with our new president, Michael Peters, in place.” President Peters says Ms. Mora brings, “great energy, intelligence, and charm to the position,” he says. “I enthusiastically look forward to completed her dissertation, “Gender, Expression, and Analogy: A Reapproach to the Problem of the Other.” “It had its roots in phenomenology, with the primary focus on an original phenomenological analysis of gender as a feature of the expressive body,” Ms. Mora says. “It was in response to an argument made by Ortega y Gasset against Husserl’s claim that we know the Other through our experience of the Other’s body A number of firsts mark Victoria Mora’s appointment as dean of the Santa Fe campus: she’s the first woman, first mother, and first native New Mexican to hold the post on that campus. working with her to pursue the aims of the Santa Fe campus and the college.” Ms. Mora grew up just 70 miles from Santa Fe and was the first member of her family to attend college. She visited St. John’s during her sophomore year at the University of New Mexico and was fascinated by the Program, but felt obligated to remain at the less expensive state college. After completing her bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy at UNM, she went to Yale University, where she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy. She taught for a year at a community college in Albuquerque while she as analogous to our own— a semaphore signaling consciousness. I end up siding with Husserl.” When she was ready to look for an academic home, Ms. Mora recalled the small liberal arts college in Santa Fe that had captured her heart. “I remembered what a great experience I had visiting as an undergraduate and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be a wonderful place to be able to continue my education and have a job?’ ” After more than a decade on the job, Ms. Mora is still shaping her education at the college, not to mention shaping the community around her. She has served on the faculty of the undergraduate program as well { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } as in the Graduate Institute. She has devoted a great deal of time to the college’s outreach programs: leading the faculty component of the Opportunity Initiative, contributing to the Tecolote colloquia which provide continuing education to New Mexico teachers, and leading Summer Classics seminars. She has served on the Instruction Committee and on the presidential search committee that selected Mr. Peters. “Victoria brings a solid background in the Program, experience working with administration, and an ability to work well with a wide range of people,” says tutor Linda Weiner, who served on the dean’s search committee. “Her thoughtfulness and energy will be an asset to our community, and we truly appreciate her willingness to serve the college as our dean for the next five years.” With such wide-ranging interests and qualifications, Ms. Mora’s appointment promises a tenure that extends far beyond the bounds of Weigle Hall. But like her predecessor, Dean Levine, Ms. Mora’s goals are firmly in the St. John’s Program. “If you think about all of the constituencies at the college, what is it that holds all of those people together?” Ms. Mora asks. “It’s a love of the St. John’s Program, and the dean is charged with both supervising the program of instruction and seeing to the well-being of the students so that they can pursue it in the best and deepest way possible. Given that the dean is right there working with the heart of the Program, it seems to me that it’s a role through which these various constituencies can come together. I’m honored to assume this role.” x —Kelly Wilson (SF09) �{From the Bell Towers} Spector Hall Dedicated in Annapolis alain jonamillo On January 28, students, faculty and members of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors gathered for the dedication of Spector Hall, the newest dormitory on the Annapolis campus. The ceremony held special meaning for Warren Spector (A81), whose gift to the college made the dorm’s construction possible, and his family. They had come to St. John’s to dedicate the new building in the memory of a husband and father, Philip Spector. A successful contractor who had built many residential, commercial, and industrial buildings in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Philip Spector died in 1990. The new dormitory is a fitting tribute to a man who was “a builder in trade and a builder in spirit,” said Mr. Spector. “I know that he would have tremendous pride seeing this hall erected in his memory,” Mr. Spector said. The President and Co-chief Operating Officer of the Wall Street firm Bear, Stearns & Co., and a member of the college’s board, Mr. Spector has made several generous gifts to the college over the years in appreciation for the education he received at St. John’s. Along with Gilliam Hall, which opened in fall 2005, Spector Hall extends community life to the lower campus. Opened at the start of the spring semester, the new dorm houses 40 students and features spacious common areas, suite-style rooms, and a faculty apartment. Mr. Spector had attended Princeton, but the Ivy League college wasn’t right for him, he said. After a brother suggested St. John’s, Mr. Spector read the catalog and knew this was the college for him. “I had been at one of the richest campuses in the entire country, a [university] with tremendous resources,” he said. “I have nothing negative to say about Princeton, but I found that those were not the things that mattered to me as a student. It was something special that was here in the community— the Program, the people, the dedication, everything about it was what attracted me to St. John’s, and I was quite right in my judgment that this was the place to be.” After joining the St. John’s board, Mr. Spector saw that while the college didn’t require “superficial” resources, the need for more campus housing was evident. “When I lived off campus you could walk to historic Annapolis and live in a reasonable apartment, but it has become impossible to do that. I’m really happy that we have 80 percent of the students living on campus now, because it keeps people close, and I think that’s vitally important.” Mr. Spector’s mother, Barbara, and other family members and friends came to campus for the ceremony, a tour of the dormitory, and a reception. “This means a lot to me and a lot to my family,” Mr. Spector said. “It is the first thing we have dedicated in memory of my father.” Representing the student body, Mary Davenport (A06) spoke about how Spector Hall helped her make another home at the college. She thanked the Spector family for their gift. “This college—the things we learn, the alex lorman A Fitting Tribute 3 people we meet, and the experiences we share—this has become a place that I am comfortable calling my home,” she said. President Christopher Nelson (SF70) also expressed his thanks. “We are grateful to you, Warren, for choosing St. John’s College as the home for your memorial dedication and the object of your philanthropy and extraordinary generosity,” he said. Rather than just providing dorm space, Mr. Spector’s gift helps foster a close-knit community of learners. “We know that Warren’s participation in community life on campus was a transformative experience for him, as he has given us the means to erect this building with the conviction that a St. John’s education is most completely achieved by having students fully engaged in the community of learning, where the classroom experience spills out into the quad throughout all the activities of student life and into the common spaces and quiet hours of the night in the college’s dormitories,” Mr. Nelson said. x —Rosemary Harty Top: In January, Spector Hall was dedicated to the memory of Philip Spector, husband to Barbara and father to Warren Spector (A81), whose gift made construction of the dormitory possible. Left: Spector Hall common rooms are spacious and inviting. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �4 {From the Bell Towers} The Quiet Man When you walk into a St. John’s seminar, it’s rare to find anything unexpected: several different translations of a Platonic dialogue, a group of students in varying degrees of sleep deprivation, and of course, the omnipresent St. John’s chair. But for students on the Santa Fe campus, there has been an exciting addition to the seminar: a college president. For Michael Peters, who became president in Santa Fe in 2005, learning about the Program firsthand was a top priority, so he joined the January freshman class as a seminar auditor. By the time Mr. Peters was officially installed as president during his inauguration ceremony last October, many Johnnies were already accustomed to seeing him in the classroom, bent over a copy of the Iliad. Mr. Peters believes that learning alongside students is an integral part of achieving the priorities that he outlined at his inauguration: support for learning, connection with the community, and heightened visibility. It soon became clear to Mr. Peters that he needed to be a part of the academic program. “Because I didn’t graduate from St. John’s, I knew that I really needed to try to find a way to get familiar with the college through its crux, the Program. I felt I needed to gain the experiences that the students have of how the classroom works,” he says. Balancing the hectic schedule of the president’s office with 200 pages of weekly reading isn’t easy; nevertheless, as his January freshman classmates began to tackle the concepts of Aristotle, Mr. Peters made time for the readings. After his long days in Weigle Hall, he stayed late to listen to the conversation and the ideas spilling forth. The St. John’s seminar was a different environment for the West Point graduate, former Army colonel, and long-time foreign policy specialist. “Sitting in on the first seminars reinforced what I’d seen during the interview process and is very much the reason that I thought St. John’s College was the right place for me,” he explains. “The level of engagement and the commitment of everyone in the classroom, the interaction between the students and the material, the students with one another, the students and the tutors, it’s all something that’s completely unique to St. John’s.” By the end of their second semester, the JFs were used to the tall, quiet man sitting in the side chair. When they returned for their sophomore year, many were surprised and impressed to see him back in seminar. As he began visiting each of the seven sophomore seminars, students became curious and asked if he could join the conversation. “On several occasions students said to me, ‘Gee, we wish you’d speak up and offer your views on this,’” “I had read Machiavelli’s The Prince many times, but this time I think I saw it in a much different light.” Mike Peters, St. John’s President, Santa Fe christopher huston Mike Peters Enjoys Seminars To better understand Johnnies and the Program, Santa Fe President Mike Peters began sitting in on January Freshman seminars soon after taking office in January 2005. he says. “But I feel that I’m really there just as a way to see the students, to get a sense of what’s going on, to be able to observe the approaches of the different tutors.” Mr. Peters is enjoying the fresh perspectives the great books provide. Even though he has read many of the books on the Program, the seminar still offers new insights into texts, some of which he thought he knew very well. “I had read Machiavelli’s The Prince many times, but this time I think I saw it in a much different light,” he says. “Not the stereotypical Machiavelli, the ultimate politician who’s always trying to figure out ways to maneuver, but the kind of moral underpinnings of the text which I hadn’t really thought about or appreciated before.” The seminars have afforded him “an understanding of the language of St. John’s, which revolves so much around the books.” It’s an insight that will { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } surely prove essential as he takes on a position that is vital to communicating the unique nature of St. John’s to the greater world. Mr. Peters said he’s looking forward to continuing into junior year. Sometime in the future, he may consider enrolling in the Graduate Institute. “If I do the graduate program, I would probably do the Eastern Classics program,” he says. “That would be a new area for me and something I would find fascinating.” In the meantime, his efforts have not gone unnoticed by Brandon Winston (SF08), who last year was a JF. “You know how Machiavelli says that the prince sometimes needs to come down from the mountain and get a different perspective of who he is from below, from the perspective of the citizens? That’s what Mr. Peters was like, and that’s the quality of the true prince.” x —Kelly Wilson (Sf09) �5 {From the Bell Towers} A Community of Hope Santa Fe Students Join Katrina Relief Efforts Before she boarded a van to New Orleans with 14 other St. John’s students, Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) visited Web sites that showed the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. “I sort of assumed that they were only showing the extreme cases,” she says. “But as we first drove into the parish, there were piles and piles of debris everywhere, abandoned cars, trees in the middle of the road, everything was totally destroyed and completely abandoned. I wanted to cry.” On March 11, the Santa Fe students piled into two vans (provided by a local dealership) and set out to Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish, hit hard by the storm. They set up camp in a volunteer tent city run by the Emergency Communities organization and went right to work. Half of the students stayed at the campsite, where they served free meals at the organization’s Made with Love Café and provided local residents with needs ranging from toiletries to child care. The others, joining up with the nonprofit Common Ground Collective, took sledgehammers and buckets into devastated homes and businesses to strip away damaged sheetrock and insulation, haul away debris and ruined belongings, and clear homes of toxic mud. “Sure, we were providing food to people, but it was more about the community we helped to create, where people could just come in and talk.” Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) The volunteers also spent time with the homeowners they were helping. Jeff Stott (SF06) listened as one woman relived her ordeal with him. “She experienced absolutely traumatic things,” he says. “During the storm, she was trapped on her roof and watched dead bodies floating past her house. Some of her neighbors were killed.” While a tragedy of such magnitude can “make you feel pretty helpless,” Kirschbaum says, the experience went beyond providing food and manual labor for two short weeks. “Sure, we were providing food to people, but it was more about the community we helped to create, where people could just come in and talk,” she explains. “There was never really a distance between people. There was music, there was dancing. It was a glimpse of what is possible.” On April 26, the students gave a multimedia presentation of their trip for the college community. Members of the Santa Fe community were also invited as a thank-you for donations they made to support the effort. The presentation featured photographs of the devastation, video, and audio interviews. More encouraging images were of the community Kirschbaum described among volunteers in the tent city. “This was something that just happened spontaneously,” says Rachel Davison (SF08), the trip leader. Friendships developed quickly out of an atmosphere of goodwill. “We here at St. John’s have our own sense of community that is built naturally out of the Program. This was different. We bonded with each other, but we also bonded with so many others.” —Kelly Wilson (SF09) photos by chris quinn Top: Ben Gaddes (SF08) prepares to feed Katrina volunteers. Left: Ezra Johnson (SF09, far right) and Nicola Podboy (SF06) at the tent city that housed volunteers in St. Bernard Parish. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �6 {From the Bell Towers} News and Announcements Tutor News photos by alex lorman In Annapolis two tutors are beginning study projects on interesting non-Program works and will later lead faculty groups on their topics. PATRICIA LOCKE will hold the Adolph W. Schmidt tutorship, gaining partial release time from classes to pursue her project. The tutorship was established in 1985 through a fund endowed by Mr. Schmidt, a former St. John’s board member and ambassador, and it alternates between the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses. Ms. Locke will study Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time. “Issues of memory, both voluntary and involuntary, are most obvious, but Proust deals thematically with bodily processes such as perception, speech, and sleep as well. Proust considers stages of mental and moral development before ‘teenage’ began to separate childhood from adult life. He also is concerned with intersubjectivity, sexuality, and the boundaries of language. My own questions are primarily: what makes a coherent self? How does one’s perception of one’s body, on the one hand, and language that takes others into account, on the other, shape a self?” Ms. Locke is also interested in how living in a city affects one’s perception of self and world. “The familiar urban setting, the unpredictable joy in truly recognizing others through the masks age wears, the desire and futility in trying to stop time—Proust sees it all, and he gives the reader access to possible meanings of the most delicate events.” As holder of the National Endowment for the Humanities chair, ROBERT DRUECKER will be studying the Upanishads, a project he became interested in after Annapolis faculty discussed a report on the Santa Fe Eastern Classics program. He thought it would benefit both campuses to become more acquainted with what has become a significant part of the intellectual life on the Western campus, he says. The Upanishads “considered by many to be the supreme work of Indian wisdom,” seemed the best starting point, Mr. Druecker says. “They are at once records of spiritual experience, formulations of intellectual insight, and expressions of poetic imagination. They aim to bring about both an illumination of the mind and a transformation of the reader’s experience so that it manifests the inner realization that the divine source of all is one with the self within each person,” he says As the holder of the chair, supported by endowment funds, a tutor gains two-thirds released time to study a topic for a year. In the second year, he or she leads a faculty study group in the fall and gives a lecture. Annapolis tutor GEORGE RUSSELL is in his second year of a study project on the speeches of Abraham Lincoln. Retirements A tutor since 1967, GISELA BERNS (HA00) has retired from the Annapolis faculty. Mrs. Berns grew up in the Black Forest of Germany and studied at Heidelberg University, where she earned a doctorate in classics and philosophy, and where she also met her husband, LAURENCE BERNS (HA00, tutor emeritus in Annapolis), in a class on Plato’s Phaedo. During a reception in the Great Hall near the end of the spring semester, tutor David Stephenson talked about Mrs. Bern’s many fine qualities, including her passion for music. “Gisela has sustained a violin section of the orchestra all by herself on more than one occasion,” said Mr. Stephenson. “Without her enthusiasm and hard work I doubt we could ever have attempted such ambitious orchestral works. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart are meat and drink to her. In her music tutorial she has discovered innumerable newness in the verbal and musical interplay of the operas and passions we study.” During the same Annapolis gathering, members of the community turned out to thank long-time Annapolis Registrar REENIE CRAVEN for her hard work and dedication to the community. Mrs. Craven worked for nearly 17 years for St. John’s, and has been Mr. Druecker delves into the Upanishads; Ms. Locke takes on Proust. Both benefit from endowments set aside for faculty study, and both will lead study groups and give lectures on their topics. { The College St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �7 {From the Bell Towers} The documentary captures baseball as a national obsession in Japan; it follows two high school teams and their coaches as they try to win the national championship. “It’s really unlike anything in the United States, and the way Japanese kids approach this rite is also quite a contrast to youth culture—especially sports culture—in America,” he says. For details, visit the production company’s Web site: www.projectilearts.org/ kokoyakyu. registrar since September 2000. In retirement, she plans to make time for “grandmothering, reading, gardening, walking, and volunteering.” She’ll stay involved with St. John’s through the Caritas Society, a volunteer group that supports the college. Appointments CATHY SMITH is the new director of Information Technology Services, based in Santa Fe, but serving both campuses and overseeing improvements to IT infrastructure. Ms. Smith earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from the University of California-Irvine, and has spent her IT career in higher education with institutions including UC, Stanford University, Indiana University, and the University of Kansas. At Carleton College, Ms. Smith partnered with faculty to develop a model of faculty technology support widely adopted in higher education; she has also partnered with administration at several institutions to implement innovative approaches to automating business processes. BRONTÉ JONES has been appointed treasurer for the Annapolis campus. Ms. Jones earned her doctorate in higher education from the University of Texas after obtaining a bachelor’s degree and an M.B.A. in finance from American University. In addition, she is a graduate of the Harvard Institute for Higher Education. Ms. Jones joins St. John’s from HustonTillotson University in Austin, Texas, where she has been vice president for administration and finance since 2004. Previously she held the posts of assistant dean of financial services, dean of enrollment management, and adjunct instructor in finance at the university. She has worked for Bronté Jones: New treasurer in Annapolis the Texas State Auditor’s Office, auditing statewide financial aid programs at institutions of higher education. Santa Fe Student Wins Fiction Award KELLY MARIE WILSON (SF09) won a $10,000 Gold Award for fiction writing from The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, a Miami-based non-profit group founded in 1981 that fosters artistic talents of high school seniors. Miss Wilson titled her winning story “Driving in a Hail Storm on the First Night She’s Been Alone in Eleven Years, Wendy Recalls her Four Great Loves.” Besides the $10,000 prize, Miss Wilson received a free trip to take part in the NFAA awards ceremony in the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City. Jackhammer Time Visitors to the Western campus this summer will see more than a few barriers and quite a few construction crews, as improvements in Santa Fe continue. More than $1.3 million in renovation projects are under way. Workers have already completed a project in the Weigle Hall lobby that renders the entrance friendlier to prospective students. A new gazebo and walkway are in place near “France,” the parking lot on lower campus. This summer, crews are breaking up concrete sidewalks throughout the central area of the campus. Students will return in the fall to brick pathways, teak tables, additional lighting, increased accessibility for people with disabilities, and a much-improved koi pond. x A Farewell to Febbies Johnnie Documentary to air on PBS A Johnnie’s documentary on high school baseball in Japan will debut at the Brooklyn International Film Festival, June 2-11. Kokoyakyu also airs July 4, 2006, on public broadcasting’s P.O.V., says ALEX SHEAR (SF00), senior producer. (Check local listings.) Sara McClayton (A09) signs the college register during January 2006 convocation in Annapolis. Eighteen students matriculated in January; they are expected to be the last of the Febbies, as the Annapolis campus has ended the practice of enrolling freshmen in January. The Santa Fe campus will continue to offer a January Freshman class. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �8 {From the Bell Towers} Leaving a Legacy Nothing Says “Thank You” Like the Senior Gift For more than a decade, graduating seniors have honored the college with a gift that class members select together and fund with their personal donations to St. John’s. It’s a tradition that started with the class of 1992, when a large percentage of the students in that class turned over their “caution fees” (dormitory security deposits) to the college to endow a Class of 1992 scholarship. Caution fees seed many of the gifts today, but seniors often make additional gifts and continue to contribute money to some funds long after they’ve graduated. This year’s gifts, from seniors in Santa Fe and Annapolis, are eminently practical and stem from needs students perceived during their years at St. John’s. Santa Fe students chose to purchase DVDs and CDs of their choice for the Meem Library. Members of the Annapolis class of 2006 may also be remembered with gratitude for many years in the future for their gift: a spiral binding machine for the campus print shop, intended to save future seniors from late-night lines at Kinkos when essays are due and also to upgrade Program materials from comb-bindings to spiral bindings. The machine is already in place in Chris Colby’s print shop—a much more convenient place for harried students to queue up to copy and bind their essays. “More than 71 percent of the senior classes on each campus participated in raising funds for their respective gifts, with excellent leadership from the senior class gift committees,” says Annual Fund director Stefanie Takacs (A89). “We expect the DVDs to be in place for fall 2006 in Santa Fe, and the first use for the new spiral binder will be to make address books for the recent Annapolis graduates, so they can stay in touch with each other after graduation.” Seniors in the class of 2005 in Santa Fe donated $4,300 toward restoration of the fishpond, a project due to begin this coming summer. In Annapolis, the class of 2005 created an endowment to buy Lobachevski’s Theory of Parallels as a gift to each incoming senior. The Santa Fe Class of 2004 has in mind a most ambitious project, and they’re seeking long-term involvement in the project from members of their class and any other alumni who are taken with the idea. Graduates chose to commission a stainless steel operational replica of 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe’s armillary sphere. The class has already raised $6,000 toward the $100,000 cost. Class leaders have selected an artist and hope to install the sphere on campus in the next decade or so, Brenna McMahon (SF04) said. The sculpture relates directly to the Program because the sphere can be used to replicate the data that Kepler used and that Newton then relied upon, McMahon says. “It’s also our hope to install a beautiful sculpture that will reflect the unity of the arts and sciences in the Program. To the best of our knowledge, there are only two armillary spheres in the world (including one at the Smithsonian), and this would be the only operational sphere in the world. We hope that it will show the St. John’s community how invested our class is in the college,” says McMahon. x David Harber’s sketch of the armillary sphere that Santa Fe’s Class of 2004 hopes to one day install on campus. Senior Class Gifts Over the Years 1905: The bell in the McDowell Hall tower was a gift from this class. Annapolis Class of 1997: Funded a portrait of Eva Brann by noted artist Cedric Egeli. The painting graces Room 12 of McDowell. Santa Fe Classes of 1998, 99: Contributed gifts to the endowment in support of faculty salaries. Annapolis Class of 1999: Made a gift to the Music Library Fund and acquisition of an apple seed from the tree that inspired Sir Isaac Newton. The apple yielded two seedlings, but sadly the trees did not survive. Santa Fe Class of 2001: Raised money for an observatory in honor of then-laboratory director Hans Von Briesen (HSF03). Annapolis Class of 2003: Funded digital re-mastering and transcription of lectures that existed only on tape. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �9 {Letters} Remembering Ralph Swentzell I wept hard when I learned of Ralph Swentzell’s death. He was one of my seminar tutors during my sophomore year over 20 years ago. What I appreciated most about him was his gentle, steady, and unpretentious spirit. He was the only tutor courageous and caring enough to reach out to comfort and support me when I was disenabled at the devastating end of my St. John’s career. This, to me, was the true actualization of any lofty philosophies examined or perpetuated by this school: to bring it home, where it really does count. Having found such a Great Soul, if only briefly, I cannot begin to imagine the loss that his friends and loved ones must be enduring. I can only hope that they know that he will be truly treasured in our finest of memories. I now wish for them the comfort and support that he so genuinely extended to me. I strive to be as present for my students as he was for us. Be free, Sir Ralph, and many thanks. Bea Butler (SF80) World Federalism I read with great interest your article about Joseph Baratta’s scholarship on world federalism, and was especially pleased to see mention of Clarence Streit’s work Union Now, which was so influential in its day but is now sometimes overlooked. Actually, the organization which he founded (Federal Union) lives on. For a while it was called the Association to Unite the Democracies (AUD), and it has now morphed into the Streit Council for a Union of Democracies (www.streitcouncil.org). I worked for AUD in Washington in 1986-87 before starting World Democracy News, a newsletter spanning the international federalist movement (we lasted only through six editions over three years before ceasing for lack of funding). I then served briefly as president of the Coalition for Democratic World Government. And I’ve been on the Board of AUD and now the Streit Council since about 1990. Our focus is on creating a nucleus for world government from the existing established democracies—for example, creating real common decision-making structures for NATO and/or the OECD—to which other democracies could Books are the Teachers Your article “Small Waves in a Tranquil Sea: Melville, Literature, and the St. John’s Reading List” (Winter 2006) was a very enjoyable read on all accounts. I was interested to receive some insight into the workings of the Instruction Committee. However, I was disconcerted by your use of the verb “to teach” when writing about tutors and books. For instance: “Dugan sees no more compelling reason “I do not recall what many of my tutors thought that the books were really about, precisely because the tutors themselves didn’t teach me anything about the books. The books did.” Christian Blood (SF02) be invited to join. Just as the EU exerts a strong democratizing pull on surrounding countries in Europe (and even North Africa), we would expect to have a similar but more global effect (maybe even restraining the U.S. in the process). The EU hasn’t yet been able to make the break to real constitutional government, otherwise it would be a model of what we want. For a long time, the main split in the international federalist movement was between those (including the world federalists) who wanted immediate world government including all nations, and those who insisted on democracy. But the American world federalists have essentially become UN-reform advocates, and I noticed recently that some of those who want more direct movement toward a federal solution are starting a new “World Democracy Movement-USA.” So Streit’s ideas, as well as Barr’s and Buchanan’s, are still in play. Rick Wicks (SF68) Melville’s tale must be on the reading list. And yet, he allows, ‘life would be more full’ if he could teach Moby-Dick and Joyce’s Ulysses.” And from the subsequent paragraph: “Having taught two preceptorials on the book, Annapolis tutor David Townsend acknowledges the impracticality of Moby-Dick as a seminar reading.” A St. John’s tutor teaching a preceptorial? A St. John’s tutor teaching a book? At St. John’s, books are the only teachers. I bristle because I have come to believe, in my time since leaving St. John’s, that we observe at St. John’s a very important distinction. I do not recall what many of my tutors thought that the books were really about, precisely because the tutors themselves didn’t teach me anything about the books. The books did. I am currently a graduate student and a teaching assistant in literature at a major research university where the professors teach all kinds of things all the time: books, courses, eras, specialties. What the professors teach is generally in line with { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } their most recent publications and to me seems to be more like indoctrination rather than teaching. But none of the students seem to learn much about what they read. Instead, they learn what the professor taught them. They are indoctrinated. Sometimes this is fine, but often I cringe and a bit of me dies as I think of how their education compares to the one I was lucky to receive from St. John’s. I hesitate to liken the activities of a St. John’s tutor to the sorts of things that happen at educational institutions elsewhere. Christian Blood (SF02) Not Brothers By now you have probably heard from others that Charles and Ray Eames were not brothers, but husband and wife. According to eamesoffice.com they were married in 1941. Nevertheless, I am delighted to learn that a Johnnie was instrumental in producing Powers of Ten. When my son was a child, we often visited the Air and Space Museum and enjoyed that short movie many times. Thanks as always for an interesting issue of The College. Christina Lauth Connell (Class of 1967) Editor’s note: Ms. Connell was one of many Johnnies who graciously alerted The College to this error in the Winter 2006 issue. The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: rosemary.harty@ sjca.edu. �10 {Capital Campaign} “WITH A CLEAR AND SINGLE PURPOSE” St. John’s Seeks to Preserve the Program with an Ambitious Capital Campaign by Rosemary Harty S t. John’s College has launched a $125 million capital campaign to build endowment for the future and address immediate priorities. “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College will seek to add significantly to the resources of the college. “Our objective is to have all aspects of the college reflect the excellence of our Program,” says Annapolis President Christopher Nelson. “For many years, the college has made many sacrifices for the sake of the Program. We must seize the opportunity now to strengthen the college for the future.” The last time the college launched a campaign, the goal was $30 million; $36 million was raised by the time the campaign ended in 1996. This much larger goal is within reach, Mr. Nelson says, in part because $71 million has already been pledged or received from individual donors and foundations. “Before we publicly announced the campaign we had already received gifts double the total raised in our previous campaign. Now, we need to take our case for support to all of the college’s alumni, friends, and parents, with the strong belief that we have their support for this important undertaking,” he says. An opening celebration for the campaign was held in Annapolis in April, and another special celebration will be held in Santa Fe July 28. The campaign’s theme was intended to underscore the vision that led Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan to begin the New Program at St. John’s in 1937. The phrase “With a Clear and Single Purpose” can be found in Barr’s 1939 president’s report to the board. Even as the college struggled financially in the early years of the Program, Barr stated that the college must always hold firm to the ideals of liberal education. In its infancy, the Program was viewed by outside observers as a radical experiment. Today the academic program is seen as a standard for liberal education. “Although the notion of a liberal arts education is often challenged today by those who see higher education as a type of job training program, St. John’s remains committed to its ideals,” says Santa Fe President Michael Peters. “An education should be about the search for truth and learning for life.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �11 {Capital Campaign} The quiet phase of the campaign, begun in 2002, was well under way when Mr. Peters accepted the presidency in Santa Fe. He was eager to take part in an endeavor that will benefit the Santa Fe campus and strengthen St. John’s collegewide. “I believe that this campaign is important for St. John’s College, and I believe that it can be successful. When I joined the college in January 2005, I could see how far St. John’s has come in recent years, how much the college has improved while never losing sight of its mission. “Part of my own vision for St. John’s is that the college gains the recognition it deserves as a leader in American higher education,” Mr. Peter adds. “Indeed, education at all levels should take a close look at what we do. But to remain true to our mission and to serve as an example to others, we need the support of every alumnus, parent, and friend. I hope that all who know the college will find a way to contribute to this effort.” The college’s capital campaign seeks to address priorities that will sustain the Program and strengthen the college. Funding these priorities will require $125 million. FINANCIAL AID: $33 million for need-based aid. FACULTY AND ACADEMIC SUPPORT: $34 million to increase faculty salaries to the median of peer institutions; provide faculty development opportunities; develop program-related student instructional material Goals of Campaign the “Like a Euclid proposition, this is a campaign characterized by clarity and simplicity,” says Sharon Bishop (Class of 1965), chair of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. “Everything that we are seeking to do is in direct support of the Program.” Funds raised through the campaign will be directed to priorities in three areas: • Students: Among the top priorities of the college is the need to sustain the needbased financial aid program that ensures that students accepted to the college can attend regardless of their financial circumstances. • Faculty: St. John’s is committed to bringing tutor salaries to the median of those at comparable liberal arts colleges, while providing more opportunities for more tutors to engage in faculty study. • Facilities: In order to house more students on campus, the college seeks to build new dormitories and renovate existing dorms. Academic buildings, especially laboratory classrooms (manuals and workbooks); and ensure small class sizes and 1:8 tutor-to-student ratio. STUDENT SERVICES: $3.5 million to improve services to students, fund internship opportunities, and provide grants so that elementary and secondary teachers can attend the Graduate Institute. ST. JOHN’S IMPROVEMENT FUND: $5 million for library collections and laboratory equipment; improving Information Technology infrastructure; { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } staff professional development and compensation. BUILDING PROJECTS ON THE TWO CAMPUSES: $49.5 million for building projects, including a Santa Fe dormitory, a Graduate Institute center in Santa Fe, and the addition to and renovation of Evans Science Laboratory. The renovation of Mellon Hall and the addition of two new dormitories in Annapolis are completed and fully funded. �12 {Capital Campaign} Endowment per student in Santa Fe, require renovation and upgrading. And the college seeks to build a new Graduate Institute center in Santa Fe that would provide the campus with a much-needed auditorium for lectures, concerts, and other programs. Grinnell Pomona Swarthmore Bowdoin Claremont McKenna Haverford Carleton Reed Colorado Oberlin St. John’s “The board, the Alumni Association, and the college’s administration are all in agreement about what needs to be done,” says Ronald A. Fielding (A70), a board member and chairman of the Capital Campaign. “We must remain accessible to all qualified students. We need to continue to attract talented and dedicated faculty members and give them opportunities that will help them continue to serve as model learners for our students. We also need a physical environment in which a community of learners can flourish.” The college hasn’t waited in addressing the most urgent needs of the strategic plan, says Ms. Bishop. Early fruits of the campaign have been directed to the projects that most directly affect student life and learning. Two new dormitories, paid for by gifts to the campaign, have opened in the last two years in Annapolis, enabling the college to house 80 percent of its students on campus. The college committed $4.5 million to the Santa Fe Initiative, and as a result, students benefit from renovated laboratories in the Evans Science Laboratory, paid summer internships, and overall improvements to the buildings and grounds on the Santa Fe campus. Building Endowment The St. John’s endowment, a carefully managed investment fund, is larger than it has ever been, at just over $100 million. The endowment’s primary purpose is to grow and to provide an ever-increasing source of revenue for the college. Compared to other small liberal arts colleges, St. John’s remains seriously under-endowed, a situation that keeps the college too dependent on tuition revenue for its yearly operations. With the current endowment, the college has $5,000 per student to spend annually, while Grinnell College, with about 1,500 students, has $43,000 per student to spend annually because of a substantially larger endowment. “This is a time of opp-ortunity for St. John’s,” says Mr. Fielding, senior vice president and portfolio manager of OppenheimerFunds’ municipal bond division. “By growing the endowment, we can support the Program for many years to come.” Mr. Fielding’s $10 million gift to the endowment, given in 2003 to support financial aid, was also intended to underscore his support for the campaign and encourage others to join the effort. “Everything else about St. John’s is strong. The college is in $862,337 $750,470 $724,850 $313,181 $303,626 $300,709 $265,283 $258,294 $217,326 $208,039 $101,590 capable hands, with a solid administration and a dedicated faculty. We have attracted excellent students, and our applicant pool is better than it has ever been. But the largest missing link in terms of the quality of St. John’s is—and always has been—related to money,” he says. Since its early days, when the Revolutionary War founders of St. John’s had to send out bailiffs to collect pledges from financial supporters of the new college, raising funds and keeping the college financially healthy has not come easily. Mr. Fielding points out that Barr and Buchanan were able to bring the New Program to St. John’s in the 1930s in part because the college was facing bankruptcy, and the board was willing to take a chance to keep the college open. “We’ve never had a John Harvard, a Johns Hopkins—a single benefactor whose gift established the institution on strong footing,” he says. “Even in the 1940s and ’50s, when philanthropist Paul Mellon was making very generous gifts to the college, those gifts helped the college survive during some very lean years, but they didn’t build the endowment.” Mr. Fielding chose to direct his gift to financial aid in part because a comprehensive aid package allowed him to attend St. John’s. The need-based financial aid program at St. John’s is one of the few in the country that devotes every dollar to students who would not otherwise be able to attend the college. About 70 percent of students receive some form of financial aid, and the average St. John’s grant is $15,000. Today, the amount the college needs to spend on financial aid is growing faster than the rate of tuition increase, with more than $11 million annually devoted to financial aid. The Johnnie Giving Culture During the campaign, alumni, parents, and friends will be asked to make five-year pledges to the effort. Those capable of large gifts may choose to support an endowment or building project. Most supporters, however, will make their contribution to the campaign through their gift to the Annual Fund. The goal for the campaign is $29 million in Annual Fund gifts and pledges by 2008. In order for the campaign to be successful, the Annual Fund will need to grow in both the amount of individual gifts and in the number of alumni who give (now at about 36 percent). Alumni can also join the ranks of volunteers helping with the campaign. Ray Cave (class of 1948) agreed to co-chair the current campaign with Fielding, contributing the expertise gleaned from chairing the Campaign for Our Fourth Century (which ended in 1996). “The $125 million is going to be a stretch to reach,” he acknowledges. “But thanks to the hard work of a lot of { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �{Capital Campaign} 13 Campaign Progress The college has already raised $71 million in gifts and pledges toward the campaign. Those gifts include: $10 million, Ronald A. Fielding (A70), for financial aid; $12 million, anonymous alumnus, for support of the endowment; $10 million from The Hodson Trust for the renovation of Mellon Hall and the construction of Gilliam Hall; a gift (amount undisclosed) Warren Spector (A81), toward construction of Spector Hall; $4 million from board member Stephen L. Feinberg (HSF96); and $1 million from BVG Chair Sharon Bishop (Class of 1965). The college has obtained 100 percent participation in the campaign by the Board of Visitors of Governors and the Alumni Association board. A group of alumni and supporters of the college have pledged $2 million gift to the campaign in honor of Eva Brann. The college will create in Miss Brann’s name a tutorship endowment fund. people, the alumni have really been brought back to the community, and they’re responsive to the needs of the college. They want to be involved, and when we ask them, I think they’ll be ready to give. They will look upon themselves as supporters of an institution that they admire and that remains on their mind.” Mr. Cave never thought of himself as a fund-raiser; he started out as a newspaper reporter in Baltimore and worked his way up to become editor of Time magazine. “When I was asked to be chairman of the previous capital campaign, I said, ‘I’m a journalist. I’ve never asked anyone for a nickel, and I don’t know how to do that.’ ” But Mr. Cave knew how to tell a story, and the college’s story in the mid-1990s was one of unmet needs that could not be ignored without peril to the Program. For example, tutors at St. John’s were at the very bottom of the salary scale for faculty members at comparable institutions. “I think it’s important to understand that in historical terms, this college basically lived from hand to mouth. You can’t run a successful college or a business that way, but that’s what St. John’s had been doing. It’s as if we were embarrassed to ask for money. But of course alumni should support their alma mater—if you don’t want to give, it says you don’t feel you got anything beneficial when you attended.” When the Campaign for Our Fourth Century was launched, “everyone agreed that we had to give tutors a pay raise, but the endowment couldn’t support it,” Mr. Cave recalls. “Enough money was raised in the campaign to give tutors a pay raise, and now we’ve got them pretty darn near the middle.” In the past 15 years, the college has cultivated a strong donor base and has established good relationships with foundations and trusts. “Today, St. John’s is well managed in all respects. The college is going out now to raise $125 million to do two things: support the institution as it exists and strengthen the financial base so that St. John’s can keep pace with what students expect and what parents expect, while remaining true to its mission.” As he did in the last campaign, Mr. Cave will meet with donors to ask for a gift to the campaign. He knows he’ll hear a lot of good things about the college. “St. John’s is the kind of institution that does create passion in those who support it,” he says. “There are many alumni who support the college because it did consequential things for them, whether they graduated or not. And there are many people who support the college because they know St. John’s matters for America.” Steve Thomas (SF74) chairs the Alumni Committee of the campaign. “I loved every one of the four years I spent at the college,” he says. “And I believe most alumni feel that way.” Only many years after graduation did Mr. Thomas gain an appreciation for how the college works. He became involved in the Alumni Association Board and is now a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. He sees some challenges in the job for which he has volunteered. “Alumni love the college, and they’re proud of being Johnnies,” says Mr. Thomas, a New York lawyer. “But for a long time, we were trained not to like the administration—there was this suspicion of that side of the college. We need to convince alumni that the money they give is going to go directly to supporting students and the institution.” As a member of the BVG’s Visiting Committee, Mr. Thomas has the opportunity to sit in on classes and meet students on both campuses. “I’m pleased that the college is providing substantively the same education as when I was a student,” he says. “I don’t think I realized until recently how much work goes into preserving the most important aspects of St. John’s.” Along with alumni, parents will be asked to make a gift to the campaign. Linda Schaefer, a BVG member and former Santa Fe Parent Association member, has volunteered to serve as one of the chairs of the Parent Committee of the campaign. Her son Eric graduated from St. John’s in Santa Fe in 2004, and during his student years she volunteered to assist the college with the Annual Fund. Mrs. Schaefer believes parents will respond to the needs of the capital campaign. “When you look back at your own sons and daughters, you can see the incredible changes that take place between freshman and senior years, and you know the difference the college had made in their lives,” she says. “They leave the college with a lifelong love of learning and the ability to think for themselves.” Mrs. Schaefer and her husband, Mark, are also supporting the capital campaign with a gift because they admire what St. John’s represents. “We believe that St. John’s is the kind of institution that really needs to be here. Just look at those students who have been to traditional liberal arts colleges and found it didn’t work for them. We really need to support and preserve the Program because so many people have benefited from it.” x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �14 {The Program} POETRY in MOTION Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Braithwaite, Newton and Aristotle by Rosemary Harty nnapolis students and tutors gathering for a Friday night lecture in January found an unusual setup on the stage of Key Auditorium. A pair of tutors sat facing each other at a coffee shop table, with books and papers spread out before them, and a blackboard positioned nearby. Instead of introducing the lecturer, Dean Michael Dink (A75) stood briefly to quiet the audience. The tutors, Mark Sinnett and William Braithwaite, began talking to each other about the nature of motion in the works of Newton and Aristotle. They were continuing a conversation—now for the benefit of an audience—that had been taking place nearly every week for almost three years. The role of a St. John’s tutor is often described as that of a model learner engaging with students on the lifelong journey of seeking knowledge. During the academic year and summer breaks, tutors work in formal study groups to pursue topics of interest together. In Annapolis this summer, tutors will study Kepler, for example. In Santa Fe, the summer topics include Mann’s Dr. Faustus. But the alex lorman A endeavor pursued by Mr. Braithwaite and Mr. Sinnett demonstrates another interesting aspect of life at St. John’s: many more tutors take part in informal groups that arise from a particular interest or a question. Their engagement in such pursuits lasts as long as they still have something they want to talk about. The Braithwaite-Sinnett collaboration on Aristotle’s Physics and Newton’s Principia also demonstrates how tutors with different experiences and abilities offer each other a deeper understanding of a work—the same thing that happens with students in an allrequired curriculum. Of the many things unique to St. John’s, the requirement that tutors teach across the curriculum may seem most puzzling to outsiders. At most colleges and universities, an English department decides it needs an expert in rhetoric; a history department seeks a Civil War expert. At St. John’s, the dean and instruction committee interviewing prospective tutors looks not for a particular expertise, but an agile, imaginative mind. As the two men described their collaboration a few weeks after their lecture (presented as a public conversation), they also captured what makes conversation at St. John’s such a fruitful and satisfying activity. Mr. Braithwaite came to St. John’s in 1995 from a law school faculty; Mr. Sinnett came from the pulpit of a Presbyterian church. “We were both teaching junior mathematics and were in the same archon group,” explained Mr. Sinnett. “I have a master’s degree in mathematics and I had been pursuing doctoral studies in mathematics when I shifted to theology. But being at St. John’s has brought mathematics back to life for me. Mathematics is done here for all the right reasons, because of the way, as Ptolemy says, it orders the soul; it’s a way of ordering the mind.” “I’m a former corporate trial lawyer whose mathematics experience before St. John’s was limited to Instead of delivering a lecture, tutors Mark Sinnett (l.) and William Braithwaite continued their conversation on Newton and Aristotle, this time for the benefit of an audience. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �{The Program} reading balance sheets,” Mr. Braithwaite said. “I had been out of college and done no other math but basic arithmetic for 40 years. If you look at our backgrounds, it wouldn’t appear that we’d have a great deal to say to one another. And that’s still something of a delightful mystery for me. We never planned to talk for 30 months. We were just going to study junior math together.” “We found that we were coming at the text in different ways, and it was fruitful,” added Mr. Sinnett. “We had a common interest, and we pursued it. That’s what happens at this college.” Junior mathematics at St. John’s centers on Newton and calculus. Students begin by reading Zeno, Aristotle, and Galileo. They consider Zeno’s famous paradox: how is continuous motion possible if, at each instant, the moving object fills the space it occupies, equal to its own size? The arrow is not moving there, Zeno posited, it’s at rest there, and it can’t be moving anywhere else, therefore motion is illusory. Continuing on to Newton’s Principia, and armed with a calculus manual, juniors explore the mechanical motions of the universe. The tutors’ joint inquiry started with Newton’s calculus, but kept returning to questions raised in the Physics. Eventually, the two settled on pursuing one central question: How does the mathematical account of motions of bodies in Newton differ from Aristotle’s nonmathematical account of nature and change in general? “Aristotle has a very limited view of what mathematics can do in relation to nature,” explained Mr. Braithwaite. “In the Physics he devotes a chapter to talking about how the mathematician’s study of nature differs from that of the physicist, what he would regard as the nonmathematical student of nature. He says that although the mathematician abstracts from nature, he doesn’t falsify the things that he studies. It looks as if Aristotle was making room for a mathematical inquiry into nature.” In their public conversation, the tutors started with Zeno’s paradoxes, which are carried through the Physics. “Something that intrigued us early on is: how did Newton think about Zeno’s paradoxes? Had he thought about them at all?” Mr. Braithwaite said. “Was Zeno a problem for Newton, or had he worked out a way of dealing with the problems the paradoxes raise that was different from Aristotle’s, or in some sense the same? We talked a lot about that over a long period of time, then we discovered that it looked to us as if Newton had found a way around the paradoxes.” According to Newton’s understanding, one divides up space and the corresponding times in the same way, resulting in a finite sum of time corresponding to the given finite expanse of space, explained Mr. Sinnett. Thus, an unbounded time is no longer necessary in order to traverse a bounded space. Similarly, he adds, Aristotle divides both space and time in a consistent manner. Both become countably infinite collections in exact correspondence of each other, with the result, as with Newton, that the paradox disappears. “Aristotle’s whole inquiry into motion, of course, is much broader. He’s concerned with change, which includes the plant over there growing, your writing on that piece of paper, the table decomposing. Newton’s got a very small portion of this: the motion of ballistic objects,” Mr. Sinnett said. 15 “I think it’s right that nothing in Newton’s calculus tells you about growing plants or the motions of animals,” agreed Mr. Braithwaite. “It’s about moving bodies from place A to place B, so it has a narrow but extremely powerful focus because of his development of the calculus. Newton is asking a different set of questions, but in the background was always this concession by Aristotle that the mathematical account isn’t false—in other words, it could tell you real, true things—it’s just not the whole horizon that Aristotle set for himself.” Newton’s ultimate ratio is not going to be visible to anyone who doesn’t proceed to it in a regular way, said Mr. Sinnett: “He’s just as dependent upon his reader’s personal insight—seeing into what is not visible to the eye—as Aristotle is, and Aristotle’s language is just perfect for describing what the student of his book has to let happen in his mind to grasp what is important. It’s startling to me to have been teaching calculus on and off for 25 years to find some of the best language for describing what I was doing in Aristotle’s Physics.” “Together we came to see that the Physics was extraordinarily helpful in understanding Newton,” Mr. Braithwaite said. “Our effort, when our imagination is not working properly, is to nail something down and hold it still so we can walk all around it and think that’s going to get us to an understanding of it. And the problem is you can’t do that with motion. Zeno’s paradoxes all appeal in some way to this natural reaction of trying to stop something in order to understand it. If you stop motion in order to understand it you’re not going to understand it as motion, you’re going to understand it as rest. That’s the difficulty.” Mr. Braithwaite had first heard of St. John’s in 1956, when he saw a movie about the college. He applied and was accepted, but for financial reasons, chose Virginia Military Institute. The college came back into his life in the early ’90s, when his two oldest sons Matthew (A96), and David (A97); matriculated here, and when Christopher Nelson (SF70), then fairly new as Annapolis president, asked him to join a President’s Advisory Council. (A third son, Daniel (01) followed, and a fourth, Jonathan, will matriculate with the class of 2010.) In 1993, at age 56, Mr. Braithwaite applied to join the faculty and was astounded to receive an offer. Similarly, Mr. Sinnett’s path to St. John’s stemmed from his wide-ranging intellectual interests. After earning his Ph.D. in systematic theology at Cambridge University, he was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church. He served a congregation in Texas for five years, but he wasn’t a good fit for the second congregation that called him. “One day I preached a sermon in which part of the message—from Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians— was that we shouldn’t turn ourselves down. The world tries hard enough to do that. I was talking with my wife about what to do next and said what I’d really like to do is teach at St. John’s. She said, ‘Well, don’t turn yourself down.’ So I wrote a letter to St. John’s.” The two are not planning another joint endeavor for some time. But given a moment to think about it, Mr. Braithwaite suggested to Mr. Sinnett, “Maybe we should take a look at the Metaphysics? You have a background in theology, after all, and I don’t, so we’d ask different questions—it could be interesting.” x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �16 {The Tutors} “EVER THE TEAC HER” Santa Fe Tutor William Darkey by Robin Weiss, SFGI86 s William A. Darkey prepared to become one of the first graduates of the New Program in 1942, he received a startling offer from Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr, founders of the Program. Mr. Darkey recounts the story—and his own bewilderment—with a grin, recalling the details 63 years later. “Buchanan called me in and he said, ‘You know, Winkie [Barr] and I have been talking . . . we ought to have a student or two on the faculty because none of us have actually been through the curriculum.’ I said, ‘You must be kidding!’ But after the initial shock wore off, I asked, ‘Gosh, you really think I could do that?’ ” “If I didn’t think you could, I wouldn’t have asked you,” Buchanan replied. Barr and Buchanan are often described as visionaries, but it’s hard to imagine that they could have foreseen how much Mr. Darkey, now tutor emeritus, would contribute to the life of St. John’s College: as a long-serving and dedicated tutor, willing to take on various duties including admissions director and librarian in Annapolis; as one of the first faculty members and a dean of the Santa Fe campus; and as a mentor and friend to colleagues and students for more than six decades. Mr. Darkey’s teaching contract, dated May 29, 1942, honored him with a $500 salary and free board at the college. But his appointment came at a tenuous time for a A struggling college. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, students and faculty began leaving St. John’s for military service. In his book A Search for the Liberal College, J. Winfree Smith describes a student body torn between “good thinking about war and peace” and the actual demands of war. Between 1942-43, enrollment plummeted from 178 to 100. Mr. Darkey himself tried several times to enlist, but poor eyesight stood in his way. “I went through the peculiar initiation of going to Baltimore every six months and going through the routine—and guess what? They discovered I was nearsighted,” he recalls, chuckling. “And then they’d say, ‘No, you won’t do at all.’ This happened quite regularly.” In November 1943, Mr. Darkey was one of five tutors who served on the committee drafting the first Polity, which (according to Smith) became official by Barr’s fiat in 1945, over the faculty’s objections. Peter Hamill, class of 1949, met Mr. Darkey in January 1946 when Mr. Darkey was serving as a “third leader” in his seminar, comprising veterans from the war. Hamill attended the college for a year before being recalled by the Navy, and he remembers Mr. Darkey as a quiet presence in the classroom. “Mr. Darkey seldom spoke up. He mostly sat back and observed. Ford K. Brown [as senior leader] was handling things.” Dr. Hamill remembers how the two men “made it easy to drop any military swagger and become a human being in the group.” At the end of that year, Mr. Darkey finally succeeded in enlisting in the Army. Asked about his background, he told { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �{The Tutors} 17 Tutor Emeritus William Darkey at Santa Fe commencement, 2003. his commanding officer he was a teacher. “Ah, a school marm!” the officer replied. “We can use you.” Mr. Darkey was assigned to training methods. “This was teaching people useful things like how to throw a hand grenade.” Mr. Darkey worked for a colonel who thought him “a very good training methods man,” and asked if he intended to make a career out of the military. No, Mr. Darkey said, he had marriage and graduate school in mind. Although he was up for a transfer to Japan, he was allowed to stay stateside to await his honorable discharge. With his wife, Connie, he went to New York to embark on a graduate degree in English literature at Columbia University. One of his teachers was noted poet and professor Mark Van Doren, an early supporter of the Program. “The very first lecture I went to at St. John’s was by Mark. I remember thinking: My God, this is an honest-to-God poet.” At Columbia the two men became good friends, and Mr. Van Doren counseled him through difficulties such as writer’s block. After earning his degree in 1949, Mr. Darkey returned to teach at St. John’s. Barr and Buchanan had moved on, and “the center of it all was [Jacob] Klein . . . a great reader of books” and in a sense “the soul of the college.” “He knew about good and evil, Greek mathematics, Hebrew, French, English. Europe gave us a great gift in all of these people,” Mr. Darkey says of Mr. Klein, Simon Kaplan, Eva Brann, and other intellectuals who were refugees from Europe and helped build the college’s reputation. Also at the college were gifted musicians and composers who inspired students with their love for music: Nicholas Nabokov, Elliot Carter, and Victor Zuckerkandl. “Music was very much alive,” recalls Mr. Darkey. “Scott Buchanan had the notion, deep inside him, that music was a liberal art and that it ought to be cultivated as such.” Mr. Darkey was Miss Brann’s seminar co-leader in her first year at the college, 1957-58. “He took me into the community and showed me the ins and outs,” she says. As a “member of the old guard,” he was the model of a good { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �18 {The Tutors} “He had the ability to make the material his own, then lend it to you; he could get inside the material and take you by the hand. He did it with great gentility.” Bob Warren (SFGI93) Alfred Eisenstaedt/L IFE Magazine seminar leader. “He’s a gentle man and a gentleman both,” Miss Brann says. Mr. Darkey’s devotion to teaching extended beyond St. John’s. He was one of several tutors to found The Key School in 1958, and when the independent school based on the St. John’s model outgrew a rented facility in Annapolis, Mr. Darkey was appointed acting headmaster. He took a year’s leave from St. John’s to help relocate Key to a permanent home. Max Ochs (AGI91) grew up in Annapolis and has known Mr. Darkey for more than four decades. His best friend was Peter Nabokov, Connie’s son from her first marriage to Nicholas Nabokov. One day near Christmas in 1959, when Ochs was elementary-school age, he visited the Darkey home to discover Mr. Darkey cutting out pieces of colored construction paper. “He was trying to teach me and Peter how to make tree ornaments—tetrahedrons and dodecahedrons . . . Just learning the word was wonderful,” says Ochs. “He was ever the teacher. And he did it in a very non-threatening way, always.” Another memory, from Ochs’ teenage years, is of the time Mr. Darkey decided to offer seminars to neighborhood kids. The first assignment was Don Quixote. “When he asked how many people actually read the book, fewer than half of us raised our hands . . . I’ve hardly ever seen his face get dark and cloudy like that,” Ochs says. If disappointed, Mr. Darkey persevered with his seminars. “He has this great, intense love of the truth.” In the early 1960s, former president Richard Weigle (HA49) spearheaded the move to open a Western campus of St. John’s. When Santa Fe was chosen, Mr. Darkey was selected to be one of the founding faculty members at the new campus. Mr. Darkey describes “the proselytizing aspect” of the endeavor. “Dick Weigle . . . wanted to bring the liberal arts to the West. We had very gifted people working on it.” William Darkey grew up in western Maryland, earned a scholarship to St. John’s, and before graduating in 1942 was offered a faculty position by thendean Scott Buchanan. His wife, Connie, he adds, “thought that the notion of founding a new campus in the West was a great idea. She was full of enthusiasm” for the adventure. A member of Santa Fe’s first class, Marilynne Scott (Maurie Wills Schell, SF68), remembers Mr. Darkey well. He led her tutorial and co-led seminar in her freshman year, and he “listened to us with such intensity,” she recalls. “Out of our ramblings he zeroed [in] on the germ of the idea we were trying to put forth. His eyes looked at the speaker as he asked us to explain, elaborate, give examples. He helped us formulate thoughts we hardly knew we had.” He also gave Ms. Scott rides to and from church. “Here was a person who dissected the Bible, Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin, yet had a deep and public faith. In the freshman don rag, Mr. Darkey asked me what wisdom was. I can now say a wise person is one who sees with his heart and acts on his convictions. Such a man is Bill Darkey.” From 1968-72, Mr. Darkey served as the second dean of the Santa Fe campus, bringing to the post “imagination, diligence, and perceptiveness,” Weigle later wrote in one of his memoirs. Mr. Darkey was a tutor to David Levine (A67) in Annapolis, and when Mr. Levine returned as a faculty member in Santa Fe, he was pleased to have Mr. Darkey as a colleague. “His sense of the mission of the college is wellcentered,” says Mr. Levine, now outgoing dean in Santa Fe. “He’s a partisan of a smaller college, someone who has expressed, many times, his concern that the college will become too large to be a community of learners . . . People have looked up to him as a way of keeping our balance.” In 1998, Mr. Levine suggested renovating the former bookstore in Peterson Hall into a much-needed common { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �19 marion warren {The Tutors} room. Bob Warren (SFGI93), a strong supporter of the college, agreed to underwrite the project if the room was named in honor of Mr. Darkey. Not surprisingly, the humble Mr. Darkey was reluctant to see a room named for him, notes Mr. Warren. He and his wife, Carol, have taken several community seminars with Mr. Darkey and have always been impressed by his gentle manner and his intellect. “He never raised his voice, or an eyebrow. He had the ability to make the material his own, then lend it to you; he could get inside the material and take you by the hand. He did it with great gentility.” Mr. Darkey was on the Instruction Committee that hired Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla in 1985. In terms of the Program, Mr. Darkey is “never complacent, but always reexamining what we do and why,” says Mr. Aigla. And as his friend for the past 21 years, Mr. Darkey has taught him what friendship may mean: “he’s committed, kind, amiable . . . [and] has a fantastic ability to listen.” “He’s the best of a St. John’s tutor; he allows differing points of view while inspiring the conversation to continue,” says Laura Mulry (SFGI02), who developed a friendship with Mr. Darkey in her years in the GI and on the college staff. “He’s broadened my intellect and opened my spirit by always asking: ‘What’s the discovery for you? What’s the pleasure and joy you obtain?’ ” Former President John Balkcom (SFGI00) has also enjoyed many long talks with Mr. Darkey, about the His students have always found tutor Bill Darkey (shown here in a 1961 math tutorial) to be a gentle, but vital, presence in the classroom. Program, students, and faculty. He was always eager for the visits, held every six weeks. “I would basically sit and listen to him just as long as he wanted to talk,” says Mr. Balkcom. “He’s the soul of the college in my book.” Mr. Balkcom remembers a lecture Mr. Darkey gave in 2002. The Great Hall was packed, people spilled into the Senior Common Room, and Mr. Darkey gave a wonderful lecture on the poems of Mark Van Doren. The next day, Mr. Balkcom learned that Mr. Darkey had left the text at home. “He did it extemporaneously. You would not have known.” Last summer, with his dog Beau close at hand, Mr. Darkey reflected on what the college has meant to him. In a little more than an hour, sitting outside the Peterson Student Center, he had tried to summarize a journey that began in Annapolis and brought him to this beautiful campus built at the foot of the mountains. “It’s the life, in all these things we do,” he said. “It’s a rare thing to understand—you have to live it.” x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �20 {History} THE Re m a rk a b l e R E V E R DY J O H N S O N An American Statesman by Andrea Lamb everdy Johnson, Esq., class of 1811, was bold and concise in his defense of Mary E. Surratt, one of the accused coconspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson’s fame rested on his reputation as a constitutional lawyer and senator. He based his defense of Surratt on the argument that the military commission created after the assasination of Lincoln was unconstitutional. “If a military commission, created by the mere authority of the President, can deprive a citizen of the benefit of the guaranties secured by the 5th amendment, it can deprive him of those secured by the 6th. It may deny him the right to a speedy and public trial, information ‘of the nature and cause of the accusation,’ of the right ‘to be confronted with the witnesses against him,’ of ‘compulsory process for his witnesses,’ and of ‘the assistance of counsel for his defense’ . . . If then, it was true that the creation of a military commission like the present is incidental to the war power, it must be authorized by the department to which that power belongs, and not by the Executive, to whom no portion of it belongs.” Unfortunately for Surratt, Johnson’s defense was unsuccessful, and on July 7, 1865, she was hanged—the first woman to be executed by the federal government. According to the 19th-century newspaper, The North American Review, intrigue may have interfered with justice even with so R eminent a counsel as Reverdy Johnson. On the third day of the session, a member of the military commission, General T.M. Harris, questioned the integrity of Johnson as counsel on the grounds that he had earlier refused to recognize the moral obligation of an oath required of voters in the state of Maryland. Johnson’s reason was based on his belief that the state Convention had exceeded its authority in attempting to exact an oath as a condition for citizens to exercise the vote. In a strange turn of events, Johnson was forced to defend himself. General Harris’ attempt to have Johnson dismissed on grounds of integrity failed, due to Johnson’s eloquence and comportment in the court room. Unfortunately, such an affront to his character was intolerable, and the dignified Johnson declined to appear in person again, submitting written arguments to the court instead. Although it failed in Surratt’s case, Johnson’s legal argument was later proven sound. In 1866, one year after Surratt’s execution, the landmark Supreme Court decision Ex Parte Milligan was issued. It stated that while civilians may be imprisoned by the military during times of war, it was unconstitutional to subject civilians to military courts as long as the civilian courts were operating. His defense of the doomed Surratt was only one of Johnson’s many controversial undertakings. He was co-counsel for the slave owner in the 1857 Dred Scott case. Chief Justice Roger Taney, earlier of the Baltimore Bar and a close friend of Johnson’s, rendered the opinion that slaves were not citizens of the United States, and could not sue in federal courts. The decision also { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �library of congress { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �22 {History} declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. Later, during the Lincoln-Douglas presidential campaign, Johnson spoke at Faneuil Hall in Boston. According to his biographer Steiner, he delivered an eloquent and moving address expressing his view that slavery was a local institution, with which Congress should not interfere. Although he personally opposed slavery, Johnson’s respect for the Constitution prevailed over all. It is not at all unusual to think of many successful St. John’s alumni much in the same vein as Johnson—brilliant, extraordi- nary, but perhaps an irregular fit in a regular world. Some of the intense controversy he attracted can be explained in part by the historical setting of his life. He served in the Senate during a turbulent time: slavery, the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination, war reparations, the Mexican War, and the first impeachment of an American president, in 1868, were issues for men like Johnson and benchmarks in American history. In all of his legal and political pursuits, Johnson met the challenges while maintaining his personal integrity. In addition to his St. John’s education, Johnson had many resources, including influential family connections. His father From One Johnnie’s Library to Another Some coincidences are almost too remarkable to believe. Take, for example, how a volume of The Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, by Brevet Captain J. C. Fremont, came to be included in the rare books collection of the Greenfield Library. Stewart H. Greenfield (Class of 1953), a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, has always enjoyed visiting used bookstores and adding to his personal library. (About a decade ago, he demonstrated his love for books by providing the gift that allowed the college to renovate the former Maryland State Archives building for a new library—named, accordingly, for Mr. Greenfield.) Many years ago Mr. Greenfield came across a copy of Fremont’s journals. In 1841 Congress commissioned a survey of the Oregon Trail and named Lt. John C. Fremont to head the expedition. Upon his return, Fremont prepared the official report to Congress. It was so wellreceived that an extra 1,000 copies were printed. “I have a couple of books about exploration and expeditions, and I saw the Fremont volume and leafed through it,” Mr. Greenfield recalls. Mr. Greenfield read the book, put it back on a shelf, and forgot about it—until he picked up the New York Times Book Review one day and saw an advertisement from a rare book dealer. “It was from Bauman’s Rare Books. Bauman’s had a copy of Fremont’s journals, and the ad mentioned that it was a senatorial copy, one of the first editions prepared for the report to the Congress. The copy they were selling had a rare map in the pocket of the back cover, and as I recall, the price tag on theirs was $6,000. “This gave me incentive to go and see if my copy included the map and was a senatorial edition.” Not only did it have a map, not only was it a senatorial edition, but it was the copy presented to Reverdy Johnson, St. John’s Class of 1811. “This was the first time I’d looked closely at the inscription. It was signed by Reverdy Johnson, whose name I knew well from my days as a student at St. John’s. I looked up his history, and indeed on the day he signed the volume, he was a member of the Congress.” Indeed, a remarkable coincidence. Since then, Bauman’s has continued to seek buyers for other Fremont volumes; the last one had an asking price of $7,800. But Mr. Greenfield’s volume became a gift to the St. John’s library, where, he says, it belongs. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } In November 2005, Stewart Greenfield donated his copy of FREMONT’S REPORT to the Greenfield Library, where it is on display in the Nutt Room. The inscription inside reads “From Reverdy Johnson to his friend Wm Price Dec. 30, 1845.” �{History} had been a lawyer and appeals court judge in Maryland. After graduating from St. John’s at age 15, Reverdy Johnson read law with his father, joined the Baltimore Bar and practiced law in Maryland. After having served as a state senator, he was elected in 1845 to the U.S. Senate as a Whig. In 1849, he was appointed by Zachary Taylor to be attorney general of the United States. He later served as a representative in the Maryland Assembly, and returned to the U.S. Senate, this time as a democrat. During the Civil War, he was a strenuous supporter of keeping Maryland in the Union. At age 50, Johnson accepted the appointment of minister to Britain’s Court of St. James’s, launching his international career. Lord Clarendon, at the time of Johnson’s appointment, wrote to a friend in America that “Mr. Johnson was the only diplomatic representative that had ever brought out the true friendly feeling of the British people for those in the United States.” Some Americans thought him too friendly to England. Johnson faced the emerging controversies of his day with expansive intellect and largeness of spirit. However, some observers, noting the pattern of shifting alliances and political positions, did not hesitate to charge him with being a “trimmer,” one who changes his political opinions to suit popular views. Other accounts cast him in more favorable light. The Hon. J. Upshur Dennis, in writing his recollections, stated that Johnson was “cursed with neither nerves nor liver, but was the robust embodiment of mens sana in corpore sano,” a healthy mind in a healthy body. (2). Even Johnson’s physical attributes attracted attention. Dennis recalls in his account that Johnson was of “medium height, round bodied, solidly almost sturdily built, just such a physical mould as indicated perfect health, capacity for work, and endurance, without risk of breakdown, of all the oils and strains of the most active life at the trial table . . . his features were strong; his forehead of great height, fullness and breadth; while the back of his head was shaped like a barrel, and seemed to bulge out all around, as if holding capacity. But the dome of his head was its most striking feature—so lofty, so symmetrically rounded, that it seemed to tower above all others, as the dome of St. Peter’s minimizes all other designs (2-3).” Apparently, possessing a measured temperament did not keep Johnson out of a gentlemen’s duel, which ended with grave physical consequences before it could even take place. According 23 to Dennis, the duel resulted from an altercation at a horse race attended by congressmen. The owners of the two horses competing, Rep. Henry Wise of Virginia and Rep. Edward Stanley of North Carolina, were also the marshals. The men got into a fight, and the challenge to a duel was issued. As Wise’s second, Johnson went out to practice his shooting. He took aim at a small hickory tree and fired. But the ball failed to penetrate the tree, boomeranged, and struck Johnson in one eye. From that moment on, he needed assistance in crossing streets and rooms, and relied on voices to identify people. He died in 1876 in Annapolis. Johnson was a persuasive speaker with his own style. He apparently made few references to literary or other authorities, in contrast to other learned men of his day, but rather built his arguments on principles and logic. He attracted many controversies in his life, most often triggered by shifting his political alliances and revising his opinions. And yet, one may view those shifts as characteristic of open-mindedness manifested in an educated man. His character traits demonstrated, according to John Grene Proud, class of 1834, “the liberality of his mind and his habit of bringing every subject to the test of calm reasoning and cool judgment . . .” which prevented Johnson from becoming “a bigoted partisan.” Such was the legacy of a St. John’s education then, and now. x It is not at all unusual to think of many successful St. John’s alumni much in the same vein as Johnson— brilliant, extraordinary, but perhaps an irregular fit in a regular world. Andrea Lamb is librarian in Annapolis. Sources: Personal Recollections of a Quartet of the Baltimore Bar (1905), by J. Upshur Dennis, in the Reverdy Johnson Special Collection, Maryland State Archives; Argument on the Jurisdiction of the Military Commission, by Reverdy Johnson, found in Surratt House Museum Archives at www.surratt.org/documents/ Bplact14.pdf.; The North American Review, 131 and 147 (1888) (http:memory.loc.gov.ammem.ammemhome.html); Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland, Baltimore (1879); Ex parte Milligan, 71 US2 (1866). (www.abanet.org/publiced/criticism.html); Life of Reverdy Johnson, by Bernard Steiner (1941); Memoirs of Deceased Alumni of St. John’s College, Annapolis, by John G. Proud, Baltimore (1879); Tercentenary History of Maryland, by Matthew P. Andrews, Chicago, Clarke (1925). { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �24 { S t u d e n t Vo i c e s } T W E N T Y- S I X DA Y S A Senior Essay Diary Tuesday, January 10 Beard growing and essay writing progressed slowly and with varied success for seniors (l. to r.) Benjamin Cromartie, Christopher Utter, Geremy Coy, and Andrew MacKinlay. beard” is a tradition for the brave few who attempt it each year. I’m curious to see how much of a beard I can actually grow. alex lorman Christopher Utter, a former editor of the Gadfly and a prolific contributor to college publications, took breaks from essay writing to keep a journal on the process. He overcame a slow start, Seinfeld episodes on DVD, and much angst to complete a fine essay on Plato’s Republic. He defended it in April—the morning after Prank. Tuesday, January 17 It was good to be at home over break, but toward the end I began to feel the weight of my essay pressing on my conscience. My plane landed at BWI last night at about 8 p.m. My girlfriend, Shoshana Goldstein, and my friend Alex Claxton met me at the baggage claim, and we drove to campus without saying much. We are pretending not to be concerned about our essays, although I’m sure most seniors are slightly panicked. We have four weeks (26 days), which sounds like a long time. I had wanted to re-read the Republic and write at least an outline for my essay, but neither of these things happened. Writing, but mostly in the form of notes, and not very cohesive notes at that. I met with Mr. Kalkavage yesterday, and as a result I have narrowed my focus to imitation in Book X. It’s very strange being here without having to go to class. It’s not that I don’t feel like I am a part of the school, it’s more that I don’t feel like I’m going to school at all. It’s always the weekend, or it’s never the weekend, depending on how you look at it. The only difference between one day and the next is that each day I am closer to the deadline. Beard progress: still stubble, but at least it’s evenly distributed. Friday, January 13 I hope Friday the thirteenth is lucky for me. Yesterday, I met with my adviser, Mr. Kalkavage, and told him I wanted to change my topic. I was originally going to write on freedom in the Republic, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that I had no idea how I would write such an essay. So after discussing the matter for a while with Mr. Kalkavage, I remembered how interested and perplexed I was at Socrates’ discussion of images and imagery. I finally settled on an examination of Socrates’ two treatments of poetry, in Books II-III and X, as the focus of my essay. As I said, I will need a bit of luck to come up with an interesting way to approach this topic so late in the game. Earlier this evening I went for pizza with Shoshana and Andrew (MacKinlay), Geremy (Coy), and Ben (Cromartie). They (except Shoshana) have decided not to shave until they turn in their essays February 4, and so I decided to join them. I’m told the “essay { The College Saturday, January 22 Go to the library and work there until it closes? Or just stay here at my desk in Gilliam Hall? I have about 20 pages of notes. One major development is that I came up with an outline yesterday covering everything I think I need to talk about, though I have still not written much. Everyone seems to have dozens of pages already! I have to write something substantial to give to Mr. Kalkavage before our meeting Tuesday. Last night I saw Match Point with Shoshana and the other usual people. The only thing about it that was typical of Woody Allen’s style was the plot’s nihilistic tinge. Because of this it ended up reminding me of my essay and the danger poetry of all kinds can pose to an audience’s thought. Geremy, perhaps influenced by the movie, is making a film of the writing process. To illustrate what we do with our free time he John’s College • Spring 2006 } �{ S t u d e n t Vo i c e s } 25 Tutors Patricia Locke and William Braithwaite walk out with Mr. Utter after the examination. filmed Alex and Ben bouncing a tennis ball across the floor to each other in silence for about a minute and a half. Writing. After my last entry I went to the library and wrote until closing, then I went back to my room and wrote for several hours more. I went through about a third of Book X and wrote 15 pages. Mr. Kalkavage thinks they’re well written and need almost no revision, so I’m relieved. Now I just have to write the rest of the essay. My beard is coming along, although I’m not sure how well I like it. It’s strange being able to feel the wind through it when I’m standing outside. Also, it itches. alex lorman Tuesday, January 25 Friday, March 31 Friday, January 27 The more time I spend on the essay the more time I need to spend doing something else. I’ve been watching Seinfeld episodes on DVD. It’s actually very interesting how much Seinfeld bears on the subject of my essay. Then again everything bears on the subject of everyone’s essay. I have discussed this phenomenon many times with my friends; whenever we read a book or watch a movie or television program, we have to be careful not to say, “You know, this reminds me of something I just said in my essay.” I suppose it means our minds are invested in the work. Tuesday, January 31 Finished a draft of the central part of the essay and sent it to Mr. Kalkavage, but I still have to write a conclusion. A problem: this central section is 50 pages long. I’ll see what Mr. Kalkavage thinks tomorrow. Surprisingly, I’m not sick of the Republic—just the opposite. Sunday, February 5 It’s done. I spent the remainder of last week cutting my essay and managed to get it down to 37 pages. Mr. Kalkavage thinks it’s very good, and so does Shoshana. I am not sure that I can tell whether it is good anymore; I’ve spent too much time with it. Andrew, Geremy, and I went to Kinko’s to get our essays bound on Saturday evening, and managed to get there just before everyone else—in and out in 20 minutes, not the two-hour wait we feared. At about 10 p.m., a group of us piled into the Polity van and headed to the president’s house to turn in our essays. Then we drove back to campus to ring the bell, a tradition we are graciously allowed to continue despite the fact that it violates the city noise ordinance. I guess 100 people ringing the bell at 1 a.m. must be annoying. Oh, and I shaved this morning. { The College I just went to the Registrar’s office to pick up my commencement invitations. They come with a little slip of paper marked “etiquette instructions” detailing how the invitations should be assembled: “The invitation and calling card go into the small, un-gummed envelope with a tissue placed over the face of the invitation and the card inserted inside the invitation . . . ” etc. For some perverse reason I enjoy little exercises like this. Wednesday, April 5 I found out two weeks ago that my oral would fall the day after Senior Prank. I was disappointed at first, of course, because this meant that I couldn’t participate in the parties. But it worked out for the best because it gave me more time to prepare yesterday morning. I was nervous beforehand, but once I sat down at 11:45 a.m. and started reading my précis, I was fine. In the robing room Mr. Umphrey, Ms. Locke, and Mr. Braithwaite explained the procedures—entering and leaving the room, how I should wear my mortar board, etc. My friends sat in the chairs around the table, but I hardly noticed them. I was so entrenched in the conversation that it didn’t matter what was going on outside of it. This is true of conversations in general at St. John’s; they’re deathly boring if you are merely watching them and are not invested in them, but when you are a part of the conversation it so envelops you that you barely notice other things. The oral was over much more quickly than I thought it would be, and before I knew it I was shaking people’s hands and being congratulated from all sides. Shoshana and I had lunch to celebrate. Then there’s a seminar reading waiting. x John’s College • Spring 2006 } �26 {Bibliofile} The Art of the PERSIAN LETTERS: Unlocking Montesquieu’s Secret Chain by Randolph Paul Runyon (A71) University of Delaware Press (2005) Randolph Runyon, a professor of French literature at Miami University in Ohio, loves a good puzzle. He’s also good at finding hidden connections and uncovering secrets—one reason Montesquieu’s Persian Letters held such interest for him. Best known for The Spirit of the Laws, written in 1738, Montesquieu first achieved literary success with the Persian Letters, which tells the story of Usbek and Rica and their journey from Persia into the Western World. The two travelers correspond with the seraglio back home and receive letters of news from Usbek’s harem. What develops is an enjoyable and interesting exposition of the differences between East and West. Thirty years after Montesquieu published his epistolary novel, he hinted that the seemingly disconnected letters held a “secret, and somehow unnoticed, chain” that tied the letters together. No scholars have been quite successful in finding that chain, Runyon posits, because they concentrated instead on finding a unifying theme. While he greatly admires the research of scholar Pauline Kra, Runyon ultimately concluded that her work concentrated on identifying a theme rather than uncovering a structural link. Instead, Runyon proposes that a chain of linguistic echoes, situational parallels, and reversals carry the reader from each letter to the next. He had already invested months in his labor—a careful textual analysis of the 161 letters—before he was sure his approach would actually work. “I became familiar with the Persian Letters because I teach French literature, and it’s often anthologized, at least in fragments,” he says. “My first response to the work was that it’s a whole world on its own. But once you enter it on its own terms, you start to see how it’s put together.” For example, Runyon finds a connection in linguistic echoes between Letters 24-25 and 26. The first two letters capture Rica’s reports of “Louis XIV searching in vain for hidden Jansenists . . . ” Runyon writes. Rica uses the words “a cherchés” and “le chagrin” in reference to the king’s fruitless searches. In Letter 26, when writing to his elusive love Roxanne, Rica refers to his own “chagrin” when his searches (“recherches”) for his love are unsuccessful. Runyon also enjoyed Montesquieu’s political satire: “So here we have Louis XIV beating the bushes for Jansenists and Usbek doing the same for the object of his desire,” writes Runyon. “It’s a hidden parallel, but it’s a pretty funny one. The { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } absolutist Sun King in his persecuting mania is likened, in the hidden chain, to a husband who can’t even make love to the wife over whom he supposedly has absolute power (19).” After leaving St. John’s at the completion of his sophomore year, Runyon earned a doctorate in French from Johns Hopkins University. He joined the Miami University faculty in 1977. Runyon’s research covers a wide range of English and French literature (The Art of the Persian Letters is one of eight books he has published), but lately he’s been fascinated by uncovering links within an individual work. He may take on Montaigne next to show how the first essay relates to the last essay in each of his three books. He’s found the writer “intentionally self-contradictory” in many of his essays. “At one point he says we have too many commentators on poetry and not enough poets, but at another he says we have too many poets,” says Runyon. “He says civil war is terrible at one point; in another, he says such wars serve a purpose.” His studies of the poetry of Fontaine and Baudelaire have also uncovered hidden chains. La Fontaine, for example, seems to employ a rhyme scheme that many readers believe “disintegrates into chaos.” Instead, what Runyon has found is that different syllable counts in individual poems often correspond with sudden shifts in action or mood. “And each fable is connected to its neighbors by the same kind of linguistic and situational parallels found in the Persian Letters.” While he appreciates the enduring ideas behind great books, Runyon is more fascinated by the manipulation of language, more interested in how the parts form an esthetic whole. His love of language was nurtured at St. John’s, where he enjoyed studying Greek and working through Euclid’s propositions. He credits the college with helping him develop his ability to find disparities, and therefore, identify similarities. In studying the Persian Letters, he could see when one letter contradicted the one preceding or following it because he could also pick out the underlying sameness. “I had Ford K. Brown as my tutor for Greek, and he used to say, ‘The closest you can be to being right is to be exactly wrong.’ I was greatly influenced by this, and it influenced my approach to all these writers.” �27 {Bibliofile} His love of French was also discovered at St. John’s, not in the classroom, but in the library in Woodward Hall. “I worked there in the evenings, and they had these lovely 19th-century editions of Racine and Diderot. I had never liked reading literature in English, but I fell in love with French literature. It’s now extended to English.” Runyon has always found the Persian Letters to be amusing and interesting, and he recommends the book as good reading for Johnnies. Although today Montesquieu’s approach to Arabic culture seems somewhat misinformed and patronizing, “at least he was writing about another culture in a serious way, long before anyone else,” he notes. x —Rosemary Harty The Cycle of Learning/ El ciclo de aprendizaje by Jorge Aigla Bilingual Press (2005) It is understandable for a poet to write about his own friends and family, but perhaps only a poet who is also a St. John’s College tutor could so deftly speak to such a broad range of topics as family, martial arts, and classical works, extending from the streets of Mexico City to the three sons of Socrates, “or the waif/ adopted by an aging Epictetus.” Santa Fe tutor, poet, and head karatedo instructor Jorge Aigla has released a third volume of poetry entitled The Cycle of Learning, his first book that includes Spanish and English versions of each poem. Haunting and evocative, the poems explore the mysterious ways in which we apprehend the world, and the dichotomy between internalizing our awareness and using language to express ideas and forms that come to us independent of language. On the book’s left-hand pages, poems are printed in the language—Spanish or English—in which they were first composed; the right-hand page offers the translation. “Poetry comes to our imagination and its linguistic representation differently,” writes Aigla in the book’s preface. “Perhaps this work could serve as an invitation to a case study on the psycholinguistics of bilingualism.” Influences of the Program abound in The Cycle of Learning. In “Ruminations of a Monk,” Aigla writes: “Why do we not realize/ that we do not learn,/ that we must always/ start again in love from the beginning/ as Kierkegaard suggested.” There is a poem called “Miguel de Cervantes” and another called “Don Quixote’s Mill.” Socrates, Goethe, Baudelaire, Plato, Confucius, Augustine, Mencius (Meng Tzu), Milton, and Shakespeare also gain mention. Each poem opens onto wider worlds of imagination, family, discovery, and the passage of time. Drawing inspiration from his family members, his martial arts practice, and his boyhood in Mexico, the poems sketch moving images of his loved ones in such gentle ways as to honor their place on the mantel of his life. Aigla creates imagery as vivid and colorful as portraiture, as moving as breath, as in “One Morning”: That cement wasteland on an early Mexico City morning, as I waited for the bus to take me to the high school gym, revealed to me a man: the same thin and dirty and dark manual laborer carrying a hemp sack, his face a bible of sorrows, condemned to ride for perhaps two hours to the factory whose stoves and chimneys devour men. Learning, the poetic counterpart to William Carlos Williams’s collection of prose essays The Embodiment of Knowledge.” One of the most sensory-rich poems is entitled “A Flower for My Mother.” Crossing borders and decades, Aigla reflects on his mother while sitting in a garden spot on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. He writes, “The garden is full this year/ after so much rain, of all/ the colors you enjoyed, and especially the deep magenta/ of that low and shy flower/ you once so tenderly straightened/ as we walked carefully on the path/ between the two large horse chestnut trees/ trees like the ones you used to help me/ climb as a boy in Cuernavaca.” Aigla was born in Mexico City. He earned a degree in medicine from the University of California, San Francisco, in 1979. Prior to coming to St. John’s, he was a medical examiner in San Francisco and taught at both the City College of San Francisco and at St. Mary’s College. His first volume of poetry, Sublunary (Pennywhistle Press), was published in 1989. His previous book of poetry, Aztec Shell (Bilingual Press, 1995), in which some poems are in Spanish, is set in both Mexico and the United States.x —Andra Maguran Charles Bell, Santa Fe tutor emeritus, wrote in his forward to the volume: “Let me promise the reader this mature and powerful experience of this Cycle of The Cycle of Learning El ciclo de aprendizaje I closed the senses and allowed the dark to envelop me, I dreamt. A wind visited me: People had loved me; I had been sick for a long time, almost unconscious, and had been taken care of, fed, and watched. I had not realized what this implied; I stared at the enormity of some of my actions and of my secret inertias. Awaking, alone, I opened once more the cycle of learning. Cerré los sentidos y permití que la oscuridad me envolviese. Sõné. Visitóme un viento: Gente me había amado; Había estado enfermo por largo tiempo, casi inconsciente, y me habían cuidado, alimentado y vigilado. No me había dado cuenta de lo que esto significaba; Miré la enormidad de algunos de mis actos y de mis inercias secretas. Despertando solo, abrí de nuevo el cilco de aprendizaje —Jorge Aigla { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �28 {Alumni Profile} Out of Africa Journalist Lydia Polgreen (A97) by Patricia Dempsey s the New York Times foreign correspondent for West Africa, Lydia Polgreen (A97) is accustomed to danger. Last winter, she boarded a flight to Nigeria to meet with militants in the oil-producing delta region who were holding nine foreigners as hostages. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta invited journalists to interview them, as Polgreen wrote later, “to show their strength and outline their demands.” But before the meeting could take place, Polgreen found herself sitting in a small boat, her hands in the air, looking at the barrel of an AK-47 assault rifle. “We were navigating the creeks and rivers of the Niger Delta, and the Nigerian military were looking for the hostages the militants were holding, so there was a strong possibility that we could get caught in the crossfire,” she recalls. “A boat with a group of men wearing hoods over their faces, aiming AK-47s and a grenade launcher, came speeding up to us. There had been a misunderstanding with our guide. We talked to them, convinced them that we meant no harm. Finally they gave us permission to proceed to meet with the militants.” Polgreen covers two dozen countries, including the war-ravaged areas of eastern Chad and western Sudan, politically volatile Liberia, and regions such as the Niger Delta. She travels for two to three weeks at a time, returning to the Times’ West African bureau, her home in the suburbs of Dakar, Senegal, that she shares with her partner, Candice Feit (A96), a freelance photographer. Any down time is used preparing for the next assignment: haggling with embassy employees to get visas and permits, or arranging for translators and drivers. Reporting on the oil pipeline in Chad, for instance, required two weeks of planning complex logistics and six days driving around the dusty A desert. “The biggest part of this job—being a foreign correspondent—is showing up,” she says. “How can you know for sure you will be safe? You cannot. So you gauge the risks.” Polgreen’s willingness to take these risks is rooted in a childhood spent in Africa. She grew up in Kenya and Ghana. Her mother, Pamela, is from Ethiopia, and her father, John (SF71), once worked as an agricultural engineer involved in sustainable development. “For me, covering the war or events in Iraq is not compelling, but covering Africa is,” she explains. “Africa has always been a part of my life. I love Africa. I want to communicate about it to the rest of the world. The situation in Africa is not hopeless. Even if it is not going to be easily remedied, my job is to tell the world about it with style, intelligence, and humanity.” To this end, Polgreen brings an insider’s sensibility to African culture, a gift for crafting succinct, vivid prose, and an outsider’s perspective on what is newsworthy. Polgreen moved from Ghana to the United States when she attended “This is true everywhere you go in Africa: despite the poverty and misery, the human spirit is powerful.” Lydia Polgreen (A97) { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } St. John’s. (Her brother, David, is also a 1997 graduate of St. John’s.) After an internship in Washington, D.C., she went to Columbia University to earn a master’s in journalism—a natural career choice for her and for many Johnnies. “It’s the critical thinking skills, being able to question, to think independently,” she says. “You are coming to things with an open mind. In journalism, you go to the primary source so you can get information—a Johnnie would be drawn to that.” The headlines of Polgreen’s Times stories convey the breadth of her coverage: “Why So Starry Eyed? Misery Loves Optimism in Africa”; “Chad’s Oil Riches, Meant for Poor, Are Diverted”; and “Why Hope in Africa is Not a Paradox.” Africa’s startling contrasts fascinate Polgreen. “Particularly in Africa, one of the world’s poorest continents, there is a paradox that I love. There is great suffering, abject misery, yet there is dignity, joy, and an optimism in life that sustains people. I find this compelling. We as Westerners, we arrive and we say, ‘Oh the horror, the horror.’ Yet in fact these people have an incredible spirit full of hope.” Polgreen describes encounters with seemingly poor people who are rich in kindness and generosity. “When I was in Chad reporting a story on the civil war, one of the town officials let me camp in his compound. Here I was sleeping under the stars, eating mush and stew from a communal bowl. Yet it was all done with the most gracious, kind hospitality. He said, ‘I wish you had been here when my children were here.’ He sent them to another town for safekeeping. This is a village that is under constant attack from Arab militia from the Sudan. You see how terribly they suffer. Yet here is this man, so gracious, his capacity for joy, spirituality, and survival is so great. This is true everywhere you go in Africa: despite the poverty and misery, the human spirit is powerful.” �29 george esiri {Alumni Profile} Given the misery she encounters, it’s no surprise that Polgreen sometimes questions the impartiality journalism demands. “You try not to get personally involved, but it is difficult. For example, when I was reporting in Haiti during the 2004 rebellion and working with a photographer, a young man had been shot. He was going from one public hospital to the next. I don’t know how many were injured in the protests we were covering, but he was turned away. He had a bullet in his gut and private hospitals were not going to treat him without money. You as a human being, you make a choice.” Polgreen and her colleague decided that since they were not going to report on the young man, it was not a breach of professional ethics to give him $100-$200 to save his life. “But usually you can’t intervene. You see so much on a daily basis—sick babies, hungry families. There is always some form of human misery. I don’t believe the pie-in-the-sky nonsense that just because journalism is a public service—it gets information out there—it will change these things. Yet it is important that the world knows. I am not foolhardy, but still I write hoping to have an impact.” To have an impact Polgreen needs to interview a wide range of individuals, many of whom do not see the importance of sharing their stories with a New York Times reporter. “You want, as a journalist, to believe in truth, in openness. So you make arguments as to why it is in someone’s best interest to let you interview them. I say, ‘You should talk to me. We do not want to support your cause, but we want to tell the world about it.’ ” Polgreen says the difficulty in getting someone to talk “increases exponentially” with their level of sophistication—unless they have something to gain from it. The media-savvy militants holding nine foreign oil workers hostage in Nigeria sought out news coverage. “They wanted to talk, to show the world that they were a serious military force, a powerful force that operates brazenly on the major waterways,” Polgreen says. “They understood ‘the media increases our power.’ ” Polgreen may never know the impact of the stories she files with the Times, many { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } Lydia Polgreen, interviewing members of a militant group in the Niger Delta last winter, encounters danger, disease, tragedy, and hope in Africa. of them from dangerous places where, “my phone is on the fritz and satellites are down.” She can’t be sure if her February 25 story, “Armed Group Shuts Down Part of Nigeria’s Oil Output,” contributed to the militants’ freeing six of the nine hostages. But within days of visiting the Niger Delta Polgreen hopped back on a plane—this time to cover the violence in Darfur pushing across the border into Chad. Her work is never finished, she says, because there is always more to discover, one more question to ask. “You learn so much with every story,” she says. “I’m always wishing and wanting one more day for more reporting.” x �30 {Alumni Notes} 1935 RICHARD WOODMAN is still practicing law in a small town in central New York and enjoying long trips abroad with his daughters and their husbands. “I’m just back from a trip around South America, and it was pretty interesting,” he writes. 1943 MARTIN ANDREWS has begun his 10th year as commander of the Nassau-Suffolk L.I. Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War and has passed his 6,000th hour of volunteer service at the Northport V.A. Medical Center. 1944 A note from PETER C. WOLFF: “I suffer from an irreversible condition: getting older.” lively group of residents, numerous activities, current affairs discussions—even a five-session course on Greek mythology! Our apartment overlooks the Hudson with spectacular views, sunsets, and barges going up and down the river. Yes, we are politically engaged, and I am vice-chair of our resident council. And, we are in good health.” 1956 “Phyllis and I have moved to Kendal-on-Hudson, a Quaker-sponsored community in Washington Irving country, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.,” writes PETER J. DAVIES. “Enjoying the 1974 1959 A note from sunny Florida, from GAY HALL: “My husband, Mortimer, died June 30, 2005. I am retired and will continue to live in the Keys. It’s warm here!” “My son, Will, graduates with a B.S. in Business from the University of Southern California in May,” writes GEORGE ANTHONY (A). “My daughter, Beth, graduates with a B.S. in Human Physiology from the University of Oregon in June.” Honored for Service AIELLO (SFGI69) has been honored by AARP New Mexico for her ability to enhance the lives of others, improve the community around them, and inspire others to volunteer. Among other volunteer efforts, Aiello served as secretary of the Los Alamos AARP Chapter, where she helped to build membership, ran a group for retired local teachers, served the Los Alamos Retired Senior Organization, worked on the senior center’s advisory council, and ran a great books discussion group for more than 15 years. In recognition of her accomplishments, AARP nominated her for a 2005 Andrus Award. x E “After having my own optical shop in Georgetown for the last 17 years and receiving the highest rating in the Washington Consumer Checkbook, I have cut back to being open only four days a week,” reports VIRGINIA HINDS BURTON (A). “My customers have been wonderfully supportive and business has even improved. I’ll never retire. This job is way too much fun. But a three-day weekend every week feels so civilized!” “I wonder—what would Tocqueville make of us now?” writes DORIK MECHAU. 1969 1948 1970 “After 19 years at Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H., I am pleased to return to Santa Fe and am looking forward to being closer to St. John’s College again,” writes RENATE LEWIS (SFGI). STEPHEN A. SLUSHER (SF) moved to the East Coast. 1975 “I’m finally having surgery on the knee I injured in 1972 while borrowing stage lights from the Naval Academy for SJC’s production of The Taming of the Shrew,” says CHRIS HOVING (A). “I tried to turn on the ladder while holding the big lights and my knee popped—and after a few steps, collapsed.” LIZABETH 1976 BETSY DAVENPORT (SF) has been living in Portland since 1978. She has married and has had one child. She also has three stepchildren and three grandchildren. She has been running a { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } private psychotherapy practice. Lately she has been evaluating and treating adults with AD/HD. The first of several writing projects on the subjects is ready to publish. 1983 JOYCE HOWELL (AGI) recently began an SAT tutoring business, Haddontutors@aol.com. “There seems to be a great demand!” she writes. 1985 “I’m teaching a spring 2006 semester course at Anne Arundel Community College on ‘Emergence of Ancient Israel,’ ” writes PAUL SCHATZBERG (AGI). “This course presents the latest scholarly knowledge on how and why desert-roaming pastoral nomads settled in the Canaan highlands beginning in 1300 B.C.E. and later identified themselves as a distinct ethnic group called Israelites. Sources of information are the Hebrew Bible, hi-tech archeology, Egyptian records, philology, epigraphy, Mesopotamian sources and others.” 1986 JAY POWERS (SF) is in Chicago: “In January, I joined McDougal Littell as a senior editor. First project: an economics textbook (gasp!) for high school seniors. I moved to McDougal from The World Book Encyclopedia, where I had been in charge of the articles on Europe and Russia since 1999.When the weather turns warm here in Chicago, I still like to bike and skateboard. Haven’t played table tennis in a while, though. I started with the �31 {Alumni Notes} SF class of 1986, and I am curious to learn what happened to everybody. I would welcome an update from the reunion this summer.” ROBERT F. RICHARDS (A) is a professor of engineering at Washington State University. “I live in Pullman with my wife (also a professor here) and two children, Dimitry (10) and Alexander (7). Although I left St. John’s after two years to finish up at the University of Chicago, I have fond memories of my times there. I recently bought a St. John’s sweatshirt and I wear it around town here, but sadly I have yet to run into anyone who is familiar with the Program. Are there any other Johnnies in the inland Northwest?” 1987 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY (A) recently published The Grail Code: Revelation of an Ancient Mystery, published by Loyola Press, according to one of his fans. “Christopher Bailey has worked as a writer, editor, translator, and researcher for more than 15 years. His articles have appeared in Touchstone, Columbia, New Covenant, the New Catholic Encyclopedia (second edition), and elsewhere. Schooled in the great-books tradition, he has spent many years in close study and translation of the Arthurian Texts. I know this because I am his proud wife, TERESA FULLINWIDER BAILEY (A).” SCOTT CUTHBERT (SF) was made chairman of the Research Board for the International College of Applied Kinesiology, 2005-06, and his research literature can be seen online by going to www.sotousa.com, where his CV and online research papers can also be found. “Living with diabetes since the age of 4 and going to the john without a blood-testing instrument to control my diabetes has made my calling as a functional medical physician a perfect fit,” he writes. “Such a study as I am upon may continue for a lifetime and keeps me learning and learning. It is a wonderful thing to discover a professional activity, a calling, that has no horizon or limits on it, one that can continually romance, glorify, and excite your daily work. I am also going to India in March 2006!” A Big Surprise OHN C. WRIGHT (A84) received a Nebula nomination for his book, Orphans of Chaos. Along with the Hugo, the Nebula is one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction publishing. “This was a big surprise to us because he was not on the preliminary ballot, but apparently the judges have the discretion to add a book of their choice to each category,” wrote John’s wife, L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright. Though the book was a dark horse, she says, “it is still very exciting to be nominated and this will get his name out in front of new readers.” x J 1988 ELAINE PINKERTON COLEMAN (SFGI) has completed the screenplay for the film adaptation of her WWII suspense novel, Beast of Bengal. The Gage Group Inc. has selected Elaine’s book for development as a feature movie. THEODORE (TED) MERZ (A) and DIANA MARTINEZ (SF86) recently celebrated the third birthday of their son, Hayden. KIM PAFFENROTH (A) is the co-author, with Tom Bertonneau, of a new book, The Truth Is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction (Brazos Press, 2006). The book looks at the religious relevance of Dr. Who, Star Trek, The Prisoner, The Twilight Zone, The X Files, and Babylon 5. Kim is associate professor and chairman of the Department Religious Studies at Iona College, New Rochelle, NY. 1990 MARK KREIDER (A) and SARAH WETHERSON (A89) announce the birth of their child, Isaac Levi Bechtel, on Thursday, February 23. Isaac weighed in at 9 lb., 8 oz., and is “chubby- cheeked and beautiful.” His parents love to hear from other Johnnies: e-mail them at wimmin@teleport.com. 1991 ANNE MARLOW-GETER and KEN GETER (both SF91) completed their first half-marathon in September 2006. 2006 also brought Anne a promotion to planning supervisor at the Colorado Department of STD/HIV Public Health and Environment and the completion of a fellowship with the Regional Institute of Health and Environmental Leadership. Ken continues the work to save us from mad cows and bird flu at the USDA. 1992 ELYETTE BLOCK KIRBY (SF) lives in the Paris area (near Versailles) with her husband, Jonathan, and three children, Benjy (5 years), Bronwyn Elyse (3 years) ,and { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } Luca (1 year): “We plan to be here at least one more year, and I’d love to hear from other Johnnies in the area, to know if there is an alumni group meeting already. My e-mail remains: elyette@hotmail.com. 1993 A DWI program manager for the local government division of the Department of Finance and Administration for New Mexico, MICHAEL A. BALDWIN (SF) encourages everyone not to drink and drive. MARIA PUMILIA (SF) and Brian Bolding are the proud parents of Annika Marie Bolding, born March 9, at 7:25 a.m., weight 7 lbs., 4 oz. Annika was born in her room at home, right smack into the waiting hands of her dad. continued on page 33 �32 {Alumni Profile} Where There’s Smoke Aman Cholas (SF98) Finds Purpose in the West’s Endangered Forests by Jason Bielagus (SF98) I t’s still dark when the siren sounds at the Redmond Air Center. The ready room at the jump base becomes a whirl of activity. A lightning storm moved across Northeastern Oregon earlier in the night, and multiple ‘smokes’ have been sighted by lookouts in the Wallawa-Whitman National Forest, about 200 miles away. Spirits are high as Aman Cholas and his fellow smokejumpers don their gear-padded Kevlar jumpsuit, harness and parachute, reserve chute, personal gear bag, and a helmet with a steel mesh face guard. In a minute they have added 60 pounds to their body weight. They waddle out to the tarmac, where they load the twin-prop Sherpa. As the plane makes its way to the runway, carrying ten smokejumpers, two spotters, the pilot and co-pilot, a veteran jumper shouts above the engines’ drone, “Another early commute to the office!” In the cabin, smiles flash in the early dawn light. Once they’ve reached their destination, the crew members spot smoke rising from a steep, heavily wooded ridgeline. It appears to be a relatively small fire, maybe an acre in size, enough work for four smokejumpers. The spotter confers with the pilot on the best jump spot, a small opening in the trees a few hundred yards further down the ridge. It’s a narrow target and missing it would mean drifting down off the ridge into a thick mat of 150-foot ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. After a few wide passes to drop wind-indicating streamers, the spotter signals for the first set of two jumpers to come to the rear of the plane and clip in their parachute rip cords. Cholas will be first. After confirming that Cholas has seen the jump site and the streamers, the spotter calls out, “Turning final, 1500 feet, get in the door!” Cholas positions his body with his hands on the frame of the doorway opening to the vast It was dangerous, exhausting, and dirty—but being a smokejumper was also exhilarating, says Aman Cholas. forest below, the slipstream of air just brushing his face. With the spotter’s shout— “Get ready!”—Cholas rears back like a spring, the sudden slap on the back of his calf initiating the lunge that propels him into the void. Without hesitation the second jumper follows. In a few seconds, the parachute canopy fills with air. Cholas checks his position in relation to the jump spot as well as to his jump partner, then feels a moment of peace. The noise of the plane and the burden of his gear are replaced by a quiet weightlessness, a beautiful suspension over green wilderness. “It’s the last couple hundred feet that are scary,” Cholas explains. “The ground suddenly begins to show its true roughness, a broken snag here, a boulder there, and it’s all rushing towards you.” In this case, the opening in the trees is a dense patch of oak brush, a soft enough landing area, but it takes some effort to get untangled and out of the jump gear. Cholas’ jump partner doesn’t quite make the spot and is left dangling 40 feet in the air from his parachute, caught in a tree. However, within minutes, he rappels to safety. A big danger, Cholas explains, is not properly “bagging” a tree. If only the edge of the parachute catches a limb, it could collapse the canopy. If the limb breaks or the parachute comes loose, there is little to break the fall the rest of the way down. Once the jumpers are safely on the ground, the Sherpa makes another pass for the paracargo drop—boxes of tools, food, water and other gear for fighting the fire. Cholas makes one last call on his handheld radio to the plane, confirming that the crew has everything it needs, and the Sherpa heads for the next fire. The smokejumpers make their way to the fire, determine its behavior, identify hazards, and make a plan of attack. The fire is fought by creating a “fire line,” a break in the fuel around the fire’s edges. This particular fire is not moving very fast yet. One of the jumpers uses a chainsaw to cut trees and heavier logs on the ground. The others use hand tools, shovels and Pulaskis (tools with an ax on one end, a hoe on the other), to dig and scrape a line down to mineral soil. By late afternoon, the fire is “contained,” and the jumpers gather for a break. Everyone pitches in to make camp comfortable and prepare a meal. They eat, joke, and enjoy the rest before it is time for “mop-up,” moving through the “black” to extinguish anything still burning by digging and mixing it in with the soil. A small fire could take a day or two; a larger one could take weeks. Their work completed, the smokejumpers load everything into enormous backpacks { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �33 {Alumni Notes} that often weigh over 100 pounds and hike to the nearest trailhead to be picked up. Only occasionally are they lucky enough to get a mule train to come for the gear or get a helicopter pick-up. “Often the pack-out can be the most grueling challenge of a fire,” says Cholas, remembering the exhaustion—and excitement—of eight years spent fighting fires. It was a career born from a love of the mountains, discovered in Santa Fe. And it’s led him to another side of preserving forests, by preventing fires. Cholas grew up in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and Corozal, Belize, with his parents, four sisters, and a brother. After graduating from high school, he spent several years working and traveling in Europe and Israel. He was working as a gardener at the Bahaí World Center in Haifa, Israel, when he visited a friend who owned the Britannica Great Books of the Western World series. He remembers thinking, “I wish that I could just sit here and read all these books.” That set him on the path to St. John’s. In Santa Fe, Cholas discovered his enchantment with mountains and forests when his freshman lab class made an outing to the Sangre de Cristos to examine coniferous trees. He often took long walks on Monte Sol to do his seminar readings and spent many weekends hiking around the Santa Fe National Forest. His firefighting career began with a summer job with a ground crew in Isleta, N.M., where his mother’s family lives. Every “Never thought I was the home birth type, but the right midwife and doula can make a world of difference,” writes Maria. Maria ditched software development for real-estate last year—get in touch with her if you’re in the market. 1994 SARAH and MICHAEL AFFLERBACH (both A) have been having a great year watching twins Max and Evie grow into little people. “They are so fun to have around and each day brings something new to enjoy,” writes Sarah. “I received my architectural license last year and work for a wonderful firm summer, he continued firefighting, moving to a Forest Service helicopter rappel crew, Sandia Helitack, based in Tijeras, N.M. “Fire fighting complemented St. John’s well,” Cholas says. “By the end of spring semester, all I wanted to do was be out in the woods. And by the end of a fire season, all I wanted to do was hang out in the library and read. So it was a good balance.” After graduating from St. John’s, he went to work for the Forest Service full time, becoming the crew leader for Sandia Helitack. Later he spent his summers in Redmond, Ore., working as a smokejumper. After nine seasons of fighting fires, Cholas became disillusioned with the Forest Service’s fire suppression policy. In keeping with its original mandate “to furnish a continuous supply of timber” (Organic Act of 1897, 16 U.S.C. § 475), the Forest Service maintains a policy of stopping all forest fires. Many of the fires he helped put out needed to burn, Cholas realized. “After almost a century of stopping fires so aggressively, we have hindered the natural process that fires perform in the forest ecosystem,” he explains. “As a result, most of our forests in the Western United States are unhealthy and overgrown, clogged with dead and fallen timber, and are prone to disease and catastrophic wildfires.” Low-intensity fires in a healthy forest can rid the forest of dead and sickly trees, while leaving stronger trees to thrive, as well as reintroducing nutrients to the soil, he adds. On the other hand, though fire is part of a here in New Bern, N.C. Mike’s radio business continues to grow and they are building a new station which will be on the air in February. We had a great time traveling to Columbia, South America, to witness JON ARCHER’S (A94) wedding to his lovely wife, Monica.” “I finally finished my philosophy doctorate in December of 2005, specializing in 18th- and 19thcentury German philosophy, history of modern philosophy, and logic,” writes PETER BEZANSON (A). “The title of my dissertation is ‘Idealism: A Brief History, Taxonomy, and Nietzschean Evaluation.’ I continue to teach calculus forest’s natural cycle, fires of recent years have grown so intense that they “kill everything in their path” and “leave moonscapes of sterilized soil and cause unnatural erosion and other problems,” he says. Two years ago, Cholas and fellow firefighter Jeremy Hanlon left the Forest Service to start their own company, Forest Fitness, based in Tijeras. They work primarily to protect properties from fire danger by thinning forested areas of overgrowth and dead material. Forest Fitness has been very successful at promoting thinning as a way to prevent the danger of fires around homes and properties. “Like a fire, we remove the unhealthiest trees and leave a mosaic of the strongest healthiest trees with room to grow,” Cholas says. “We also try to achieve a mix of tree types and age classes that is indicative of the natural vegetation. Even people who are against the cutting of trees are often very happy with the results of our work. The beauty and balance that is achieved, as well as the reduced fire danger, is very appealing to people.” As satisfying as he finds his current work, Cholas looks back fondly on his smokejumping days. “It was the most incredible job I have ever had.” x Author’s note: For more about smokejumping, see Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire (an account of the Mann Gulch fire); the Forest Service documentary The Greatest Good, or the NOVA documentary Fire Wars. classes and a philosophy seminar at a great books liberal arts school in Tempe, Ariz., (Tempe Preparatory Academy). In addition, I serve as the mathematics curriculum consultant to Great Hearts Academies (www.greatheartsaz.org) helping them realize their mission to create a network of academically rigorous, liberal arts middle and high schools in the Phoenix metropolitan area. My wife, Alison, and I have one son, Noah, who was born nearly two years ago.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } 1995 JOEL ARD (A) and HANNAH (STIRES) ARD (A92) welcomed Ruth Anne Ard into the world on April 4, 2005. Ruth joins big brother David (2 years old). TED NAFF (A92) is Ruth’s godfather. The Ards sadly left their Annapolis abode and moved closer to D.C. in June. They are now in University Park, Md. Hannah is working part time for a law firm in D.C. and Joel is working at the Department of Justice. They would love to hear from old friends and can be reached at joelandhannahard@ hotmail.com. �34 {Alumni Notes} Prefers Sleeping B ETH MARTIN and ALEX GAMMON (both A94) are pleased to announce the arrival of their son, Theodore Jasper Gammon. Theodore made his appearance on January 29, 2006, at 8:27 a.m., weighing in at 8 lbs 9.4 oz. All are doing well, and Theodore prefers to spend his time eating, sleeping, and making his parents smile. x fellow Annapolis alums RICH (A96) and KARA (A99) LUNA. Hannah’s law practice focuses on estate planning and adoptions. She’d love to hear from anyone in the area—her e-mail is hannah@ dcadoptionlaw.com. 1997 MICHAEL CHIANTELLA (SF) has been practicing law for three years. “Started my own firm in 2004 in the lovely seaside town of Venice, Florida. In October of 2005, my wife and I attended the wedding of TAFFETA ELLIOTT (SF97) in New York City. ZENA HITZ (A) has accepted a job teaching philosophy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, starting this fall. MIKE LAYNE (A) writes: “My family moved from Barrow to Anchorage last summer. We live next door to DANNY MYERS (SF93). I am happy to report he still has long hair and has stopped wearing high-heels to Halloween parties. THEA AGNEW (SF95) is also living in Anchorage and expecting her first baby in February or March. Audrey Rae will turn 4 in February, and Jackson will celebrate his first birthday in March. And I still have a full head of hair –thank goodness. My work e-mail has changed to: MikeL@ EAtribes.net—I’d love to hear from SJC alumni. I am a grant administrator and grant writer for a non-profit tribal organization. This spring I am running for one of the seats on the Anchorage School Board. Feel free to visit the campaign Web site at: www.MikeLayne.info.” 1996 ANNE and MARK CORMIER (both SFGI) write: “We’ve recently moved to a new house to accommodate our newest addition, Sarah Clare, who was born September 29, 2005. Her older sisters Anna (5) and Eliza (3) continue to astonish us with their limitless energy and fresh perspective on our (their?) world. Mark is still teaching English literature at Longmeadow High School, and Anne is home attempting to impart something that might lead to virtue to the three girls.” ALLISON and JOHN EDDYBLOUIN (SF) are enjoying life in mid-coast Maine: wooden boat building, home schooling, etc . . . HANNAH GOLDSTEIN (NÉE GILLELAN, A) joyfully announces both her November 2005 marriage to Stephen Goldstein and the opening of her own law practice. Hannah and Stephen live on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., just blocks from DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) is enjoying the life of an entrepreneur: “North Star Games is now putting on corporate team-building events and monthly trivia nights at several local bars. These events are a blast! Come join us. You can learn about them at www.NorthStarGames.com.” Sales of “Wits and Wagers,” he notes, have picked up dramatically since the game was featured in Time, Games Magazine, Knucklebones, and other media. ARAND PIERCE (SF98) graduated from the University of New Mexico Medical School May 12. He also was presented with an award for academic, research and service excellence May 11 at a public ceremony at the UNM Health Sciences Center. 1998 RICK FIELD (SF) recently published a children’s book, Momma, Momma Brown Toes. The book is a collection of poems and pictures inspired by his eight-year-old daughter, Amanda. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } 1999 GREG KOEHLERT (SFGI) wants all his old friends to know that he and Merrie have bought an apartment in Park Slope in Brooklyn. Also, Greg and Merrie’s daughter is turning one around Thanksgiving. PATRICK BARRINGTON REED (AGI) writes: “Our first baby, Lucille Lahja Reed, was born June 17, 2005. Now, we move in April to Bitburg, Germany—thanks to the Air Force. We expect to be on hand at the World Cup this summer and at the Tour de France in July. May God bless St. John’s College!” “It’s been 10 years since I last saw most of you, and I hope life is treating you well,” writes BENJAMIN THORNBER (A). “After leaving St. John’s in ’96, I transferred to Guilford College, a Quaker school in North Carolina. While there, I met my fiancée, Eva, whom I’m marrying this July. I graduated from seminary in 2004 and I’m now the pastor of a Quaker church. While my time at St. John’s was quite brief, I really value the friendships that I made there. Let’s get back in touch!” 2000 ZACHARY WARZEL and ERIKA CARLSON (both SF) were married in August 2005 in Colorado, their new home after a move from New York City in May 2005. Erika received a master’s degree in historic preservation from Columbia University in May 2005 and is working as a preservation specialist at Humphries Poli Architects in Denver. Zach received a law degree from Brooklyn Law School in May 2005 and is currently working as a litigation associate at Roberts �35 {Alumni Notes} No Mail? 2001 DANIEL FRAM (SF) reports that he is “living cheap in Boston; playing the now smoke-free Irish pubs and sneaking into classes on ethics.” JESSICA K. REITZ (A) and Christopher Wallace proudly announce the birth of their first son, William Alexander Wallace, born March 21, 2006. 2002 Have your fellow Johnnies lost track of you? Reconnect with your classmates by joining the online alumni community at www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on For Alumni and follow the links from there. More than 3,000 alumni have registered for the community. Johnnies can also sign up to receive a free St. John’s e-mail address for life, post resumes or job openings through the Career Services section, find out what’s happening in their local chapters, and register for events online. Levin & Patterson in Denver, a plaintiffs’ litigation firm. CHRISTOPHER VAUGHAN (A) continues to work with his older brother, renovating old houses. He is engaged to ASHLEY BROOK T YLER (A07) and is taking classes at a local college to prepare for grad school. “I have been accepted into the University of Tennessee’s College of Veterinary Medicine and will be starting that program in the fall,” writes BEN YOUNG (A). “My wife and our dogs still have not tired of my stories from St. John’s.” ALANA and JOEY CHERNILLA (both SF) had their second little girl, Rose Isabella, in February. Sadie Pearl recently turned two. “Besides enjoying our intense domesticity, Joey runs a daycare, and I work in publishing and tutor home-schoolers in Euclid,” Alana writes. MEGAN GRAFF (A) writes: “After a few years spent working in what is laughably known as ‘the real world,’ I will begin attending the North Carolina School of the Arts this fall as an MFA candidate in Performing Arts Management.” ERIN KRASNIEWICZ (A) is living in Philadelphia with RANDY PENNELL (also A02) and working as a library research assistant for the Pew Charitable Trusts. “This is really the time to be in Philadelphia, which is undergoing a renaissance of sorts,” she writes. “Drop us a line if you’d like to see the sights, we love to show off our city.” GEORGE NELSON and MONICA ANATALIO (both A) are getting married this August in downtown Washington, D.C., and will be honeymooning in Rome and Athens. George is in his first year at American University’s Washington College of Law and will be pursuing the litigation track. Monica is graduating from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law and will be an attorney for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress. Coldwell Banker in Annapolis, and Douglas works as a court reporter for a firm in Washington, D.C. x 2005 2003 CORINNE HUTCHINSON (SF) and PAUL OBRECHT (SF02) are getting married in Santa Fe this coming spring. KATE REDDING (A) is enrolled at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, where she is studying for a certification in piano technology. CYNTHIA BARRY (AGI) has recently completed text-editing the National Geographic Collegiate Atlas of the World, to be published in fall 2006. She and ANDREW ROMITI (A06) are currently conducting Touchstones discussions with middle-schoolers at St. Martin’sin-the-Field Day School in Severna Park, Md., where Ms. Barry is the librarian. x ISAAC SMITH (A) is going to the University of Maryland this fall to begin studies toward a master’s degree in public policy. He writes, “Johnnies in the D.C. area interested in politics, policy, the old days, or anything else should drop me a line at ikesmith@gmail.com.” 2004 After her retirement from St. John’s a few years ago, GINGER ROHERTY (HSF) is now director of development for the Santa Fe Children’s Museum. DOUGLAS C. TURNER (A, aka Rex Nerdorum, Archon of Melee) married DARLENE B. ROGERS (A05) on September 3, 2005, in Alford, Mass., Rev. David Rogers, father of the bride, presiding. Several Johnnies were in attendance, women in various green costumes and men in tuxedos, armed with broadswords for the ceremonial arch. The honeymoon in London included Phantom of the Opera and two plays at the Globe, Pericles and The Tempest. The newlyweds live in Annapolis. Darlene works for { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in October; deadline for the alumni notes section is August 1. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �36 {Alumni Profile} The Secret Lives of Crabs Biologist Denise Pope (SF89) Finds the Charisma in Animals by Erica Naone (A05) Studying individual fiddler crabs is interesting to biologist Denise Pope (SF89). But what she really likes to do is get them in a group, stand back, and see what develops. In her research on fiddler crabs, Pope focuses less on the brain and body of a single crab and more on how many crabs interact and communicate. For her, the arthropod’s life is as much about its environment and society as it is about its breath, blood, and neural signals. “I enjoy being able to make inferences by watching whole organisms and what they do and how they interact,” she explains. “I want to manipulate them just enough to ask questions.” An assistant professor in the biology department at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, Pope spends the academic year communicating her enthusiasm for the life of animals to students. Her summers are spent going to where the crabs are—Panama and Portugal—for example. Days in the field are spent observing animals and recording her observations in the summer sun; during the evenings she enjoys local cuisine and good conversation. In her classes, Pope teaches students to ask scientific questions and discover answers in the lab. Her research into animal behavior gives her students plenty of opportunity to see science as an undiscovered country. When Pope began studying fiddler crabs, enough was known about the animals to give her a basis for her research, but enough was unknown that Pope had to learn for herself the advantages and disadvantages of studying crabs in captivity. Pope knew she wanted to study animal behavior since high school. “I was a shy kid,” she says, “and gravitated toward animals. Lots of people would say, ‘Oh, you must want to be a vet.’ ” Through a high-school assignment, Pope found that a person with an interest in animals did not have to become a veterinarian. She discovered the work of When she’s not doing field work, Denise Pope shares the St. John’s method of inquiry with her students at Trinity University: ask questions and talk it through. Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz, two key researchers of animal behavior. “My reasons for studying animal behavior come from a fascination, appreciation, and love for the natural world for its own sake, not for what it teaches me about myself or my species,” Pope says. Though she recognizes commonalities between humans and animals, Pope also notes, “Our culture, society, and our obsessive and intense internal life that enables us to analyze and question our own actions set us apart in some ways from other animals.” Because of this, she is careful about comparing human behavior to that of animals. The breadth of Pope’s interests brought her to St. John’s for her undergraduate degree. Her teaching philosophy is heavily influenced by her experience at the college, and by seeing the process of discovery rather than only the discovery itself. She wrote her essay on Kant and quantum theory. “I couldn’t get over how much everything is overturned,” Pope says, “seeing what a huge shift there was. Quantum mechanics blew me away, but it wasn’t just that. I read Joyce for preceptorial, and then we read Nietzsche and Freud. It was the accumulation of it all. There was the building up of this realization that the physical world isn’t at all what I thought it was. It epitomizes the sense of science as natural philosophy.” Soon after graduation, Pope worked for the GenBank Project in Los Alamos National Laboratory, which paid for biology { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } classes that allowed her to prepare for the Graduate Record Exam. She enrolled in Duke University, where she earned her Ph.D. in zoology in 1998. At Duke, Pope discovered her love of fiddler crabs. Having begun with the study of birdsong, the typical focus of scientists with her type of interest, she found herself feeling discouraged. “It seemed as if everyone else had perfect pitch and an excellent sense of acoustics,” Pope says. “. . . I decided I was more visual and wanted to look at visual signaling.” A friend pointed her toward fiddler crabs because the males have an enlarged claw that they wave in a visual display, “which is presumed to attract females for mating.” “They’re surprisingly entertaining and charismatic animals,” she says. This experience of science as hands-on, a work-in-progress, full of unknowns and the need for ingenuity, is an experience she tries to re-create in her classes. She gives her students a great deal of autonomy in the lab, autonomy she knows can be daunting before becoming liberating. She is also helping to redesign introductory biology courses at Trinity, reshaping them to emphasize the questioning and searching of real science. With such an intense and busy working life, Pope pursues a more relaxing schedule outside academe. She read Gregory Maguire’s Wicked during breaks from a symposium she recently attended in Japan. She has three cats at home and loves to cook. Though she learned to cook red and green chili and posole after the time she spent in Santa Fe, Pope has given up cooking New Mexican dishes for friends, offering Tex-Mex instead. “They can’t take the heat,” she says. x �37 {Tributes} Remembering Tom McDonald Thomas McDonald, who was a tutor for 33 years in Annapolis and Santa Fe, died in December 2005. His former student and good friend John White (class of 1964) prepared this remembrance of Mr. McDonald for a memorial service that was held in Baltimore earlier this year: Tom was the best teacher I had. He was the most intelligent man I’ve ever known, and he was the best educated. His memory was extraordinary, but it never seemed to be just a scholar’s memory. It was part of his living and thinking, a “human” memory; he was never showy or pedantic. His personality was compelling. His classes were intense, but relieved by bursts of laughter. Whatever you studied with him was worth your best effort, but being serious is not the same as being grim. His classes were long and often exhausting because of the nervous stimulation of concentration. I felt I was asked to give all I could and felt “used up” and elated. I learned more, and more quickly, than from any other academic experience. Tom somehow elicited his fierce attention and urgency without using anything that might lead to argument rather than thought. My contact with him as a teacher had a beginning and end. Although I never stopped learning from him (and [his wife] Julia), he became a friend as well. In the fall of 1964, Tom’s second year at St. John’s, Ed Weinberger (class of 1965), a classmate, gathered a group of students to read a Kant essay with Tom. I didn’t know Tom at the time . . . We met in Tom’s apartment at 214 Prince George Street. The day was cold and the room was very hot. Tom’s voice was soft and monotonous. The building was old and the windows had the old glass, the glass of uneven thickness and bubbles. I stared outside, slowly moving my head back and forth, watching the trees the cars ripple and wobble. Then a word or an intonation caught my attention. By chance I actually heard two or three sentences. At first they were strange sounding, difficult, then Johnnies admired Tom McDonald (class of 1948, shown here with his dog Belle) for his brilliance, his sense of humor, and his humility. “He helped you to see things clearly from all sides, to keep the difficulties in mind while not being overpowered by them.” John White they became clear, then they became thrilling. I had a moment where I lost my orientation, even got a little dizzy: This man was saying wonderful things in an unemphatic way. Why wasn’t he shouting and gesturing? Strange man. In the next years he gave many of these extra classes on diverse subjects such as poetry, mathematics, Latin, and German. All faculty members were generous with { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } their time, but no faculty member had done so much teaching “just because people wanted to learn.” He did all of this and advised 6-10 senior essays each year, until his health gave out. After that first Kant class, a group of us asked Tom to give a preceptorial on Hegel. Hegel was a daring choice (in a teeny-tiny way): for some reason, without exception, the faculty was against German philosophy and Hegel. They made fun of Hegel. Not only was there no serious effort to understand Hegel, there was pride in claiming not to understand him. The Philosophy of History was read in senior seminar at that time. The book encouraged students to produce grandiose historical statements, the kind of statements that their freshman seminar leaders had convinced them not to make. The preceptorial meetings always ran longer than the scheduled time—partly because at the beginning of class Tom always came 10-15 minutes late, partly because at the end of class Tom took 5-10 minutes to decide on the next reading, but mostly because we never looked at the clock. We never stopped in the middle of a conversation. After the preceptorial was over, we gathered around Tom to ask more questions. Tom loved to think; he couldn’t stop. He had patience and concentration beyond anything I’d ever experienced. Once when I was on my way to a one o’clock class, I saw him and a student standing on the corner of College Avenue and Prince George Street, deep in conversation despite the falling snow. And when I left two hours later, they were still there, still talking, brushing snow off their sleeves. �38 In class Tom spoke more directly than my other teachers. But he was not gathering disciples, even though he was much admired. He always made one feel that the material was important and subtle, and it needed and deserved serious effort. Usually his students did not know what Tom’s opinion was. He helped you to see things clearly from all sides, to keep the difficulties in mind while not being overpowered by them. After the Hegel preceptorial, I asked Tom to advise my senior essay. We talked at length and he came up with a suggestion that allowed me to pursue several of the things I was interested in. We had to consider passages from four or five Platonic dialogues and some Hegel. The plan was exciting. Up until that time at St. John’s I had had only three or four paper conferences. But now I met with Tom two or three times a week, and the meetings lasted two to four hours. Sometimes I went there in the afternoon, worked on revisions, was invited to dinner, then started to work again. (Julia also helped me.) {Tributes} I had never worked so long or so hard on one thing; new standards and habits began to take hold. We worked on my essay beyond the deadline—one week, then two weeks, all the time the dean giving me looks. But I couldn’t actually get the essay from Tom, who saw new paths, better ways of interpreting and explaining. I sort of tricked him to get the paper back and hand it in. (I think he was not a fan of finishing things.) Between the end of essay writing and the end of the year, I saw another side of Tom. One Friday afternoon, I was in lab, in the midst of a long discussion. Ed Weinberger opened the door and interrupted the class. “Excuse me, is John White in this class?” I raised my hand. Ed said, “You have an important call at the switchboard. Could you come with me?” As we walked down the hall, Ed told me not to worry; “McDonald and I wanted to play Monopoly and we need you.” We played a lot of Monopoly at that time (driving Julia crazy). I learned from Tom that the best properties on the board were Tennessee, New York, and St. James. I also learned that Tom had a dark side. He said that during a game his motives were greed and spite, no more, no less: he bought every property he landed on—even pathetic Waterworks—because 1) he wanted it for himself and 2) he didn’t want anyone else to get it. At graduation several of his students got together and gave Tom a present to thank him for a wonderful year: an 8" x 11" card for Boardwalk . . . . I think of Tom as liberal, generous in his actions and judgments. He was free with his time and his mind to those who sought him out. He didn’t care for foolish, shallow people. He liked people who worked intensely and liked to laugh. To be serious is not to be grim. He was side-splittingly funny at times. He was intelligent, well-educated, serious, witty, good company—also unusual, different, and even eccentric. But whenever you talked to him, after five minutes, you felt, “This is what sanity is, this is the way a human mind was meant to work.” x {Obituaries} CHARLOTTE FLETCHER, HA69 Charlotte Goldsborough Fletcher (HA69), former librarian of St. John’s College in Annapolis, died of pneumonia March 29, 2006, at the age of 90. After her retirement in 1981, she pursued a scholarly interest in the early history of the college and published several works, including St. John’s Forever: Five Essays on the History of St. John’s College and Cato’s Mirania: A Life of Provost Smith. In one of her essays, Miss Fletcher made the most solid case yet for explaining how St. John’s got its name. Many hours spent poring through the Maryland and St. John’s archives led her to conclude that St. John’s was likely named by Masons involved in the founding of the college for St. John the Evangelist—perhaps to honor George Washington. “It is hard to understand why a cloud of mystery has ever since enveloped the circumstances of the naming,” Miss Fletcher wrote. “But if Masons were responsible, one could expect secrecy about their role. Discretion . . . is the first of the Masonic virtues.” Miss Fletcher was born in Cambridge, Md., in 1915. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Hollins College and a bachelor’s in library science from Columbia University, both in 1939. Miss Fletcher was conferred with a Master of Arts, honoris causa, from St. John’s when Woodward Hall was rededicated on October 18, 1969. After several years at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, she became librarian of the Talbot County Free Library. In July 1944 she began 37 years of service to St. John’s College. She retired in 1981, but as she lived close to the college, was a frequent visitor to campus. Miss Fletcher was a favorite of students and faculty. During the years before the Naval Academy-St. John’s croquet matches, Miss Fletcher kept her own croquet set at the library and was always willing to lend it to students—often with the stipulation that she be invited to join them. Although normally a gentle, soft-spoken person, on the croquet court she took no prisoners. In addition to croquet, she Longtime St. John’s librarian Charlotte Fletcher displays a book from the St. John’s “cage” in the Maryland State Archives building, later to become the Greenfield Library, in 1974. Miss Fletcher pursued a special interest in the college’s history. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �39 {Obituaries} instructed generations of students in the esoteric art of bookbinding. Miss Fletcher traveled widely with her sister, Mary Henry Fletcher, who died earlier this year. At the time of her death she was planning another trip to Europe and in the midst of writing a second book, a collection of short stories. The college plans a memorial service for Miss Fletcher in the fall. —Rose Wynn ARCHER JONES, CLASS OF 1947 Archer Jones, Class of 1947, died in Richmond, Va., on January 23, 2006. Mr. Jones enrolled in St. John’s in July of 1943. After three years at the college he was drafted into the Army in 1946. After his discharge in 1947, Mr. Jones, apprehensive about taking the enabling examinations after such a long break, transferred to HampdenSydney College, graduating in 1949. He then enrolled in the University of Virginia’s law school, but later decided to pursue his deep attachment to history. He received a doctorate in history from UVA in 1958 and launched a career as a teacher, academic administrator, and author. He taught at the University of Virginia, Hampden-Sydney, Randolph-Macon Women’s College, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The capstone of his teaching career was his service as Morrison Professor of History at the U.S. Army’s Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Mr. Jones held a number of key academic posts: dean of Clinch Valley College of the University of Virginia; founder of the Department of History and Political Science at Virginia Tech; associate dean of the University of South Carolina; and for many years, dean of the College of Humanities, Social Sciences, Business Administration, and Education at North Dakota State University. He was a prolific and prize-winning writer in the field of military history. He was the co-author of: Politics of Command; How the North Won; and Why the South Lost. His magnum opus was The Art of War in the Western World. Mr. Jones is survived by his wife, Joanne Leach Jones, a son, and two grandchildren. Ever a loyal St. John’s alumnus, Mr. Jones felt that whatever success and recognition he may have achieved were the direct result of his undergraduate studies in the New Program. He always expressed great affection for the college and his fellow Johnnies, and was a frequent attendee of homecomings and a generous contributor to various St. John’s fundraising efforts. —George M. Van Sant, Class of 1947 EDWARD LATHROP, CLASS OF 1938 Edward Flint “Ned” Lathrop died April 8, 2006, in Annapolis. He was a decorated Naval officer and a St. John’s tutor who also taught mathematics. As director of athletics, he organized the intramural program at St. John’s. Capt. Lathrop spent two years at the Coast Guard Academy before transferring to St. John’s. He joined the St. John’s faculty and taught until 1941 before enlisting in the Navy. During World War II he served aboard submarines in the Pacific and was awarded the Bronze Star and Silver Star medals. After the war he rejoined the St. John’s faculty in 1945, where he remained until 1950 before returning to active duty in the Navy. At the time of his retirement in 1965, he was commanding officer of the Naval Reserve Training Center in Baltimore. In 1965 Capt. Lathrop began teaching mathematics at the Landon School in Bethesda, Md. He created Landon’s first varsity lacrosse team and served as head coach until 1974, when he returned to Annapolis. MERLE SHORE, CLASS OF 1954 A gathering in honor of Merle Shore, a member of the class of 1954 who became a noted artist and art director, will be held at the home of tutor Sam Kutler and his wife, Emily (classes of 1954 and ’55), during Homecoming Weekend 2006 in Annapolis. Mr. Shore died January 28, 2006, in Santa Barbara, Calif., at the age of 86. After serving in the Navy for five years during World War II, Mr. Shore started his own graphic and commercial art studio in Hollywood, Calif. In 1950, at age 31, he fulfilled a lifelong ambition to attend St. John’s and put his art career on hold while he immersed himself in the Program. After graduating from St. John’s, Mr. Shore resumed his professional art career in Santa Barbara. Mr. Shore served as art director for Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label, as well as art director for Verve and Warner Brothers, where he also illustrated album covers. He illustrated for magazines including Esquire, Playboy, Saturday Evening Post, and { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } Atlantic Monthly. He did book illustrations and commercial advertising. His artistic talents extended to the cinema as well; he designed graphics for the films Manchurian Candidate and Spartacus. He was also a serious painter. Mr. Shore is survived by his wife, Priscilla Bender-Shore (class of 1955), whom he married in 1951 and who attended St. John’s with him, a daughter, son, son-in-law, three grandchildren and two brothers. For details on the luncheon gathering, contact Mr. Kutler at: 410-263-2261, or by e-mail at: reltuk@comcast.nrt. ALEX MAGOSCI , SF89 Alex Magosci, SF89, died Friday, March 24, 2006, in Santa Fe. Born in New York and raised in Dallas, Mr. Magosci was an accomplished writer and musician who made many friends, especially in the music scene in Santa Fe. After graduating from St. John’s in 1989, he became music editor for The Dallas Observer. He moved back to Santa Fe in 1990 and later became an editor and columnist for the Santa Fe New Mexican. He was a drummer for a number of rock groups both in Dallas and Santa Fe. ALSO NOTED: JOHN BRUNN (class of 1947), Jan. 17, 2006 D. MASON CHEEZUM (class of 1933), Feb. 2, 2006 BRUCE COLLIER (class of 1965), March 26, 2006 THE REV. FREDERICK P. DAVIS (class of 1949), Jan. 7, 2006 THOMAS G. FROMME (class of 1950), March 31, 2006 MICHAEL F. GRAY (SGI84), Jan. 29, 2005 MARK HABREL (SF75), March 10, 2006 THOMAS JUSKEVICH (A03), March 15, 2006 LAWRENCE KANTOR (class of 1935), Feb. 20, 2006 HAROLD MILSTEAD (class of 1937), March 23, 2006 RALPH RACE (class of 1930), died February 20, 2006 STEWART A. WASHBURN (class of 1951), Feb. 17, 2006 INA WUNDRAM (SFGI97), Jan. 18, 2006 �40 {Croquet} S WEET VICTORY alex lorman G other stake. That happened; Navy staked me out. So, on my first turn after sitting out, I took a shot to go to the other end of the court, and that turned out nicely. Navy set themselves right in front of the wickets that they needed to go through next, and they were halfway back to the finishing stake.They could have won. “The closest ball to me was blue. But it was probably about 20- to 30-feet away—the Hail Mary shot of croquet. On my turn—what actually turned out to be the actual last turn—I took probably an eight-foot shot to hit the stake. Because I hit the stake, I got an extra shot. The first plan that presented itself was to rocket my ball to the other end of the court so I could be close to that stake. But Navy was guarding that stake, so there was a chance of being staked Above: Mac Ward and Geremy Coy (both A06) ponder out again. their strategy; at left: Coy celebrates victory. Opposite page, clockwise: the Dobbyn family, decked “As I was setting myself up to out in seersucker suits: Jack (A02), Joe (A05), take that shot, suddenly Plan B Mike (A06), and Dick (A06), with future Johnnie arose, and I saw blue, lodged in Alex Dobbyn; Tutor Cordell Yee and his daughter, his wicket. That was the long before the skies cleared; a natty group of Johnnies shot. I struck the ball—it was a enjoy a beautiful afternoon; Navy’s minions await leap of faith shot. I worried I their duties; Peter Kalkavage leads the freshman hadn’t put enough on it, but it chorus. took the perfect little curve and hit blue—the crowd erupted, this was huge! hit the ball. But my ball ended much farther “So, I had a second shot on them, and now I had to get to black, all the way over on from the stake. All I had to do was hit the stake and win the game. I bent down on one the other side of the court. I reared back, knee. I could hear people on the sidelines. put as much as I could into it, somehow it I reared back, hit the ball, hit the stake, Mac bounced off a nearby wicket, and struck rushed at me, people were swarming, and black! Now I had two more shots, and this my glasses were lost.” serene calm. Since Navy had been sticklers Final score: St. John’s 5, Navy 0. x about the quiver rule [when two balls are in contact, the striking player must make the opponent’s ball quiver], I was careful when I dimitri fotos eremy Coy (A06) never dreamed he’d get to be “the man.” He had never been hoisted atop the shoulders of a little league team after hitting the winning homerun, never doused with Gatorade after scoring the winning touchdown. But thanks to croquet, Coy got to be a sports hero. Three-and-a-half hours into the annual contest with Navy, the Johnnies had won two matches, and a tense match was unfolding between Coy and Mac Ward (A06) and their Navy opponents. The Mids were determined to try to take the Annapolis Cup for the second straight year. Coy was in position to make the winning shot. With Zen-like concentration, he took the mallet into his hands . . . and had ESPN been there, this is what he would have told the interviewer: “I had gone through all my wickets, so all I had to do was finish. There’s a rule that if the other team knocks your ball into the stake, then you lose two turns, and you have to go to the other end of the court, hit that stake and then go back down and hit the { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �41 dimitri fotos dimitri fotos alex lorman {Croquet} As part of the croquet tradition, the Imperial Wicket went to the Naval Academy the Friday before the match to speak to the Corps of Midshipman at lunch in the mess hall following their noontime formation. In keeping with the Soviet theme the Johnnies adopted, Matt Mangold read two pages of excerpts from the Communist Manifesto. But not a word could be heard above the din of the Middies, hooting, hollering, and banging their silverware against their plates and on the tables. (It is another good-natured part of the tradition for the Corps to shout down the Johnnie.) “It was hard to pass up the chance—so rich with irony—to read Karl Marx to this room of some 4,000 screaming midshipmen,” said Mangold. x The Team Imperial Wicket Matt Mangold (A06); Rob Hurst (A07); Tommy Dyer (A06); Micah Beck (A09); Ian Hanover (A08); Charlie Fleming (A08); Mac Ward (A06); Geremy Coy (A06); Paul Patrone (A06); Andrew MacKinlay (A06); Will Kelly (A07); and Dan Houck (A06). gary pierpoint The Touch of Irony Soviet Domination. The team uniforms this year were red t-shirts with the hammer and sickle (croquet mallets taking the place of the hammer). The team emerged from the BarrBuchanan Center to the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR.” gary pierpoint The Theme { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �42 { A l u m n i tA ses o c il lt i oo w N r s }s } {From h Be a T n e ew From the Alumni Association President I recently made my pledge to the college’s Capital Campaign, and I am hoping you will, too! As my non-Johnnie husband and I talked about our gift, I had a chance to articulate for him the several reasons that I wanted to give the largest gift we could afford. First, I hope that generations of eager readers and talkers can immerse themselves in the St. John’s Program long into the future. I want to help ensure that others have the same opportunity I had when I went to college to engage with the books and fellow students as we learned about ourselves, each other, and the most profound questions. I feel honor-bound to help others share this experience. Second, I see my gift as an acknowledgement of the people at the college who taught me so much. Tutors, administrators, and fellow students all shared their questions and emerging answers with me. I want to say “thank you” to one particular tutor who read my Kant essay, gave me a copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, and sent me home to rewrite and rethink it. I can name the people who influenced me, just as I’m CHAPTER CONTACTS ALBUQUERQUE Robert Morgan, SF76 505-275-9012 rim2u@comcast.net ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410-951-7359 emartin@crs.org AUSTIN Charles Claunch, SFGI05 512-446-0222 cclaunch.sjcalum@ earthlink.net BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen, A77 410-472-9158 deborahcohen@ comcast.net BOSTON Dianne Cowan, A91 617-666-4381 dianecowan@rcn.com CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 rlightburn@gmail.com DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbell.net sure you can name those who were important in your time at St. John’s. Conversations with these people were most intense while I was on campus, but they have continued through the years and (I expect) will carry on through my lifetime. Third, I wish to help make an investment in the physical and fiscal infrastructure that supports the college. As a student I had little appreciation for the practical side of the college community. I didn’t know (or care) what it cost to house and feed us, to maintain a committed faculty, and to take care of the myriad challenges of daily life. Today I appreciate the institutional needs and monetary necessities of sustaining a community like St. John’s, and I want to do what I can so those on the campuses can focus on the work that really matters—reading and talking about the books. Finally, my gift is, in part, a thank-you to those alumni and friends of St. John’s who have made leadership gifts to the campaign. We have received some remarkable gifts from individuals with much greater giving capacity than mine. My gift is one way I can thank them for their commitment to the college’s community, institution, and Program. They have invested in our college because they believe in our principles and want to help perpetuate this special way of learning and teaching. With my gift, I want to thank everyone who invests in St. John’s. There are many other reasons for me and probably for you, too: • Foundations are impressed and give more when a high percentage of alumni participate in giving to the college. • Government support for private colleges is dwindling or being redirected. • Many students who want and would benefit from a St. John’s education struggle to make ends meet. • Giving to the college keeps me connected with a community of people I admire and enjoy. • I see a new level of strength and stability in college staff and leadership. • I am concerned about the state of the public discourse across the country, and I think the college offers a good alternative to dogma and demagoguery. • I want to be sure that when I come back for my 40th, 50th, and 60th reunions the college is there to greet me—stronger than ever. The Alumni Association is independent of the college, and as an organization we focus on serving the constituency of the alumni (as opposed to being organizationally focused on fundraising). We provide opportunities for alumni to engage in many ways that do not involve financial support. On the other hand, the Alumni Association board recognizes the significance of this campaign and is committed to supporting the “clear and single purpose.” The board has approved a campaign gift of $75,000 to support the college’s new online alumni community (click on “For Alumni” on the college’s Web site) and endowment for scholarships. We also expect that every one of the 47 members of the Alumni Association board will make a personal pledge to support the campaign. Please join us. Whatever your reasons, I’m sure they are compelling. Thank you for all the ways you support the college! PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 215-482-5697 helenstevezartarian@ mac.com SOUTHERN CALIF. SALT LAKE CITY Elizabeth Eastman, Erin Hanlon, AF03 SFGI84 801-364-1097 erin_hanlon@juno.com 562-426-1934 e.eastman@verizon.net SANTA FE TRIANGLE CIRCLE, Richard Cowles, NORTH CAROLINA SFGI95 Susan Eversole, SF79 505-986-1814 rcowles2@comcast.net 919-968-4856 sfevers@yahoo.com SEATTLE James Doherty, AFGI76 WASHINGTON, DC Deborah Papier, A72 206-542-3441 202-387-4520 jdoherty@mrsc.org dpapier@verizon.net SOUTH FLORIDA WESTERN NEW Jon Sackson, A69 ENGLAND 305-682-4634 Peter Weiss, SF84 jonathan.sackson@ 413-367-2174 ubs.com peter_weis@ nmhschool.org DENVER/BOULDER Lee Katherine Goldstein, SGI90 720-746-1496 LGoldstein@ Lindquist.com MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu NEW YORK CITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 president@ sjcalums.com PITTSBURGH Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 Joanne.Murray@ alcoa.com PORTLAND Lake Perriguey, SF91 503-803-5184 lake@law-works.com SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 NORTHERN CALIF. Reynaldo Miranda, A99 805-684-6793 srico@sandi.net 415-333-4452 reynaldo.miranda@ gmail.com { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } Glenda Eoyang (SF76) �43 { o u ni e B c t T w ws s { F rA lm m t h A s s o e ilal i o no N ee r } } Eva in Israel Annapolis tutor Eva Brann was asked to lecture at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in January. She spoke on Plato’s Republic and the next day took part in a seminar with members of the Philosophy Department of the Hebrew University. “It began wonderfully when a professor said, ‘I will tell you the difference between a Socratic conversation and a Talmudic discussion. In the first, Socrates and his partners all come knowing nothing and they leaving knowing nothing, friends as before. In the second, the rabbis come each with his opinion and they leave each with that opinion, friends as before.’ ” The college knows of 23 alumni living in Israel. Miss Brann had an opportunity to meet about half of them at a lively dinner in Jerusalem. “One, Jed Arkin (A85), made himself my special host, and we did something marvelous,” Miss Brann says. “We— he and his lovable two sons and his army pal and I—went to the Negev, the beautiful desert in southern Israel. We went in two jeeps, intercom, mini-Uzi, water and all, but the land was empty and grand.” x West Coast Johnnies Dedicated volunteers have always been the hallmark of strong alumni chapters, and Elizabeth Eastman (SFGI84), president of the Southern California Chapter for the past six years, is no exception. “I’ve always been looking for ways to extend the mission of St. John’s outside the boundaries of the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses,” says Eastman, “Alumni chapters can play a critical role in extending the college’s reach.” Six years ago, Eastman, with the help of Susan Allen (SGI89), a member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, reinvigorated the Southern California chapter, drawing members from a wide geographic area that was once served by three chapters. “There is an enormous challenge here because of the distances people have to travel and the traffic. To make this viable we had to select a central location, the Westwood area of Los Angeles, and the time we picked, Sunday afternoon, is also dictated by the 43 but prior to Hitler’s rise to power,” says Eastman. The person who chooses the reading typically leads the seminar, says Eastman. About half of the readings are from the St. John’s curriculum, including the Eastern Classics program. “We talk about life experiences,” says Eastman. “It is not uncommon to have someone from every decade, back to the 1940s. This makes for a fabulous discussion with different perspectives from different generaA desert wanderer: Tutor Eva Brann with Tal and Matin tions, and yet age is Arkin, sons of Jed Arkin (A85), in the Negev last winter. transcended.” Benjamin Friedman, traffic,” says Eastman. Members, who who grew up in Santa Fe, where his include Benjamin Friedman (SF95), mother worked at the college and both his Dierdre Lenihan (A67), and Amy Cooper parents attended the Graduate Institute, (SF75), come from Los Angeles as well as agrees, “It’s very interesting having areas such as Claremont, 40 miles east, seminars with a more diverse group than I Santa Barbara, 90 miles north, and had as an undergrad; the maturity of the Orange, about 32 miles southeast. participants make for some fascinating The geographic spread of the chapter’s and surprising discussions. I run into area also dictates the kinds of events the people at the seminars who babysat me chapter can hold. “We don’t have signature when they were students, or were the events like wine tastings and cultural parents of children I played with during activities. We are solely a reading group,” the summer GI sessions oh so many years says Eastman. “It can take some members ago. I always wonder who I’ll encounter longer to travel here than they’re here for from my past when I walk into a seminar.” the seminar, so we have a potluck following Over the years the chapter members it to make it worthwhile. It is a contrast to have invited tutors to lead their discusNew York chapter, for instance, where they sions, among them Eva Brann, Frank have ease of access to the downtown area.” Pagano, John Balkcom (SFGI00), and Eastman mails postcard reminders one Sam Kutler (class of 1954). “We also had month prior to each gathering, inviting Danielle Allen, (Susan Allen’s daughter alumni, friends of the college, and also and a professor of classics at the University participants in the Summer Classics of Chicago) lead a seminar on her book program offered at Santa Fe. Alumni— Talking to Strangers. I actually went to the about half are from Annapolis and half St. John’s summer day camp in Santa Fe from Santa Fe—bring along significant with Danielle when we were both kids and others, spouses, and friends for the her mom was in the GI,” says Freidman. monthly two-hour seminar which focuses Eastman, a busy mother of two who has on a reading chosen the month before. a master’s degree in political science, will This spring, the Southern California step down this spring as president of the chapter discussed Shakespeare’s Troilus Southern California chapter. But she’ll and Cressida in March, and in April always make time for seminars with other they will discuss “The Concept of the Johnnies. “The opportunity to have a Political.” “It’s a short political tract that conversation is so welcome, it brings Carl Schmitt wrote during the Weimar balance to my life,” she says. x period in Germany after World War I, { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �44 44 { F { Ao mm n ihA s sB c il t i o n oN e e r}s } r lu t e o e al T w ws Summer in Santa Fe: Great Books, Great Friends discussion, the practicum brings participants to paint outside at some of the most compelling sites in Santa Fe. Guided gallery tours will provide an opportunity to revel in contemporary and classic Western art. No painting experience is required. This year’s other offerings are: Descartes’ Discourse on Method, led by tutor Sam Kutler (class of 1954) and the Book of Job and Karl Jung’s “Answer to Job,” led by tutors Keri Ames and Jessica Jerome. Through the Summer Alumni Program in Santa Fe, alumni from both campuses can spend a week revisiting a favorite Program work, discussing something they’ve never read before with other Johnnies, painting, listening to opera, and enjoying the company of others who love books and ideas. The program this year starts Sunday, July 23, and runs through Friday, July 29, when Homecoming begins. To find out more about the program, visit the college Web site: www.stjohnscollege.edu; click on “Alumni” and follow the link to the “Summer Alumni Program.” More information is available by calling the Santa Fe Alumni office at 505-984-6103. Two avid participants of the Summer Alumni Program shared their thoughts on what makes the week worthwhile. “Revelling in Art” Elizabeth Pollard Jenny (SF80), an artist who lives in Boulder, Co., brings art to participants in the Summer Alumni Program. In 1995, I noticed that St. John’s was offering alumni the chance to return to Santa Fe for a week with fellow alumni from all different years and from both campuses to study together. This seemed to me like a way to really keep the conversation going. St. John’s alumni leave the college with the message that we are the enduring community of the college. I have always construed being a Johnnie to mean being a life-long learner who keeps the conversation going, in our world and in our college community. I responded to the mailer because, along with giving me an opportunity to check in with my fellow alumni, it offered me the chance to study art in one of the art capitals of the United States.That summer, I was fortunate to take the seminar, practicum, and lecture with tutors Charles Bell and Steve Houser, and with Steve’s wife, Michelle Bender. Steve and Michelle designed the art tutorial in Santa Fe. In addition, John Agresto, then president of the Santa Fe campus, took Alumni Program and Summer Classics participants on a tour of Hispanic religious folk art in Chimayo, Taos, and Truchas. “There’s a Special Conversation” Mary Fisher (AGI92) of Ontario, N.Y., will attend the Summer Alumni Program for her fifth straight year. Catch up with friends this July in Santa Fe. Register by June 30 for the Summer Alumni Program. In addition to sharing his knowledge about the artwork, John showed us a great restaurant along the Rio Grande, where we stopped and had fresh trout for lunch. During another summer, I took the course offerings that focused on issues relating to consciousness, artificial intelligence, and optics, with one of my former tutors, Phil Chandler (A68), and his son. The Alumni Program has been a wonderful way to revisit familiar friends and places, but it has also been a way to meet new people and explore new paths in this Johnnie enterprise of learning together. That brings me to my role as offering an art practicum to alumni through the Summer Alumni Program. To me, painting in and around Santa Fe with fellow alumni is like a dream come true. Add to this that you are in Santa Fe, you can see contemporary art shown in local galleries, and you can meet artistic alumni during the AllAlumni Art Show. With tutor Phil LeCuyer, this year I will be leading the practicum side of “Plein-Air Painting as Practice and Reflection.” The program includes seminar discussions of the nature of perception and the role of visual art in the formation of our language of perception. Complementing seminar After I graduated from the Graduate Institute in 1992, I received information about the Summer Alumni Program. I thought it would be a dream come true to reconnect with the college and have enriching conversations with Johnnies. There’s a special kind of conversation that we develop among ourselves, and it’s a wonderful way to encounter other human beings. In 2002, I thought, “If I don’t start doing it, when will I do it?” It’s not easy to make these treks, but since my oldest son and his family live in Colorado, I can get to Santa Fe on my trips to visit them. As I considered signing up for the first year, the thing that really clinched it for me was that Eva Brann and David Carl were leading a discussion on the Republic and I had the never had the opportunity take a seminar with Miss Brann. And there was Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, with Peter Pesic. I’m a musician, so that was a joy. One of the wonderful things about the Summer Alumni Program is that we have access to Santa Fe Opera tickets at a reduced rate. One summer, as part of the seminar that included plein-air painting with Liz Jenny, we made trips to artists’ studios. We were also reading Heidegger and listening to Don Giovanni. I really have a special appreciation for the seminars on the arts. In painting and in sculpture—in all the arts—we find different aspects of the { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �45 { o u ni e B c t T w ws s { F rA lm m t h A s s o e ilal i o no N ee r } } human community. Last year, I had another seminar with Miss Brann and Mr. Carl, this time on Milton. What I find really remarkable is that we alumni can encounter each other in conversation about so many different aspects of what life is about, not just in the philosophy and the sciences, but also in the various arts—which in my world is a huge part of what I consider the riches of being on this earth. In a seminar, we don’t just look at the structure of the music, we also talk about human themes. That brings me to one of the real riches I find in this kind of alumni encounter. We’ve gone out into the world, done a multitude of things, and lived all kinds of different lives. That enriches our conversation, but it also gives us an added opportunity to reflect on what our ongoing lives are about. When we revisit a book such as The Republic, we have a wonderful opportunity Are you Reading? From Portland, Oregon to Putney, Vermont alumni chapters and groups all over the country continue to “read the books.” Eighteen chapters and three reading groups held events during 2005. In the last four years, several new groups worked with the alumni offices to organize seminars and other events. As one alumna wrote, “Anyone wish to start a reading group? I’m starving for some intellectual discourse.” Here’s a look at some newer locations creating SJC alumni groups: • The Pittsburgh group became a chapter in 2003 after more than a year of regular activities as a reading group. Though there are fewer than 70 St. John’s alumni in their area, they have 6 to 10 people at their monthly events. • The Western New England reading group has been holding seminars since 2002. In 2005, they had a regular bi-monthly schedule of events for their nearly 130 alumni. • The Miami/South Florida reading group, drawing from over 200 alumni in their area, has held regular seminars during both 2004 and 2005 and will be petitioning to become a chapter this coming year. • The Salt Lake City reading group has held seminars since November 2004. to look at larger issues and gain more insight into the work. These books don’t stand alone; it’s the tutors and the other participants who help lead us to a greater understanding of these ideas. St. John’s is not just a four-year experience. It’s the kind of ground on which we build our lives. There’s always more to be learned, and there’s always something interesting to talk about. We are works in progress. Any of us can become a little harassed by things so that we get hog-tied, like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. Every summer, we have the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with all the college can offer us. The college arranges this special time just for us alumni. 45 It’s something much richer, and sustaining and balancing, and it stays with us when we leave. It is nutrition for our mind’s eye. We really are privileged to have this opportunity. x Alumni from both campuses choose a thinking vacation with the Summer Alumni Program. There are only 45 alumni in the area, but they have had 6 to 14 people attending each event. • In Atlanta, alumni stay connected with informal groups and at gatherings sponsored by the Alumni office. • A meeting is planned in Phoenix to organize area alumni this spring. • Interest is brewing to start a local chapter in the Indianapolis area. Though the number of alumni in the area is small, the desire to read and talk to other Johnnies remains strong. Though not every attempt to start a reading group has been successful, there does not seem to be a minimal number of alumni needed to have sufficient interest Christopher Nelson (SF70), president of the Annapolis campus, and President Michael Peters, president in Santa Fe, regularly visit chapters and reading groups. Tutors from Annapolis and Santa Fe are interested and available to travel to chapters and groups throughout the country. The Alumni Office funds their trips and provides an average of two tutor visits per year to chapters. Alumni interested in assessing interest in holding seminars and other activities in a new area should contact Jo Ann Mattson, Alumni Director, at JoAnn.Mattson@ sjca.edu or 410-626-2531. The alumni office staff provides support in setting up an initial event, answering questions, giving advice on how to get started, and { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary – Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair – Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76 Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. mailing notices to all alumni within the geographic area identified. The new Online Community is also an excellent way to keep in touch with alumni in your area and to stay involved. You can find a listing of your chapter or group’s events at www.stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “alumni” and then “chapters.” x �46 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } T WO MONTHS BEFORE THE MAST by Todd Wilson (AGI00) Todd Wilson combines yoga with duties at the helm. Wilson never quite got his sea legs during his Reach the World voyage. Todd Wilson spent two months aboard the Makulu a 43-foot sailboat, documenting his experiences for Reach the World, an educational organization that seeks to give inner-city students in grades three through six a wider view of their world. B ased in New York City, Reach the World is a nonprofit organization founded by Heather Halstead. Sailor-educators circumnavigate the world and document their journey using digital cameras, laptops, and the Reach the World Web site. They post answers to eight essential questions for each geographic region on the site, which teachers use as part of their curriculum. Before the voyage, we met the students and toured their schools in the Bronx, Queens, and Harlem, talking to them about the itinerary. The goal is to open their minds to the idea that they belong to a global community. Since graduating from the GI, I have sought eclectic positions in education, such as teaching English on the Texas/Mexico border with Teach for America and managing an environmental education campus in Yosemite National Park. When RTW offered me a job, I thought: How can I pass on this opportunity? I have always been interested in documentary films, photography, and journalism. The great books, being the ancient documents of societies and human thought, seemed the perfect foundation. Thus, I went to learn about modern human life from observing how people live and the environment living around them, documenting it all for students. As part of a five-person crew, I sailed from Cairns, Australia, to Bali, Indonesia. Jim, the captain, and Hannah, the first mate, taught the fundamentals of sailing to Amie, Tonia and me: steering a course, reading charts, and navigating open waters in daylight and darkness. Each day at sea was spent rotating through a watch and { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } cooking schedule, meeting about the program, writing, and for me, finding time to practice yoga on the aft deck—usually in three- to six-foot waves. We all worked to keep a tidy, safe ship. And the weather was consistently helpful with more wind and sunshine than galls and high seas. As the days turned like pages from a great, blue mind, I found the open ocean to be a true wilderness. From my first glimpse of the Great Barrier Reef to dolphins racing to and fro off the bow, sparkling with phosphorescence in midnight waters, I realized that the ocean is untamed and amazing. We bring a floating shell of humanity, yet our coming is one precarious rise and fall upon the waves after another. I embraced the austere vastness of being at sea with respect and humility. Three days out of Australia in the Timor Sea, we stopped Makulu for an afternoon swim. After 20 minutes, Hannah called us aboard quietly. Once atop, she pointed to the five tiger sharks that joined us from the depths. “Just visiting,” I whispered. Komodo Island was truly enigmatic, a land rare and sculpted by time into timelessness. The land befits the dragon that exists only there, the largest lizard in the world. When I first saw two dragons below the kitchen, they were flattened out like �{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s } 47 todd wilson Left: A hut on Komodo Island frames the MAKULU. Below: Schoolchildren on Balo-Baloang stop to pose for Wilson. attaining balance than enjoying the ocean’s grandeur. It was not seasickness (though I did lose my crackers coming into Bali after 10 hours enduring 10-foot seas); I can only describe it using the Ayurvedic term ahamkara, which translates as the todd wilson dogs: content and lacking ferocity. Two hours later we tracked a female with a radio collar to her nest. Again, the sight of her brought a fearless awe. She, like all things rare, lived through the myths and labels in the simplicity of being. Two weeks later, we visited a school on Balo-Baloang Atoll. The tiny island (twohour circumambulation) is the home of shipbuilders. These men have honed their craft for a thousand years, and like the dragons, only these Indonesian seas are home to their designs. In their presence, Makulu looked extravagant and awkward in her modernity. We felt the slowness of time here when we signed the school’s register, the sixth visitors in five years! In a classroom without electricity, we interviewed the students about their unique and simple lives, their teacher translating our words. Afterwards, we enjoyed lunch at the teacher’s stilt house: sweets, tea, black-sugar coffee, rice, and vegetable broth eaten on the floor of the kitchen, with our fingers, the women and children waiting for the guests to eat first. I had signed on for a two-year journey. But my new environment rattled my equilibrium, and days were more about { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } integral feeling of self despite the commingling of the numerous physical elements of which we are composed. My ahamkara was tilted, and this feeling combined with the understanding that my overall health was the foundation of any position. Even though I loved the work on land, the days at sea took my legs from me. After an amazing two months before the mast, I chose to leave and offer the rare opportunity to someone who is an educator and a sailor. I am sure there are a few Johnnies who fit this description. x Wilson’s articles on Australia and Bali can be found at www.reachtheworld.com �48 {St. John’s Forever} Books, Balance and a Bell Tower A crane sets in place the iron finial in the bell tower of Weigle Hall in Santa Fe, circa 1972. The finial was designed by John Gaw Meem, the noted architect who also donated the land for St. John’s Western campus. Meem’s finial was meant to represent a “stand-up” version of the college seal, according to an article in the Santa Fe New Mexican. First called the Tower Building and later renamed for former St. John’s President Richard Weigle (HA49), the campus’ main academic building was dedicated in 1971, while work on the finial was still under way. Design of the finial was one of the few commissions that Meem took after he { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } retired in 1960, according to John Gaw Meem: Southwestern Architect, by Bainbridge Bunting: “. . . Meem accepted only a few commissions from close friends or produced occasional designs for a public cause or for historical preservation. Among these . . . the delightful bell tower on the administration building of St. John’s College . . .” x �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Calendar Come home to Santa Fe this summer! This year’s festivities including a special Opening Celebration for “With a Clear and Single Purpose”: The Campaign for St. John’s College, along with the traditional Homecoming Banquet, art show, and varied parties. Catch up with your old friends, make new ones, and learn about the college’s plans for the future. Friday, July 28 2 - 5 p.m. Registration 5:30 p.m. “With a Clear and Single Purpose,” Opening Celebration for the Capital Campaign 9 p.m. Rock Party in the Coffee Shop Saturday, July 29 10 a.m. Seminars Noon – 2 p.m. Picnic 2 – 3 p.m. All-Alumni gathering 4 p.m. Alumni and tutor book signing 5 – 6 p.m. “Speaking Volumes” lecture: Louise Heydt (EC97), author of Divine Rainbow: Nature as Spiritual Teacher 5:30 – 7 p.m. All-Alumni art show 5: 30 p.m. Combined art show and “Speaking Volumes” reception 7 – 9 p.m. Homecoming banquet 9 p.m. Cantina San Juan: margaritas and mariachi at the Homecoming ball 9: 30 p.m. Movie: Singing in the Rain Annapolis Mark your calendars for Annapolis Homecoming, Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, 2006. The theme: Oktoberfest. Look for a brochure to be mailed this summer, or watch the St. John’s Web site, www.stjohnscollege.edu, for more details. Sunday, July 30 8 – 11 a.m. Early Riser – light breakfast fare in the Fireside Lounge 11 a.m. Brunch, hosted by Mike and Eleanor Peters Mountain in Santa Fe by Virginia Strong Newlin, SFGI74 One August night three of us tried to scale a small peak above the college. We took the rock face, sneakers slipping, gripping whatever felt firm to grasping hands. hauling ourselves to the top, we sat upon stones spoke softly, looking over St. John’s in silver sleep amongst its great books. bill denison In the sky great constellations spread near enough to finger in the midnight air. I thought of being East again, the session over, minus this evening’s mountain walk and the highs of a seminar’s lively talk on Aristotle and Aquinas, Aeschylus and Socrates, handholds for people scaling peaks. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Spring 2006 } �P ERIODICALS P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 2006 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 32, Issue 2 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2006. 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_2006 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/3a19509323264357be8eaac0921b176e.pdf 48f0e90eaa58fdcecec216a701015db5 PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe J.S. Bach Music and Culture S p r i n g 2 0 0 7 �On Bach The College (usps 018-750) tudying Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is one of the great moments in four years of St. John’s. Indeed, if the college ever required a theme song, the Passion would do quite well. What makes it a great work worthy of the Program? To Eric Stoltzfus, music librarian in Annapolis,“it’s the combination of a very powerful story, and a sense that there’s a brilliant mind interpreting that story and adding things to it.” Peter Kalkavage, who led the Annapolis Community Chorus in its performance of the opening and closing choruses of the work, says the Passion is an immensely satisfying culmination of two years of the study of music, a work that holds special meaning for many alumni years after they leave the college. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685, a year that saw the birth of two other great musicians: Georg Friedrich Handel and Domenic Scarlatti. By the time he was 10, both of Bach’s parents were dead, and Bach came under the wing of his eldest brother, Johann Christoph, who helped guide his musical education. Bach sang in a boys’ choir, and later turned to the organ, pursuing his musical education independently. At age 18, he was appointed organist of the New Church in Arnstadt, where he kept getting into trouble. (In 1705, he brawled with a student and called him a “nanny-goat bassoonist”; the following year was reprimanded for staying away too long from his post after he traveled to another city to hear a great organist.) In 1707, Bach became organist in Mühlhausen, where he married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, with whom he had seven children. Other posts followed: court organist and chamber musician, later concert master at Weimar; musical director at Köthen for Prince Leopold of Anhalt; music director and cantor of the church of St. Thomas, Leipzig. He was the third choice for the post at St. Thomas, which he took up in 1723, and he so disliked one of his duties—teaching Latin to the schoolboys—that he paid someone else to do it. In a span of about five years in Leipzig, Bach gave the first performance of the St. John Passion and produced the Magnificat and the St. Matthew Passion. After Maria Barbara’s death, Bach married Anna MagdalenaWülken, a gifted musician, who bore him 13 children. Bach died in 1750, but four of his sons continued his legacy: Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian, Wilhelm Friedemann, and Johann Christoph Friedrich. C.P.E. Bach co-wrote his father’s obituary, which praised his moral character, piety, and devotion to his art: “If ever a composer showed polyphony in its greatest strength, it was certainly our late lamented Bach. If ever a musician employed the most hidden secrets of harmony with the most skilled artistry, it was certainly our Bach.” This issue of the magazine considers music’s place in the Program. Not only is it important in the classroom, but music in all its forms also enlivens the communities on both campuses, with groups such as Primum Mobile singing sacred music in the Pendulum Pit in Annapolis, and tutors such as Cary Stickney in Santa Fe sharing their talents and love for music with all of us. S —RH is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty, editor Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Gail Griffith, Santa Fe editor Emily DeBusk, assistant editor Jennifer Behrens, art director Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Elizabeth Burlington (A08) Caroline Caldwell (SF08) Nelson Hernandez (A99) Andrea Lamb Oliver Lemke (SF08) Peter Pesic Jennifer Sprague Jennifer Wright (A08) Elliott Zuckerman (HA95) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �Spring 2007 Vo l u m e 3 3 , I s s u e 2 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 10 “With a Clear and Single Purpose” d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • • • What the $125 million campaign for St. John’s College means to the Santa Fe campus. • • 16 “Sing, Goddess” • page • page 10 As part of the quadrivium, music belongs in the Program, but where and how? 34 Annapolis treasurer Bronté Jones A year in Iraq Green energy for Annapolis Annapolis student establishes leadership retreat Johnnies from foreign lands Restoring Key’s will An Annapolis-born novelist had ties to St. John’s bibliofile “How-to” books for people who think they know how to read. 22 Pop Johnnies page 39 Can YouTube and American Idol coexist with the form of the good? 26 Visual Thinkers from the bell towers alumni P RO F I L E S 38 Christian Acemah (SF05) travels, page page 16 Three artists working in different media share their distinctive works and philosophies. 36 Happy Birthday, Croquet page researches, and writes for African development. 41 Coming of age in tumultuous times, the class of 1966 has a distinct character. 42 Manhattan dealmaker Munir Hussein (A90) discovers cultural understanding in Maine. 48 50 52 Over 25 years, the St. John’s croquet tradition has evolved into a mini-Homecoming. page 26 on the cover Johann Sebastian Bach Illustration by David Johnson obituaries alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} Beyond the Bottom Line Annapolis Treasurer Bronté Jones the man in the photo–her grandfather, Asbury Jones. “Last fall I drove over to my grandparents’ home on the Eastern Shore for my grandfather’s 85th birthday. My grandfather is my absolute favorite person in the whole world. He’s a blue-collar worker and when he retired, he made $16,000 dollars, but he put seven of his kids through college,” says Jones. gary pierpoint A brass-framed photo on Bronté Jones’ desk tells the story of how she has become, at 37, one of the youngest college treasurers in the country, and one of the few African-American women in this male-dominated profession. Jones, who joined St. John’s last summer as treasurer, says she credits her parents for what she has accomplished, but especially “He walked to work until he was 45 to save money. He had a plan–it was about fiscal management and about the differences that could make. I went to college and majored in finance simply because I understood the difference that having strong financial acumen could make in one’s life.” Growing up on the Eastern Shore in a tight-knit family filled with educators (her mother is a retired teacher and three of her mother’s siblings are also educators), Jones saw her grandfather daily and later took his inspiration, along with his photo, on her academic and professional journey. As treasurer of the Annapolis campus, Jones’ position includes fiscal responsibility for the college’s operations and she is a member of the management committee that oversees all aspects of the college’s administration and strategic planning. Jones brings more to her new position at St. John’s than her solid credentials, which include a summer at the Harvard Institute for Educational Leadership, and a master’s in business administration from American University, in addition to her doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. She brings a passionate sense of purpose and the exuberance and desire to help people that mark a leader. Besides her grandfather, her role models for leadership are trailblazers such as Thurgood Marshall, Nelson Mandela, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I’m drawn to the people who feel like their lives are a mission and there is something they’re supposed to accomplish with it.” Jones cites Johnetta Cole, president of Bennett College, as the kind of female leader she admires. “Her book Conversations: Straight Talk with America’s Sister President inspired me— she’s a role model for me. I like people who made a difference and understood their lives’ work to be about enhancing the lives of others,” says Jones, who aspires to be a college president one day. Jones discovered her passion for higher education 10 years ago while she was Bronté Jones discovered her calling in higher education. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{From the Bell Towers} working at the state auditor’s office in Austin, Texas. “Originally I thought I’d be a financial planner, then I wanted to be a finance professor and teach, but when I found myself auditing federal financial aid programs on college campuses I discovered the world of higher education administration. When I went onto college campuses I came alive; I loved getting to know the students. It was and still is about more than making sure the institution’s bills are paid and books are balanced, it’s about relationships and being a bridge for students who need advice.” Jones changed her doctoral focus from finance to higher education administration and was accepted at the University of Texas, Austin. “After completing my doctoral studies in Austin in 2005, it was my dream to return to Maryland. This dream has been fulfilled by having the opportunity to serve as “The true sign of intelligence, per my grandfather, is that you can explain anything to anybody.” Bronté Jones, Annapolis treasurer an officer for a premier institution such as St. John’s,” says Jones. Jones brings her sense of purpose to everything from troubleshooting with custodial staff about new equipment, to offering astute advice on financial strategy at investment meetings with other officers of the college. Yet, dedicated to a leadership style that centers on sharing Rankings Revolt Christopher Nelson (SF70) and Santa Fe President Michael Peters are among 12 college presidents leading a revolt against U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings system. Along with their colleagues, they signed a letter sent to college presidents throughout the nation, asking them to refuse to fill out the magazine’s reputational survey and to refuse to use the rankings in any promotional efforts. The letter asks colleges to give the magazine data collected according to shared professional standards. For almost a decade, St. John’s has declined to take part in the U.S. News and World Report survey, maintaining that rankings don’t help students choose a college that is right for them. Both presidents have been quoted in the national press on the college’s opposition to rankings of any kind. Throughout the spring, college presidents continued to sign on to the effort, coordinated through the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that seeks to decommercialize the college selection process. However, U.S. News Editor Brian Kelly dismissed the presidents leading the effort as a small group of “the usual suspects.” “These are the folks making these complaints for years,” he told the Washington Post. x knowledge, she remains accessible, even humble. “The true sign of intelligence, per my grandfather, is that you can explain anything to anybody. Finance isn’t rocket science. I want to explain terms like amortize, life annuity, and alternate investment, and what’s in our endowment. I want everyone to really understand the goals of the institution, how we operate and know that the college and its business office isn’t a mysterious place.” Like many of Jones’ colleagues, President Christopher Nelson is eager to learn from the college’s new treasurer. “We seek Bronté’s advice on everything from policy initiatives to administrative matters. Bronté brings a certain sophistication to the business operations and financial controls that is new to the college,” says Nelson. “The role of a treasurer in a small college is not just a financial manager. Bronté has a higher education background so she can serve us across the whole institution— admissions, financial aid, enrollment management, business, operations, financial management. She brings a level of managerial skill to help all of us to do our work better.” Given the $125 million capital campaign, Jones’ expertise is needed now more than ever. Not only does she help the college manage the funds that are raised through the campaign, she also works with staff to develop a strategic plan that secures the college’s future. Jones says the challenges she faces at St. John’s are unique as compared, for instance, to Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, where she was vice president for administration and finance from 2004 to 2006. “The interesting thing { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } 3 about St. John’s, unlike anywhere else in America, is that we’re actually having discussions about reducing the size of the student enrollment to preserve the rich educational experience of the seminars; this runs contrary to most institutions,” she says. One of Jones’ challenges, she says, is to figure out “how to thrive with 450 instead of 500 students and still provide the small classroom experience that we do.” For Jones this translates into questions such as: Where and how does the college streamline? To what degree does the endowment need to grow in order to sustain the college at 450 students? “There are several questions that we will need to answer. It’s not going to be a tomorrow fix; it’s going to be a multi-year plan.” As Jones moves forward in her new position as treasurer there is one other person besides her grandfather to whom she is especially grateful: her predecessor, Bud Billups (HA03), who was treasurer at the college for more than a decade. “I have such respect and admiration for Bud,” she says. “This is the most ideal situation. It is like running a race and somebody passes you the baton and they want you to run as quickly as you can because you’re all in the race together. That’s how I feel with Bud–he passed me the baton and he wants me to finish the race well.” Jones says her extended family has grown since she met Billups and his wife Bea, an Episcopal minister. “I’ve adopted them as family.” x —Patricia Dempsey �4 {From the Bell Towers} ties and meet students, give lectures, and offer various social events at universities.” Unfortunately, classwork has been severely limited at most of the country’s universities, and the state department deems most universities unsafe to travel to, though Bayer says the situation in the north is better. He plans to travel to universities in Erbil and Fulyamaniyah later this year. The war has disrupted everything in the country, so managing the program presents daily challenges. Bayer sent out e-mails to about 70 trailer, his office, and the “DFACS” where he gets his meals. Little else besides work occupies his time except for reading (Thomas Pynchon’s newest novel, Against the Day; Santa Fe tutor Greg Bayer the third-largest in the world in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra), and arrived in Baghdad last terms of the number of writing (a book project on ArisChristmas to take up a yearmasters’ programs,” Bayer totle). Traveling to and from long assignment as director of says. “It’s not a true exchange the city—as he did earlier this the Fulbright program in Iraq. program: obviously, there spring to make a trip to D.C.— After a grueling flight he aren’t too many students from is a tense ordeal that starts with checked out his new home: a other countries wanting to donning a helmet and a heavy small metal trailer with one bed study in Iraq right now. We will Kevlar vest. “You go out under and some lockers. Jet-lagged, probably have 35 to 40 students the cover of night in a Rhino, a he sat outside by a pool going over to American univerhuge vehicle that’s something formerly owned by Saddam sities this summer and fall. All like a super-armored Hussein, listening to the thud fields are represented: public Winnebago, and travel in a of explosions and watching a health, public affairs, English, convoy,” he explains. thick plume of black Bayer tries not to smoke rise from dwell on the risk outside the walls involved in his job. surrounding the “There are rockets Green Zone. “There’s that come in and a surreal quality of mortars every once in life here in Baghdad,” a while, and someBayer says. times you have to Former Santa Fe duck into these little President John pillboxes,” he says. Agresto, who for nine “You’re on your way months served as the to work in a suit and senior adviser to the tie, you’re thinking Iraqi Higher Educaabout a visa interview tion Ministry, alerted or an ad you have to Bayer to the Fulbright get in the newspaper, opportunity. Bayer and you hear the applied for the posithuds of car bombs tion and for a year’s going off not too far leave from the away.” college. “John talked The Fulbright a few times at the program, he says, college about his provides an oasis of work in Iraq, and he normalcy among the got me interested in Santa Fe tutor Greg Bayer was fitted for his Kevlar vest and helmet—requisite chaos; in desperate the whole situation,” equipment in Baghdad—on his first day in the Green Zone last December. times, it offers hope says Bayer. “I had for a bright future for served on our some talented young Fulbright committee Iraqis. “So much is made, and university contacts and various forms of linguistics, in Santa Fe, and I thought I rightfully so, of all the terrible received just a handful of journalism.” might be able to do some good things that are happening in replies. After they’re awarded This spring, Bayer has been during my sabbatical.” Baghdad,” he says. “It’s dirty, the Fulbright, Iraqi students working to promote the Bayer has an office in the it’s rundown, it’s falling apart, must then get the “right” Iraqi program and solicit applicants Chancery. He works six to but it is still a pretty lively city. passport, go through the visa for fall 2008. He’s organized seven days a week and puts in People are going about their process, and undergo a backnews conferences, given radio 10-hour days, processing applidaily lives, despite everything. ground check by Homeland and television interviews, and cations, interviewing appliThe Iraqis are amazingly Security. Bayer helps usher placed advertising in media cants, helping students negoresilient people.” x them through the process. throughout the country. “The tiate the visa process, and Bayer would enjoy hearing Bayer spends most of his normal way to publicize somepromoting the program thing like the Fulbright,” Bayer time in the Green Zone, and his from members of the St. John’s throughout the country. “Our community: gbayer@sjcsf.edu. daily life restricts him to his explains, “is to go to universiFulbright program in Iraq is Finding Fulbright Scholars in a War Zone { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{From the Bell Towers} Green Power While it can’t install wind turbines on back campus to power the college, St. John’s in Annapolis is nevertheless doing its part for green energy. The college has purchased renewable energy credits (RECs) to cover 100 percent of its energy consumption. Renewable energy credits are created for every 1,000 kilo-watt hours produced by a renewable energy generator. Power plants that use alternative sources, such as the sun, wind, methane from a landfill or wastewater treatment, geothermal energy, and the ocean, garner additional revenue from the sale of RECs so that they become increasingly economical to build and maintain. “We can’t buy wind directly, because there are no turbines in our region or in our grid,” explains Don Jackson, director of operations in Annapolis. “So the energy industry sells credits for electricity produced by wind or photovoltaic sources that say we’ve paid a premium for its product at another location.” By purchasing the credits, the college supports the production of energy through renewable resources. The state requires that about 3.5 percent of all energy purchases be covered by renewable energy credits. Currently, 100 percent of St. John’s energy is covered by renewable energy credits. St. John’s purchased enough to cover 10 mega-watt hours; the college uses 6 megawatt hours per year. “St. John’s will be the first college in Maryland to engage in a green energy commitment beyond current state requirements,” says Skip Trimble, an energy consultant who helped the college evaluate energy options. Green energy, Trimble says, is more than helping the environment. “It establishes alternative energy sources that also make a more secure nation by limiting our reliance on oil and provides a more reliable energy grid by introducing prudent energy diversity,” he says. Although green energy is more expensive than traditional energy sources, Jackson says the college made the purchase of energy credits a spending priority. “It was the right thing to do,” he says. x Inspiring Future Leaders For one week in August, the pristine Limberlost Forest in northern Ontario will be a rendezvous for 12 student activists from around the world. The students will meet under the auspices of International Partnerships through Education and Collaboration (IPEC), a youth conference founded by St. John’s sophomore Malcolm Cecil-Cockwell. Malcolm CecilCockwell (A10), cleaning the shoreline of College Creek, wants IPEC to encourage others to be activists in their community. Cecil-Cockwell was recently awarded a $10,000 grant by the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Foundation to put his proposal for a youth-oriented leadership and education retreat into practice. His idea is to support “personal development through conversation and study, for the sake of leading social change.” Before they meet in Canada, the students, traveling from Canada, India, Mexico, Tanzania, and the U.S., will research their own locality and develop a project to improve their environment and society. While in the Limberlost, “The students will spend time reading and discussing issues related to their projects, as well as participating in workshops led by qualified guest-mentors,” he explains. Cecil-Cockwell has recruited professional volunteers, government lobbyists, and experts on social thought to lead workshops on topics ranging from current news stories to how to collaborate with the media. The big picture, Cecil-Cockwell writes in his proposal, is to make efficient use of youthful motivation by giving it support, direction, and practical skills through dialogue. “In that way, it is very like St. John’s,” he says. Long after the participants leave Canada, Cecil-Cockwell hopes IPEC will be a source of mutual support as these potential leaders return to their countries with new ideas and plans for the future. x From Sanskrit to Skype The Eastern Classics program in Santa Fe immerses graduate students in ancient languages— Sanskrit or Classical Chinese— and texts such as the Tao Te Ching, written by Lao Tzu in about 600 BCE. Jason Litton, who will finish the program this August, took a detour from his { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } 5 study of ancient works to consider how 21st-century technology is playing a role in shaping societies and creating conversations across cultural and geographical barriers. Last March, Litton presented a paper, “On the Potential for Communications Technology to Cause a Fundamental Shift in the Way People Form Societies,” at the New Directions in Critical Theory Conference, an interdisciplinary graduate student forum. Graduate students from all disciplines were invited to present papers on “negotiating and constructing identities” at the University of Arizona conference, and Litton chose to explore how technology facilitates crosscultural communication and the formation of entirely new social groups drawn together by common interests and ideas. Litton taught English for several years in Seoul, South Korea, and used Voice Over Internet Protocol, which allows for phone-like conversations via the Internet, to stay in touch with friends and family. He observed how “in Korea, the most wired country in the world,” virtual communication created a shift from “parlor” conversations to virtual dialogues open to many participants. Advances in translation technology offer the promise of creating communities by overcoming linguistic barriers, he adds. There is a potential downside to virtual interaction, Litton acknowledges: those who replace person-to-person encounters with strictly online interaction can experience isolation, rather than the sense of community. Yet Litton still see great potential for the use of communications technology in education. “You don’t need to be physically present for a conversation,” he says. “Online seminar discussions, conducted across cultural boundaries, could be richly diverse.” x —Oliver Lemke (SF08) �6 {From the Bell Towers} Worlds Away Each year, at least half a dozen foreign students enroll in St. John’s. The College visited with two “F-1” students, an Annapolis Johnnie halfway through the Program and another in Santa Fe, just graduating from St. John’s. Interviews are by Elizabeth Burlington (A08) and Caroline Caldwell (SF08). Yuhai Zhou (A09) Lanzhou, China Distance from Annapolis: 6,258 miles Legendary City “Lanzhou is my birthplace, and I lived there for 15 years until my family moved to Guangzhou in 2002, one of the three biggest cities in China (Beijing and Shanghai are the other two). The other name for Guangzhou is “The City of Five Goats.” It is said when there was famine, five gods on five goats came, each with wheat in its mouth. People accepted the wheat and they finally got a big harvest. Then Guangzhou became the wealthy city in the south. The interesting thing is, before I came to St. John’s, I met four alumni of St. John’s who were teaching in the same college in Guangzhou.” On Dante “So far my favorite book is Dante’s Divine Comedy. Originally, I wanted to write on the Divine Comedy for my sophomore essay, but, because I feel that it is so beautiful, I am afraid of destroying the beauty in that book by writing about it. So I decided to destroy the beauty in another book. I ended up writing on Job.” Alarming Moment “I really like cooking and I have become very famous around campus for my cooking. One day [in Gilliam Hall], the fire engines came and all the alarms went off. Chinese people are famous for their cooking-oil smoke. My father, was living in England in 1995, and he was cooking in the apartment and he caused a lot of oil smoke. So finally he was kicked out by the landlord.” Plans after St. John’s “My plan after St. John’s is to continue to study. When I first left China, I thought that I would like to be a teacher in the countryside. The countryside of China is 70 percent of the population. My father says that if you do not understand the countryside then you don’t understand the whole condition of China. So I decided to go teach in the countryside, but I am not sure if that plan will change after a couple years here. Both of my parents are teaching at the University of China. My mother teaches economy, my father teaches geography.” Felicitas Steinhoff (SF07) Stanhope, Germany Distance from Santa Fe: 4,613 miles Cultural Highlight “Well, in the town I grew up in mostly, in the north, there was this old monastery and there was a rose bush that apparently was over 1,000 years old. That was it. That was the cultural highlight. So basically there was nothing special; lots of towns in Germany have these odd little cultural artifacts that are famous. Usually they will build a church around it. I’ve noticed in America that people will proudly put up signs for a street that’s like 250 years old or a settlement that’s been there since the Founding Fathers. The little town close to where I lived, where my mother lives now in Stuttgart, is originally from 1250 or left: A cooking oil incident made Miss Zhou briefly famous in Annapolis. Right: Even with years of English practice, Miss Steinhoff struggles with idioms. something like the Middle Ages, but there’s no sign or anything proclaiming that loudly.” Biggest Headache “I had been speaking English in school and lived with international students for three years in boarding school. We would basically mix and match English and German phrases all the time. It was still odd to come [to Santa Fe] and all of a sudden there was no German, and not the slightest possibility to speak German, so for the first three days I had the biggest headache ever. I think in English now. I dream in English. The only thing that is still a bit problematic are little idioms and figures of speech that I usually butcher in hilarious ways. I had big issues with the word ‘pneumonia.’ ” On Kant “Kant made up a lot of his own words to describe the things he was talking about. It was easier to read [an English] translation of that because in order to translate you have to interpret { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } it in a certain way that makes sense to you. So the translation itself is almost already an interpretation in itself, which helps, whereas the original is stranger in German. I started reading it in German then I picked up the English one along the way and I thought the English one made much more sense.” Plans after St. John’s “I am right now waiting to get my work permit approved. I don’t really want to go back to Germany yet. I was planning to go to grad school but my senior essay got a little bit in the way of my application process. So I’m going to stay in Santa Fe simply because I have no relatives in the states, but a couple of my friends will be staying too. We’ll all be working full time, saving up money, and then I will apply to grad school in October. I want to get my master’s in counseling psychology.” x �7 {From the Bell Towers} Good Will Preservation The last will and testament of Francis Scott Key, class of 1796, came to the college in 1993 when a descendant of Key thought the college was the rightful place for a document of such historic importance. The author of the “Star-Spangled Banner” was also founder of the college’s Alumni Association and is considered its most famous alumnus. Earlier this spring, the will was transported to the Conservation Center for Arts and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia for an overhaul. The Conservation Center will clean and flatten the document (it was folded in thirds for many years), and will repair a slight tear to one of the pages. The document will be returned to the college next spring in a special box that will preserve it for another two centuries or so. The center will also provide a facsimile of the will that St. John’s will enclose in a glass case and make available for public display. James M. Cain Was Here roy hoopes, roy hoopes collections The words film noir evoke images of a fedora-wearing, wise-cracking private eye, a curvaceous and ultimately treacherous femme fatale, and stark, smoky cinematography. Who would have thought that such scenes, deeply engrained in the American pop consciousness, were straight from the novels of an author who spent his childhood on the sunny campus of St. John’s College? Born in 1892, the son of a St. John’s professor, James Mallahan Cain grew up in the Paca-Carroll dormitory, which was then faculty housing. His father eventually became the vice president of St. John’s before moving the family to Chestertown, Maryland, to become the president of Washington College, from which Cain graduated in 1910. After some time in the army, Grants from the Anne Arundel County Trust for Preservation; Four Rivers: the Heritage Area of Annapolis, London Town and South County; the Maryland Bar Association Foundation; and the Nielsen Bainbridge Company provided funding for the project. Distinguished by bold, elegant script that may or may not be Key’s, the will was first penned in 1837 and amended several times. It arranges for the distribution of Key’s assets to various relatives. Alas, no bequest was made to the college. x Cain became a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, where he met and was influenced by the famous journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken. In 1923, he returned to St. John’s as a professor of journalism. He stayed in Annapolis for just a year before moving to New York to become an editor and writer for various publications, including The New Yorker. With the onset of the Depression, Cain moved to Hollywood where the pay for screenwriters was generous, although his best-known works are novels that became screenplays. As Cain’s novels hit the silver screen during the 1940s, some of the brightest movie stars in Hollywood brought his stories to life: Double Indemnity starred Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck; Joan Crawford was Mildred Pierce; and The Postman Always Rings Twice featured Lana Turner. “Hardboiled” is a term that is James M. Cain penned 19 novels in addition to his short stories and screenplays. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } Key’s will will be preserved for future generations. often applied to Cain’s writing style and, consequently, to the entire genre of classic cinema. (As an example of hard-boiledness, the protagonist in The Postman Always Rings Twice says, “Then I saw her…she really wasn’t a raving beauty, but she had a sulky look to her, and her lips stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her.”) Cain’s works were important contributions to what later became known as the hard-boiled school of American detective and crime fiction, a genre that included another Maryland-born author, Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon), and Raymond Chandler, who wrote the screenplay for Double Indemnity. Though some may dismiss Cain’s work as pulp fiction, he claimed a loyalty to what he called in the preface of Double Indemnity, “the logos of the American countryside,” saying that “the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices, and even the gutters of this country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent.” x —Emily DeBusk (A06) �8 {From the Bell Towers} Guggenheim Winner Santa Fe tutor and musician-inresidence Peter Pesic has been awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship Award for his investigations into the connections between music and natural philosophy. Guggenheim Fellowships recognize “distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.” Pesic plans to examine music in relation to parallel developments in science, philosophy, politics, and art. In Pesic’s view, music and natural philosophy have long and deep connections. “With this award, I hope to explore the dialogue between ‘ancient’ music, or music modeled on the dispassionate beauty of the ‘music of spheres,’ and ‘modern’ music–music devoted to moving human passions,” he says. In February, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Glitch Silences Bell on Essay Night It’s a wonderful tradition at St. John’s for seniors to ring the bell, signifying the completion of their senior essay. But this February in Annapolis, about 50 seniors were robbed of their celebratory peal when the button that students press in the McDowell Hall bell tower stopped working. “The switch got stuck because it’s not made to ring a 100 times in a row,” suggested Sid Phipps, director of buildings and grounds in Annapolis. The college applied to the city of Annapolis for a second exemption to the noise ordinance, and arranged for the seniors who missed the chance in February to have their moment of glory on March 31. chelsea stiegman News & Announcements Board of Visitors and Governors Anna Greenberg (HA96) with Chris Nelson (SF70), left, and Michael Peters, right, has served the Annapolis community well for more than 40 years. Anna E. Greenberg (HA96) and M. Brownell “Brownie” Anderson (HSF98) have been named honorary members of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. The designation recognizes individuals who are stepping down from the college’s governing board for their commitment and contributions to St. John’s. An Annapolis native, Mrs. Greenberg has served for more than four decades as a volunteer leader with civic, educational, social service and religious groups in the community. Ms. Anderson is Senior Associate Vice President of the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Division of Medical Education, where she also serves as the division’s deputy director and executive secretary for the association’s Group on Educational Affairs. The college’s board also welcomes several new members: Sheila Bobbs Armstrong (SF70, EC92, SFGI95) has been involved with the college for more than 40 years. Brad Davidson (A77) is president of SPARDATA. He is a captain in the United States Army Reserve and served on the Annapolis City Council. Until he retired last year, Austin Ligon was the first president and chief executive officer of CarMax, Inc., the nation’s largest retailer of used cars. Mark Lindley (A67) is a retired America Online executive and volunteers for Touchstones, Inc. Ford Rowan (AGI06), a former NBC correspondent, is now a national security consultant. Dolores E. Wolf of Washington, D.C., served for 18 years as vice president of Personnel Resources for American Airlines. Roxanna Zirakzadeh (SFGI04, EC05) owns a bookstore, Symposium, in San Francisco. Staff Earlier this spring, the Santa Fe community said farewell to a long-time and much-valued staff member. Lawrence Martinez, head custodian, retired in March after 31 years of service. Emily Mawhinney (AGI07) joins the Advancement office in Annapolis, where she will manage the Fielding Challenge, part of the college’s $125 million capital campaign. x {Letters} Natural Consequences I am writing to thank you for, and to comment upon, the article entitled “Good Design Starts with Good Questions” (Winter 2007), which features architect David Schwarz (A72). The article’s title is an apt summary of a fascinating conversation. On the other hand, Mr. Schwarz says that “[St. John’s] gives you three things, and only three things: it teaches you how to think, how to read, and how to speak. If you’re lucky, it will also teach you how to write…” I beg to differ on two counts, although I stand in The Great Outside, as a mere Johnnie-parent. My first difference with Mr. Schwarz’s statement is that the word “all” implicitly denigrates skills—thinking, reading and speaking—that are both crucial to our ability to function socially, and so rare as to be remarkable, based on my experience of nearly a quartercentury of teaching graduate students. Even if these comprised the “all” that St. John’s College offered its students, they would be an “all” difficult to improve upon; schools, employers, and organizations—including, I am { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } sure, Mr. Schwarz’s firm—would be ecstatic if they could find a sure source of students, teachers, employees, and workers who could in fact think, read, and speak well. . . My second objection to Mr. Schwarz’s statement, however, is more substantive— it concerns his omission of the natural consequence of the pedagogy of St. John’s College. �9 {Letters} The pedagogy fosters in students the skill of listening—of hearing what is being said by someone else, whether that someone is an ancient Greek philosopher, medieval Christian theologian, or the person sitting across the table. The ability to hear another does not mean merely to keep one’s mouth shut, but to actively listen to what they are trying to say—to seek clarity, or (in a word), understanding. The ability to hear is rare. . .in part because hearing (understanding) requires patience: waiting to hear everything that the other person has to say, waiting a bit more to be sure that they have finished and to consider what they have said, and then responding in such a way that our reply implicitly reverberates with their question, suggestion, insight, or concern. . . I write this letter because I am very happy to say that I have seen this ability to listen develop in my daughter (A08) during her time at St. John’s, and in other Johnnies whom I know. . . I have been struck repeatedly by their attitude—a kind of quiet intensity— that focuses their attention on the speaker’s words and ideas, so that their comments and questions in turn further our conversation. I also write because this ability to hear, to understand (a text, another person, or ourselves) underlies our ability to be and increasingly to become fully human, to allow our lives to be examined by others, living and dead, and ourselves. It is a great gift offered by the pedagogy of St. John’s, and one that ought not to be overlooked or assumed. Frederic Clarke Putnam Admiring Jane I am writing belatedly to thank you for the excellent Fall 2006 issue of The College. Life is busy and sometimes we don’t get all our assigned readings done, but I held onto this magazine through the winter. Being a descendant of Jane Austen’s mother’s family (the Leighs of Stoneleigh Abbey), I knew I wanted to give this issue more than a cursory reading. I was delighted to find appreciations of Grand-Aunt Jane’s work in so many different voices. I really do think that women of today appreciate Jane Austen much more than earlier generations. These articles demonstrate that her social analysis was deep, insightful, and abiding in value, yet always tender and sympathetic. Sometimes I myself feel that I am just now catching up to her in my understanding of the war between the sexes (as another favorite author, James Thurber, used to call it). Congratulations on a wonderful issue that I will save on my bookshelf alongside my own favorite Austen work, Sense and Sensibility. Christel Stevens (A72) Constructive Criticism Reading Mrs. Maschler’s “A Life” in the Winter 2007 issue, I was reminded of a stillvivid comment that she wrote on an assignment submission of mine during our freshman science [laboratory], 1986-1987. The assignment, allowing now for my failures of memory, consisted of observing for a time an animal, any animal, and reporting in writing on its actions. I picked a turtle, because there was already at least one in captivity at the college. I observed this turtle, which to my knowledge was unnamed, for approximately one hour. Using the notes I compiled, I prepared a more formal essay for submission. My only concrete recall of my submission was that I likely anthropomorphosized the turtle’s actions to a degree (e.g., its banging its body into the glass walls of its tank indicated a desire to exit the tank, etc.). While I didn’t quite “get” the assignment, I thought that my submission was well-written and satisfied the assignment’s objectives. When the assignments were returned to the class, the following, solitary comment was written on my submission, verbatim: “Nothing much came of this.” I’m relatively sure that whatever measure of success I’ve achieved since that day has been due, in some small part, to overcoming that pithy dismissal. Sandro Battaglia (A90) Du Bois and McCarthy I can’t help (1) congratulating you on that wonderful story about Martin Dyer and “Web” Du Bois and (2) telling you my own story . . . It happened the same year, 1952. I was a senior at Yale Law School and chairman of the Yale Student Guild Chapter. We had invited Dr. Du Bois to give a lecture at the law school. The day before the event there was a knock at my dormitory door which, when opened, revealed—I am not making this up—two gentlemen in trench coats and Fedoras, flashing FBI badges at me. “Oh boy,” I said to myself, “there goes my legal career.” (The McCarthy witchhunt was in full swing in those days, which entitles President Weigle to a posthumous commendation for inviting Dr. Du Bois to the college). As it turned out, my two visitors wanted to interview me about Peter Davies (class of 1948), who had applied for conscientious objector status in the draft. I waxed as eloquent as I could about Peter’s patriotism, high moral standards and sterling character and the fact that, since he was doing God’s work on earth, he must, according to St. Thomas, believe in God even though he refused to admit to such belief. (To merit CO status at the time you had to have a credible belief in some kind of divinity.) I also mentioned in passing that Peter and I had spent the previous summer in Israel on a project sponsored by the Foundation for World Government, headed by Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan, to wit, several weeks of research on whether the kibbutz was a workable { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } model for use in underdeveloped countries. The two gentlemen … listened attentively and took copious notes. At the end, one of them asked if he could read his notes back to me for verification. When he got to the part of the previous summer, said, “In 1951, subject and interviewee went to Israel to study underdeveloped Jews.” The fact that I was able to make the appropriate correction without cracking up was one of the proudest achievements of my senior year . The St. Thomas gambit did not get Peter out of the draft, but it may have helped him get into the Merchant Marines as alternate service. We have remained good friends ever since. The Du Bois lecture the next day was a great success. Peter Weiss, class of 1946 Corrections: An article on W.E.B. Du Bois in the winter 2007 edition misidentified the late husband of Priscilla BenderShore; his name was Merle Shore. A profile of Richard Field (SFGI98) in the fall 2006 issue of The College incorrectly reported his doctoral degree; he holds a PhD in exercise physiology. Santa Fe tutor James Carey was misquoted in the same issue; instead of being “faithfully impressed with the cadets,” during his time as a visiting professor at the Air Force Academy, Mr. Carey was actually “favorably impressed.” The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or e-mail to: rosemary.harty@ sjca.edu. �10 {Capital Campaign} “WITH A CLEAR AND SINGLE PURPOSE” How the Campaign for St. John’s College is Making a Difference in Santa Fe by Gail Griffith t. John’s College Santa Fe President Michael Peters had been on the job barely a month when one of the first major events of the Capital Campaign was held in Boston. “The Board of Visitors and Governors made a decision to launch the campaign at the same time they made the decision to launch me,” he says. The magnitude of a campaign to raise $125 million—more than triple the amount raised by the previous campaign— might have been daunting to a new college president. But because so much of the S groundwork had been well-established, Mr. Peters says he “just stepped into the job.” Although his presidency began at one of the most critical times in the college’s history and required him to get up to speed quickly, it also gave him an opportunity to get to know the community. Working with Annapolis president Chris Nelson, he has met board members, alumni, parents, and other college supporters at campaign events across the country. He discovered how strongly Johnnies feel about their alma mater, and saw that non-alumni share the same fierce loyalty to St. John’s. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �11 {Capital Campaign} anthony russo Much has transpired on the Santa Fe campus since Mr. Peters’ inauguration in October 2005, and the success of the campaign thus far gives him reason to feel confident that some of the goals he articulated early on are coming to fruition and others are within reach. “I believe it is important to establish and maintain a campus community that is worthy of the program of instruction,” Mr. Peters says. “That means having the resources to make classrooms as productive as possible and to provide the kinds of services and resources both inside and outside the classroom that enhance the learning experience for our students. It is critical that we have not just adequate, but modern, facilities that provide the infrastructure to make this possible.” Of the $125 million campaign goal, $49.5 million has been earmarked for capital projects on the two campuses. The building projects included the renovation of Mellon Hall and the construction of two new dormitories in Annapolis; these have been funded and completed, thanks to gifts of $23.5 million from alumni, parents, friends, and foundations. In Santa Fe, campaign priorities include a new Graduate Institute building, a new residential center, a set of campus improvement projects, and renovations and an addition to Evans Science Laboratory. Fundraising for the Santa Fe projects is progressing nicely, says Mr. Peters. Last summer, Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74), gave the college a $5 million gift for construction of a Graduate Institute center. An architect has been hired, and the college has engaged a local firm to help negotiate the complicated process of securing required permits from the city of Santa Fe. The building, to be situated between Weigle Hall and the Fine Arts Building, will offer graduate students “a welcoming place to congregate in the center of campus,” says Mr. Peters. The college’s capital campaign seeks to address priorities that will sustain the Program and student instructional material (manuals and workbooks); and ensure small class sizes and strengthen the college. Funding these priorities will require $125 million. To date, 1:8 tutor-to-student ratio. $107 million has been raised. FINANCIAL AID: $33 million for need-based aid. FACULTY AND ACADEMIC SUPPORT: $34 million to increase faculty salaries to the median of peer institutions; provide faculty development opportunities; develop Program-related Technology infrastructure; staff professional development and compensation. BUILDING PROJECTS ON THE STUDENT SERVICES: $3.5 million TWO CAMPUSES: $49.5 million for to improve services to students, fund internship opportunities, and provide grants so that elementary and secondary teachers can attend the Graduate Institute. building projects, including a Santa Fe dormitory, a Graduate Institute Center in Santa Fe (funded), and the addition to and renovation of Evans Science Laboratory. The renovation of Mellon Hall and the addition of two new dormitories in Annapolis are completed and fully funded. ST. JOHN’S IMPROVEMENT FUND: $5 million for library collections and laboratory equipment; improving Information { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �12 {Capital Campaign} “It is critical that we have not just adequate, but modern, facilities.” Michael Peters, Santa Fe President and with the launch of the Eastern Classics program in 1994, it was clear that the original footprint mapped out for the Santa Fe campus was inadequate. “Having a structure dedicated to the Graduate Institute programs on campus physically demonstrates the importance and centrality of these programs,” says Mr. Peters. The new center, Levan Hall, will hold classrooms, offices, and common rooms for graduate students. The building is being designed so that in the future, it will be possible to add an auditorium that can accommodate the entire campus community. The Evans Science Laboratory renovation and addition is the most pressing unfunded capital need for the campus, says Mr. Peters. The current Ronald Fielding (A70) has pledged $2.5 million in a labs are 30 years old, and there challenge grant for Santa Fe’s new residence hall. are not enough of them to An Evolving Campus accommodate the number of The bold move to establish a second campus of St. John’s laboratory classes that need to be scheduled. Expansion of College in 1964 presented challenges that the founders of the laboratory building calls for the addition of four new the Santa Fe campus could not have imagined. The state-of-the-art labs with adjoining prep areas and four program of instruction remained constant, but the seminar rooms. Renovations will include installation of demands of adapting to both the distinctive physical new multi-purpose workstations, safety equipment, surroundings and the needs of the growing student popuchemical storage facilities, and improvements and repairs lation have meant ongoing challenges. When, in 1967, the to the laboratory ventilation systems. Graduate Institute was established in Santa Fe, the size and scope of the college’s educational mission expanded, The Santa Fe Initiative, a group of smaller-scale campus improvement projects, has been completed. The purpose of the initiative was to make the kind of improvements that would affect the first impression appearance of the campus. The Campus Core Renovation project, for example, transformed the upper campus by replacing chipped and patched concrete with 105,000 bricks and renovating the koi pond. In addition, the college now has pledges in hand to build a new residence hall, allowing the campus to house 80 percent of its students on campus. Campaign Chairman Ronald Fielding (A70) has pledged $2.5 million toward the construction of the dormitories, and the college received pledges and gifts of $7 million from several other donors. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{Capital Campaign} A Community of Learners At 30,000 square feet, and with 60 beds, the new residential complex in Santa Fe will allow the college to house about 80 percent of its undergraduate students on campus. The new project will provide a more affordable and convenient housing option for students and support the college’s student recruitment efforts while providing more opportunities for learning outside the classroom. As is the case in Annapolis, some students will still choose to live off campus, even with additional housing. For Will Hollingsworth (SF08), moving off campus for his sophomore and junior years had some advantages, such as the convenience of a kitchen. But it also removed him from the community in more than a physical way. “Moving off campus really severed my ties with a lot of friends—the dynamic shifts so much from year to year,” he says. Because she found herself in a double room in a “gregarious dorm” for her first year, Betsy Hardin (SF08) sometimes found it hard to go about her work without 13 The Santa Fe Initiative, paid for in part by gifts to the capital campaign, included the transformation of the central campus area. Still to come: The Norman and Betty Levan Hall, a center for the Graduate Institute; major renovations in Evans Science Laboratory; and a new residence hall for Santa Fe. being distracted. On the other hand, being in a friendly environment eased the social pressure of making friends and adjusting to the campus and the Program. “I made great friends from that dorm,” she says. Living off campus during her sophomore year was more challenging than Hardin expected. But a Johnnie life doesn’t leave a lot of time for chores like grocery shopping. Ensconced in a suite on campus this past year, Hardin found a happy medium. She enjoyed the conveniences of the dorm without the distractions of a double, along with the conveniences of a kitchen. “I often make breakfast for myself and it’s a nice way to start the day,” she says. When the new dorm is open and ready for students, more Johnnies will find that balance of community and independence. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �14 {Capital Campaign} New Program, New Collection by Jennifer Sprague Meem Library Director “Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.” Confucian Analects, 20:3.iii W hen a pilot program of the Institute for the Study of Eastern Classics began in the fall of 1992, Meem Library accordingly started to develop a collection to support these studies. At that time the library had just a few copies of the primary texts. The librarians thus had the joy of building essentially a brand new collection. Thankfully, the Lounsbery Foundation and the Bradley Foundation provided generous grants to fund the institute that also provided for enhancing the library’s collection. The tutors involved with the pilot program gave Inga Waite, then library director, lists of book recommendations, and the library staff went to work ordering and processing the texts. The initial inventory of texts included just one copy each of 130 recommended readings. In 1994, the college enrolled its first students in the Eastern Classics master’s program. The library now needed to support a new curriculum—without an adequate budget increase. Book donations and gifts made the growth of the collection possible. In 1998 the William H. & Mattie Wattis Harris Foundation gave the college a $10,000 grant for Eastern Classics acquisitions, allowing the college to purchase multiple copies of program readings and alleviating some financial burden for students. The library also acquired translation tools such as grammars and dictionaries as well as significant secondary materials. The library continues to depend on gifts to fund Eastern Classics collection development. The Harris Foundation gave the library two more grants in 2004 and 2006. Eastern Classics alumni have been generous donors, too. Recently, one alumnus who wishes to remain anonymous gave the library a gift of $20,000. A tutor committee identified authors and texts to focus development efforts on, including Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Dogen, Nagarjuna, Shankara, Sima Qian, The Mahabharata, The Pali Sutras, The Tale of Genji, and the Upanishads. The goal is to create a broad, more comprehensive collection to support the study of these primary readings. Increasing the depth of the collection will provide tutors with resources for their own inquiry, says Graduate Institute Director Krishnan Venkatesh. “The library collection is essential for faculty development,” he says. Having effective language learning tools is important as well because both students and tutors depend on library resources to enhance their study of either Sanskrit or classical Chinese. The language requirement for the Eastern Classics degree sets St. John’s apart from other Eastern studies programs, and Meem Library has specialized tools such as the Sanskrit Atlas, Ralph Swentzell’s classical Chinese program, and other language software. In addition to focusing on program-related materials, Meem Library plans to supplement its book collection with movies and music that can offer a historical setting to the readings. Mr. Venkatesh suggests that such materials “can provide a cultural context for places that can be quite foreign for some of our students.” These resources will likewise serve as another avenue for introducing the Eastern Classics program to undergraduates and Santa Fe residents who use the library. As Meem Library expands its collection, it continues to face the challenge of maintaining the physical condition of its print materials. Most of the books that come from India have poor bindings and acidic paper. The library often sends these books to a professional bindery to be rebound. Many classic Indian texts are now available in beautiful editions as part of the Clay Sanskrit Library, a bilingual series co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation. Another challenge in maintaining the collection is the regular wear on books in circulation, requiring the frequent purchase of replacement copies. Collection development is truly a dynamic process, and the library is deeply grateful for those donors who have supported this ongoing endeavor. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } The Meem Library’s collection expanded with the launch of the Eastern Classics master’s program in 1994. �{Capital Campaign} 15 Great Books, Rare Books by Andrea Lamb Greenfield Library Director A victoria smith reputable Dragon in St.Paul’s Church-yard. academic library, Its publication history reveals regardless of its that there are three Leviathan editions bearing this same size or age, must imprint. These editions are convey upon generally known as the “head,” scrutiny an “bear,” and “ornament,” named informed and knowledgeable for the ornaments that appear on oversight of its collection. The the title pages. The “head” is the legacy of the college librarians on first edition, and this is our copy. the Annapolis campus reveal an Our copy of the Leviathan is informed, thoughtful pattern of extremely valuable from a decisions over time that have printing history perspective; it is shaped the collection of today’s also in disrepair. Its ailments Greenfield Library. include a previously leather The selection, care, and reback of only modest quality, preservation of a unique pervasive red rot, and damage collection depends on adequate from rodents. The frontispiece is funding and a sustainable, detached, along with several long-range acquisitions budget. leaves. The paper is soiled. It is Every year 75 to 150 titles are lost an excellent candidate for or damaged irreparably. Book restoration by a professional replacement costs are absorbed conservator. into a general books budget, and Acquiring such funds for this most years we exhaust the book, and for the 100 or so library’s funds in acquiring notable other titles in our rare multiple copies for replacements. book collection is a worthy goal Our paper-based periodicals for additional library funds. increase in price 7 to 20 percent The restoration of these titles, every year. Yet our needs extend estimated at up to $10,000 per beyond the quid pro quo replacement of books that circulate, or book, should be a priority for the the acquisition of the periodicals library over the next decade. that our community loves to read A 17th-century copy of LEVIATHAN is among the Greenfield These rare books are directly library’s treasures. in the library’s hidden nooks. related to the circulating collecThe age of the Annapolis tion in that they represent the campus’ collection mandates that we acquire conservation funds first appearance of a Program work, the first in the line of for the rarer books that represent a real treasure for our campus continuity. The Leviathan’s imprint history includes the modern editions by Oakeshott, Lindsay, Waller, and Curley. and our college. We need to turn our attention to the urgent care We have these editions in our circulating collection. and feeding of the older collection. Another book that is a prime candidate for conservation The library’s primary collection remains, of course, the treatment is an incubula title of St. Augustine, a 1486 Venice Program title works. We also acquire other works written by imprint of De Civitate Dei. Only three other identical works are Program authors. We carefully select the original texts of contemporary authors of the canon authors. This historical known to exist in the world. continuity in our collection development contributes to the At St. John’s College, “the books are the teachers,” and the intrinsic value of our collection overall and defines the unique heart of the Greenfield Library’s collection will always be the character of the library. Another of our legacies is a small but circulating collection. Books are the constant companions of impressive collection of rare books, many of which have direct our students and tutors, the friends of all friends. We who ties to Program readings. advocate for the library appreciate the continuing and valuable For example, we are fortunate to have in our rare books investment that alumni and friends of the college continue to collection a first edition of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, printed make to the Greenfield Library. x in 1651 in London by the Printer for Andrew Crooke at the Green { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �16 {The Program} “SING, GODDESS” Music and the Program by Rosemary Harty s they have for many years on the Annapolis campus, the freshman class gathered in the Great Hall for its spring choral performance. The last notes of Sicut locutus est from Bach’s Magnificat hung in the air as the upperclassmen and tutors in the balcony sounded their approval. This year’s performance—by an unusually large freshman class crowded into the hall—was outstanding, many told tutor Peter Kalkavage as he gathered up his scores. “They were very good, weren’t they?” he agreed. J.P. Snyder (A10), who doesn’t enjoy singing, was just relieved it was over. “I’m very flat, I’m just good at hiding it,” he confessed. Freshman chorus and sophomore music are parts of the Program he’ll have to endure; laboratory and math have his passion. “Honestly? If I could avoid music, I would,” he confesses. Music wasn’t part of Barr and Buchanan’s original plan when they came to St. John’s in 1937; it first appeared in the 1949-50 academic year. Dynamic personalities such as Victor Zuckerkandl and tutor Douglas Allanbrook shaped the development of music in the early years in Annapolis, and the college’s approach to music has been fine-tuned many times on both campuses. Music is an integral part of the Program, an essential liberal art, says Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora. “Music is part of our humanity,” she says. “Our reason and our passions come together in the study of music. Fundamental questions about A this relationship between reason and the passions arise and are addressed.” Both campuses are focusing their efforts on the music program this coming year. In the fall, Santa Fe will make changes in its approach to teaching music in freshman year. This summer, Santa Fe faculty will meet in a study group to refine and develop materials for sophomore music, with a goal of making them more broadly accessible and less reliant on individuals’ expertise. “I don’t think there is a big debate here in Santa Fe about trying to get more tutors to teach the music program,” says tutor John Cornell. “Our purpose is going to be to improve the access even further.” In Annapolis, where there are no changes planned to freshman chorus, faculty will meet in a study group designed to better prepare tutors for teaching sophomore music for the first time. Proposed by Dean Michael Dink (A75) to address his concern that more faculty need to be involved in sophomore music, the study groups will be paired with released time to allow faculty to audit the second half of sophomore music. Plans call for an inter-campus exchange of faculty to learn from the innovations in place on each campus, and the college’s joint Instruction Committee will review the results. A New Approach in Santa Fe Cornell and tutor Ned Walpin in Santa Fe will lead the campus’ revamped freshman music program, carrying out an idea developed by Peter Pesic, tutor and musician-in-residence. “We were at an impasse over what to do,” says Santa Fe tutor John Cornell { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �17 {The Program} “Other tutors have said that chorus is often the place where the freshman class becomes a class.” peter howard Tom May, tutor says. “We could see our management of 110 freshman in chorus was not worthy of St. John’s students. Peter had the brainstorm. It’s somewhat daring, but at the same time, it’s totally in keeping with the St. John’s program of instruction: to sit at that common table.” Freshman music (its provisional name) will depart from the exclusively choral approach and will be organized as tutorials focusing on Gregorian chant and ancient music theory. The material in the first five weeks of sophomore music will move into the freshman year, but students will still sing, and often in combined groups. “Those five weeks are focused on the Gregorian chant, and a significant portion of the time is spent singing,” says Walpin. “We’ll have about six sections of freshman music and each tutorial will meet as the same time as another, so that there will be two tutorials meeting at the same time. Those tutorials will get together regularly to sing so that at least 30 people will be singing together at all times. Then, there will be all-college events where all freshmen will get together to sing as a whole chorus, and they will be singing the pieces that they have been studying and singing in their tutorials.” Music is included on the St. John’s Program because the ancients accorded music a place among the liberal arts; they understood it as one of the essential functions of the mind, associated with the power to grasp number and measure. Walpin expects that the tutorial approach will give students the fundamentals they need to get more out of singing, paving the way for an even more productive sophomore music tutorial. “With this new structure, we are giving them reasons to sing because they’ve been learning how to interpret a melody, what makes a piece have a beginning, middle, and end. When they understand what they’re hearing, the singing will become crucially fulfilling for them.” A required freshman chorus, Pesic believes, is antithetical to the ideals of the Program. “Students come to St. John’s to talk to each other,” he says. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } continued on p. 19 �18 {The Program} On the Double Origin of the Music Tutorial By Elliott Zuckerman (HA95) tutor emeritus T he three musical works that have been perennial in our seminar list are a passion, an opera, and a music-drama. They are all settings of narratives that can sustain a discussion apart from the music. But in the late 1950s the seminar list included quite a few works of music that were wordless, such as the Goldberg Variations, the Rite of Spring, and (along with the Ninth, that does blossom into verse) the Fifth and Eighth Symphonies of Beethoven. These works of socalled “pure” music were among the losses when (in the early ’60s) the list was decimated in order to make room for the preceptorials. As with some of the scientific readings, and the plays of Molière and Racine, we had the excuse that the works were already being discussed at length in the tutorials. But the lost music seminars were scarcely regretted, for it was widely thought that it required a particular talent to lead a seminar on a musical work that had no plot or poem to fall back on. Yet Victor Zuckerkandl, who designed the music tutorial, said to me more than once that if we eliminated the music seminars from the program, the music tutorial should go, too. It was well known that Zuckerkandl himself could get any group of people to talk about music, as well as about almost anything else. But I gathered that for him the chief aim of the tutorial was to provide the students with the wherewithal for talking about music in the seminar, even when they didn’t have an inspiring conductor. Zuckerkandl’s successor as leader of the music tutorial was Douglas Allanbrook, who disliked music seminars, and did nothing to defend them. At the same time, despite his fondness for Zuckerkandl and their friendship, he had an aversion to Zuckerkandl’s view of music, which Allanbrook characterized as Ton-Wille—the tones somehow had a will of their own–and attributed it to windy philosophical music-lovers such as Schopenhauer. Zuckerkandl’s notion of music as a message from another world was as remote as possible from Allanbrook’s down-to-earth New England view that composers put tones together to delight us, and possibly move us, with imitations of our own motions. The music tutorial had to be justified as worth doing apart from music seminars. From the beginning, the most venerable justification lay easily at hand. Music, after all, had been part of the traditional liberal arts, and the music tutorial rounded out our study of the quadrivium. As in the laboratory and the mathematics tutorial (and, less systematically, in the language tutorial) we are invited to learn and think about the elements of a subject. The compounding of intervals gives us an audible example of the compounding of ratios in Book Five of Euclid. And there is a unique correspondence between the two-to-one ratio of pitches in the physical world, and the universal human response to that simplicity when we recognize the sameness as an octave. Annapolis photographer Dimitri Fotos captures this portrait of Elliot Zuckerman (HA95) for Fotos’ “Facing the Music” series. It is worth studying the first chapter of Zuckerkandl’s textbook—let alone his remarkable theoretical works—with a view to how little he accounts for the power of music by adducing the arithmetic correspondences that elated the Pythagoreans. I think I can safely assert that for him the Miracle of the Octave is something other than our response to the simple ratio. We are fortunate to have a music tutorial with this double origin. We ought to become more aware of what it means to hold the Grand View or the Practical View, and embrace the argument between them as our domestic dialectic. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{The Program} “You were either daring enough to jump into music or your weren’t.” 19 However, the music tutorial needs true amateurs, Pastille says. “When I’m teaching He believes the changes help make music a something I’m not an expert in—say freshman more integral part of freshman year. “This will lab–I can enter into class discussions on a level happen just when students are discovering much closer to the students. It’s almost imposPeter Kalkavage, Tutor ancient mathematics and ancient philosophy, sible for me to do that in music,” he says. which I think is ideal in that way,” he says. “It “When you’re too inclined to see things that the also allows the students to learn the elements of students probably can’t see, you can let a lot of music as they’re discussing what the elements really mean, as fundamental questions go unasked.” they do with Euclid and everything else.” Beginning this summer, Annapolis will have in place a system Mora likes Pesic’s approach and suggests that it more fully for bringing more faculty into the tutorial. Seven tutors have integrate music into the rest of the Program, particularly in signed up for an eight-week study group to be led by tutor Peter freshman year. “Just as students come to understand the Kalkavage. In each of the 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years, elements of mathematics by discussing them as well as by two tutors who have participated in the study group and who are demonstrating them on the board, so too will they learn the teaching the tutorial in the first semester will gain a station of elements of music by discussing them as well as practicing them released time in the second semester in order to audit another by singing,” she says. music tutorial. “The college hasn’t had something like this in place before,” he says. “You were either daring enough to A Study Group for Sophomore Music jump in to music, or you weren’t,” he says, acknowledging that While Annapolis plans to continue freshman chorus as it is, this “it can be scary. If you haven’t had music training or you feel you summer it will take the first step toward making more tutors don’t have a taste for it, it can look like the most difficult part of comfortable leading sophomore music. Dink understands why the Program.” some tutors on his campus are intimidated. In his 26 years at Chorus Goes On St. John’s, he has yet to lead sophomore music, although he audited it during one of his sabbaticals. As do many tutors, Dink Freshman chorus will continue as before in Annapolis; indeed, worries his lack of musical training will hamper his effectiveness Tom May can’t imagine the college without the freshman in class. “I may be at the extreme end of the spectrum in terms chorus. “I find it absolutely exhilarating,” he says. May has of lack of preparation, but there are people who have played spent much of his life immersed in music; as a seminarian, he an instrument who still feel sophomore music would be a chalwas a choir director, and he later found a job singing sacred lenge,” he says. music in an Episcopal church. He has always been impressed by Throughout the years in Annapolis, musical tutors have the place music held in the Program, and he believes that it is applied their expertise to reshaping sophomore music to make especially important now, at a time when public and private it more accessible for their nonmusical colleagues. When Bill schools invest fewer resources in music. Pastille came to St. John’s in 1986 (with a PhD in music from Preparing students with different backgrounds to tackle Cornell), only about a dozen tutors were willing to teach music. sophomore music together remains the prime focus of freshman When he revamped the curriculum in Annapolis in 1989, music. Some students are experienced musicians; others can’t Pastille built the tutorial around Zuckerkandl’s The Sense of read a note of music when they come to St. John’s. “How are Music and created a supplementary series of tapes for tutors and people with that wide a range going to be able to talk to each students. “We made the tutorial more accessible, and we did other? We have students who’ve had a great deal of technical manage to sign up a whole bunch of new people,” he says. training but they’ve never sung. Freshman chorus performs a That curriculum lasted a decade in Annapolis, before it was similar role in the music program to that of the practica in changed again. Today, in addition to Zuckerkandl’s text, the the laboratory program, in giving a class a common experience campus uses a manual called “Materials for Sophomore Music,” of the phenomena—it’s for this reason as much as any other that an ordered sequence of readings and musical examples. I believechorus is such a vital part of the way we learn here,” Although it was designed to make the tutorial more accessible to May says. more tutors, many are still reluctant to volunteer. continued { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �20 {The Program} A Dialogue between Ancients and Moderns by Peter Pesic A of beauty and cosmic order. Only a mong the diverse few fragments remain of ancient projects underGreek music, but Gregorian chant taken at St. John’s represents this first practice. College, none is Chant is essentially monophonic, more remarkable a single beautiful melodic line than our music that generally does not aim for program. Beside music conservaemotional expressivity. For tories, I know very few other example, the same chant melody colleges where all students study could be used to set “sad” as well music. Moreover, our study of as “happy” texts. music is unique in its approach Our sophomores begin with a and scope, not simply “music month of singing various chants appreciation,” music history, or and reading Boethius (who transtheory. I would like to describe mitted ancient musical theory how this approach has developed to the West), each student here in Santa Fe, where I have composing a chant to a given text, had the privilege of being which the class then sings and involved with this program over discusses. Beginning with a kind the past 25 years. of music unfamiliar to almost Before then, our music everyone (whether musically program had been led by such trained or not) allows fresh considdistinguished and talented tutors eration of the elements of music. as the late Michael Ossorgin and We then consider the momentous Sam Brown, accomplished and mysterious transition to musicians who emphasized polyphony, the interweaving of certain masterworks that remain several independent voices so fixtures of our music tutorials: characteristic of Western musical Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, art, so strikingly absent from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde—that Music is an integral part of the “great adventure” that ancient practice (or from world unique trilogy about passion. music in general). This leads to a is St. John’s, says Tutor Peter Pesic. About 1980, Dean Robert Bart month devoted to the polyphonic asked Ralph Swentzell to rethink art as developed by such masters as the music tutorial so that it would Palestrina and taught by Fux’s be more open to tutors who did not feel they had a specialized celebrated dialogue Gradus ad Parnassum, which taught Bach, background in music. In his unforgettable way, Ralph took Mozart, and Beethoven the art of counterpoint and whose this project to heart and produced an amazing historical exercises we also do. Our touchstone is Palestrina’s motet “Sicut compendium of music and theoretical writings, the basis of the cervus,” a theme-song on both campuses, its haunting beauty a program we still do in Santa Fe, which remains indebted to fitting epitome of music’s first practice. Ralph’s foundational vision, even as it has been shaped and The crucial transition between ancient and modern music refined by many colleagues since then. may have begun even before the parallel, momentous In my view, the heart of our music program is a dialogue transitions in mathematics, philosophy, and natural science that between ancients and moderns. For music is not simply the we study in other parts of our Program. Their seminal works expressive art it became over the past centuries, but needs date from around 1600; our music tutorials treat Claudio to be understood in reference to two parallel traditions, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) as the pivotal work. In it, La both extending back to antiquity. For clarity, let me use the Musica herself steps forward and announces that she can terminology introduced by a crucial figure in the story, inflame the iciest heart, “now with noble anger, now with love.” Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo’s father, who distinguished two Monteverdi here puts into action the aspirations of Vincenzo “practices” in ancient and modern music. His “first practice” Galilei and others who wanted to revive the Greek drama and its (prima prattica) is exemplified by the ancient “music of the incomparable emotional power, which they thought the first spheres,” which is essentially passionless and eternal, a paragon practice had wrongly ignored. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{The Program} 21 “Our reason and our passions come together in the study of music.” There’s another benefit as well, one important being in the presence of music in a way that is to the shaping of community. “It’s amazing that ultimately unforgettable. At the end, they know we ask all of our students to sing together,” he if it’s going to work, we have to work hard—and says. “Other tutors have said that chorus is often they do, year after year.” the place where the freshman class becomes a Kalkavage, who has shared chorus duties with class.” During spring performances of the May for many years, believes freshman chorus is Victoria Mora, Santa Fe Dean chorus, upperclassmen on the balcony will often not only a tradition in Annapolis, but an excellent chime in on some of the songs. During the Senior way to introduce students to “making music.” Dinner each spring, students join their tutors in singing Certainly some students never take to music, yet he observed favorite selections from freshman chorus, and alumni at that year after year, many Johnnies develop confidence in their Homecoming speak fondly of their freshman chorus memories, singing and discover a great love for great music. “It’s a thrill to he says. get students together and watch them discover their musicality,” Students of lesser ability would be unlikely to have this expehe says. x rience to stretch themselves, he says. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” says May. “Students get a sense of Their “second practice” (secunda prattica) was explicitly designed to seize power over human passions, as La Musica had proclaimed, as Orfeo fatefully enacts. This new Orpheus is the master of a reborn art—opera— that can move mute stones and even infernal powers, but in the end Orfeo is mastered by his own passions, loosing Eurydice to a second death after having won her back from her first. Thus Monteverdi, crafting the first masterwork of the second practice, also foresaw its tragic dilemma, incarnate in Orfeo himself; near the same time, Francis Bacon’s mythical retellings also foresaw the powers and tragic possibilities of the new science he envisioned. Thus emerged a deep dialogue between beauty (the ideal of the first practice) and power (the goal of the second), a dialogue that continues to this day and had in fact already begun in ancient times, for Plato described both the music of the spheres and earthly modes capable of ruining the soul through sensuous indulgence or firing it to courage. Our music tutorials explore the harmonic art that Monteverdi pioneered, an art that went on to empower the great masterworks of Bach, Mozart, and Wagner mentioned above. For them, the controlled use of ever-stronger and more unstable dissonances is crucial, reminding us of the transition from the fixed Aristotelian earth to the mysteriously movable condition of Newtonian planets or from unalterable chemical elements to radioactive instability. As we explore these works of musical and scientific imagination, we draw close to the sources of their immense powers and also confront the attendant questions those powers imply. In the story of Orpheus, the project of power reacts on itself; our music program concludes by considering modern masterworks that turn from ever-intensified expressivity to reconsider the first practice and its austere ecstasies, works by Debussy, Stravinsky, Webern, Messiaen, Arvo Pärt. Thus the opening question posed by the two practices—by beauty and power—resounds from past to future. Throughout, we aspire to a complete musical experience, encompassing listening, singing, reading, discussing, composing, analyzing, playing. Next year, we will experiment in Santa Fe with a new format for freshman music as normal tutorials, rather than a single large chorus, so as to encourage the discussions that are the lifeblood of St. John’s classes. As with so much of St. John’s Program, our study of music is rightly a work in progress, always trying to improve, grow, and deepen. This great adventure, artistic and philosophical, has opened new vistas for me, in my own education, as I hope it will continue to do for many others, now and in the future. x “Throughout, we aspire to a complete musical experience, encompassing listening, singing, reading, discussing, composing, analyzing, playing.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �22 {Pop Culture} POP JOHNNIES In the examined life, is there room for Shakespeare and Shakira? by Emily DeBusk (A06) op culture is easy, fun, prevalent, comforting, and of-the-moment. The great books are dense, rigorous, distant, provocative, and old. Can they coexist without mocking each other? The question has implications beyond the movies Johnnies choose to see or music they download to their iPods. It touches on some deeply felt beliefs about a St. John’s education and Johnnies in the wider world. Is it odd to finish up a seminar reading on, say, the gospel of John, and then settle down for a good listen to the new wave of Swedish death metal? Is it snobbish to think one shouldn’t spend time on fleeting fads with so much rich material in the canon? Consider the (apparent) tension between pop culture and the St. John’s culture. In one corner, there is a peculiar St. John’s culture where, according to the college’s creeds, dialogue is king. The campus is characterized by the reading of great books, earnest conversations, tweedy traditions involving waltzing and pipesmoking, and all-around bookishness. In the other corner, there is pop culture. A broad definition begins with media—music, TV shows, movies, and the pervasive buzz that the Internet and advertising emit—and its fundamental connection with certain key ingredients: mass appeal, commercialism, consumerism, and transience. In short, the St. John’s culture is anchored where pop floats; limited, where pop is universal; and for the inner, where pop concerns itself with the outward. Nothing about what is done at St. John’s is “quick!,” “e-z!,” or “for a limited time only!” Pop culture is entertainment, not education. So why make the comparison? In 1937 Scott Buchanan, the first dean of St. John’s under the new Program, wrote in the Bulletin of St. John’s College: “Ultimately the ends of liberal education are the intellectual P virtues, the development of the capacities from which they come, and the integration of the characters to which they contribute.” That is, the intellectual virtues should not be left at the door as students exit the classroom. Stringfellow Barr (who published a novel and a cookbook along with academic works) said that while immersion in the Program will foster a taste for higher things, the St. John’s alumnus can still find riches in the culture of his times: “From his constant association with the first-rate, he will have acquired a distaste for the second-rate, the intellectually cheap and tawdry; but he will have learned to discover meaning in things that most people write off as vulgar,” he wrote in a 1939 report. The St. John’s education seems to have the power to elevate higher pursuits over popular ones, but should it? Three Views As pop culture and the St. John’s culture contend for attention, some tension arises. In a college-wide survey asking current students for their opinion about the relationship of pop culture and the St. John’s culture, at least three differing viewpoints surfaced. Many students saw no connection at all between what they do as students and what they do as pop culture consumers. These students turn to pop simply for relaxation and entertainment. “Pop culture functions like Reality,” says Kayla Gamin (A08). “It provides emotional release, social lubrication, and a way to group people into social sets distinguished by their tastes in music and entertainment.” There are many college-wide symptoms of pop culture, such as film clubs, video games, and dance parties. The relatively few TVs on campus (rapidly becoming obsolete thanks to laptops with streaming video and DVD players) have some faithful watchers. One group of students gathered every Tuesday night to follow the sensational life of the misanthropic House of the { T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{Pop Culture} “Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man’s nature.” raphael’s SCHOOL OF ATHENS digitally adapted by lord thomas burbridge Marcel Proust “I want to be an artist that everyone can relate to, that’s young, happy and fun.” Britney Spears, singer { T h e C o l l e g e • John’s College • Spring 2007 } 23 �24 {Pop Culture} “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” Albert Einstein “For me, just being on the cover of a magazine wasn’t enough. I began to think, what value is there in doing something in which you have no creative input?” Elle Macpherson, model eponymous Fox TV show. (Again, the intertwining of pop and the Program was startling; one Johnnie read his lab manual during commercial breaks.) Pop culture is also used as a source of information about what’s going “out there.” Cloistered by size, geography (Santa Fe), and a relatively closed curriculum, St. John’s can seem to be a world of its own, and it is a constant struggle to be engaged in the present as well as the past. “The world is so large,” says Annapolis tutor Eva Brann, an unapologetic fan of monster truck rallies, Louis L’Amour novels and Law and Order. “I don’t want to be totally out of it. Whatever it is they like, I want to know about it. Our students don’t want to cut themselves off.” Another group of students views pop culture as a distraction. “I think the most disturbing part of [pop culture] is how reason just isn’t there,” says Liz Curry (A07). “There are things about it that should bother us. Everything is so emotionally driven, and it’s the very excess of emotion that is praised. I don’t think it should be studied, but engaged. We won’t always be reading and talking about these books, so there’s got to be a way for the things we do here to resonate with people in general. I think Johnnies in particular have the power to give another perspective from pop culture that’s not necessarily elitist or bookish. There’s a way that these books live for us as much as pop culture lives for others.” Tristan Chambers (SF08) goes beyond wariness to outright disdain. He sees a connection between the nature of pop culture and the rhetorician Socrates warns about in his dialogues. “Most of pop media is morally debasing and it obfuscates the truth on all levels,” Chambers says. “I feel like pop culture panders to our vices as Socrates says the rhetorician panders to our vices and more animalistic urges. Pop media wants your attention, and its main means is to appeal to basic urges, which are harder to endure or manage. I think it’s bad for our souls. These media generators are unconcerned with what’s true or false, but are more interested in manipulating for effect. Pop reflects that rhetorical attitude in its sound bytes, one-sided stories, and advertising.” Still others are simply not attracted to pop. This group chooses instead to be entertained and inspired by media that is too eclectic, old-fashioned, or avant-garde to rightly be called pop. Zack Hay (A08), for example, listens to records of Moondog, a blind musician who busked on the streets of New York City and made his own instruments—a far cry from Billboard’s Top 100. “I’ve just always had an inclination to look for things in obscurity, not things that are readily available,” Hay explains, “because there is a tendency, I think, in all cultures, to overlook a lot of things, which do not deserve to be—if something is just a little bit weird, it just gets thrown by the wayside. I always take delight in knowing that there’s always a little pocket of these alternatively-minded people scattered about the world, now, and historically.” Fleeting Fads vs. Great Works In trying to pinpoint the tension between pop culture and the St. John’s culture, it is tempting to think it is simply a matter of aesthetic quality. Just compare the newest American Idol’s hit single to Mozart and voila! the one withers in the shadow of the other. The music and literature of the Program is mainly “high” culture (Mozart, Milton) with a bit of counter culture (Marx, Baudelaire), and nothing that could be classified as modern pop. Yet it is too simplistic to take the omission as an a priori condemnation by St. John’s of pop culture. “There are obvious quality distinctions between the best and the worst forms of hip-hop, and this is true of classical music as well,” says Santa Fe tutor David Carl, who is routinely described as a “cool” tutor by students. “The best hip hop is better than the worst classical music, so aesthetic value cannot be determined simply based on what part of culture (popular or ‘high’) something participates in.” Hollywood produces a few good films each year, the recording industry manages to produce work by good artists, and some television shows “are not simply a waste of time,” says Carl. “How to distinguish between what I would call ‘good’ and ‘bad’ culture (pop or otherwise) is the challenge,” he maintains. Annapolis tutor Mera Flaumenhaft posits that the real danger of pop culture in the St. John’s community is more of a how than a what. “Everything goes so fast, everything is loud, and many things happen at once,” she says. “One of the best things we do at St. John’s is develop the habit of slowing down. This is a place where people look carefully at something: a tree, a sentence, a math demonstration, a difficult argument. We look for a long time and with other people. We ask questions, converse, and look again. This way of life makes our encounters with everything, including popular culture, more thoughtful and more interesting.” Brann submits that these habits are the means to meet the challenge Carl speaks of: “Going through the Program is the shaping of taste,” she says. “If you have thought about really good works, it gives you the tools to think about the difference about the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{Pop Culture} 25 “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.” Plato “We all feel love, and that might sound kind of corny, but I really feel that’s what joins musicians together around the world.” Enrique Iglesias, singer faith—that Johnnies bring to the seminar table. Carl points out that Shakespeare and Aristophanes might be considered the pop Pop and the Johnnies culture of their day. Someday, Pervading the general attitudes of St. John’s students might be St. John’s students towards pop on reading the lyrics of 21st-century campus, there was a reluctance to pop songs or movie screenplays, treat pop culture as a single but by then these works will have whole, to be entirely accepted or outgrown the pop label. Could rejected. Perhaps this is because students in some future tutorial for those who tune into pop be examining the film Fight Club culture with their minds as well as for truths about the human their headphones (and some condition in the same way we now deliberately choose not to engage consider Fleurs de Mal? their minds) the movies, TV St. John’s treasures the old shows, and commercials born of because it endures, but it doesn’t pop are raw source of information reject all in current times. about the human condition. “Pop culture is something like Kim Paffenroth (A88), an the Blob in that old Steve associate professor of Religious McQueen movie,” observes Carl. Studies at Iona College, devotee “It consumes everything in its of heavy metal and classic TV path that it thinks it can get somescience fiction, and author of thing from, and this means that (most recently) Gospel of the a few truly good things (maybe Living Dead: George Romero’s even great things) will get Vision of Hell on Earth, has found consumed along with all the plenty of material in pop culture Elizabeth Burlington (A08) takes a break from Hobbes to worthless trash.” catch up on Slash. to engage him. “I think St. John’s The real struggle between pop teaches you to take ideas and texts culture and the St. John’s culture seriously, analyzing them with seems one of dominance; “The habits of curiosity and interrogation,” he says. “I apply that to St. John’s way” has ambitions to be an integral part of a Johnnie’s current pop culture. There is writing out there that tries to fit pop life. So does pop culture. The consumer is meant to buy what he into some post-modern analysis, but I try not to bring any theoretsees, think what she listens to, and not worry about time for ical baggage. I just give it a close reading. I don’t think all of pop dialogue or “unplugged” reflection. “Life is too short to listen to deserves this approach, but some does.” In Paffenroth’s opinion, bad music and read bad books and watch bad movies,” says Carl. to reject pop culture “guarantees that you are regarded as irrele“Pop culture offers to do all the choosing for us, but I think we are vant and disconnected from the larger world that we live in. [At better off getting out in the world and discovering for ourselves St. John’s] what one strives for is not so much to refine your taste, which music, books, television, and movies are worthy of our but to refine your analytical skills and to analyze what is valuable.” time.” This is where free people, living examined lives, politely In other words, within the morass of pop lie shreds of the very decline pop’s offer. x same kinds of questions—of philosophy, art, political science, emily debusk good and the bad. You ask yourself ‘What about this will pass away?’ What revives?’ ” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �26 {Visual Think er s} VISUAL THINKERS uestioning is at the heart of discovery for these artists who move beyond words to shape clay, carve wood, and paint. Q Smart Hands In 2005, Betsy Williams (SF87) and her partner Mark Saxe, a stone sculptor, opened Rift Gallery in Rinconada, N.M. Functional pieces designed for daily use are the foundation of her work, complemented by objects for contemplation and display. When I graduated from St. John’s, truth be told, I had no idea what to do in this world for the next several years. Not that I wasn’t trying to figure it out. Circumstances eventually had me employed at a small Japanese regional bank with a branch in New York City, working as a trader on the money market. Then a co-worker invited me to an exhibit of 17th-century Korean ceramics at the Metropolitan Museum. Standing in front of a slightly asymmetrical celadon vase, I had what is perhaps best described simply as a profound moment, and my life took the direction that it has today. I scrimped and saved so that I could make a move to Japan and study pottery seriously. I wanted to learn about traditional methods, digging clay, making glazes from natural materials and firing with wood. In 1994, I did make that leap, and managed to find a teacher, Mr. Yutaka Ohashi, in Karatsu, Japan, with whom I apprenticed over the next four years. I learned through observation, imitation, and lots of repetition. In working at the wheel a surprising kind of knowledge was revealed to me gradually about just how smart my hands are. I made thousands and thousands of the same cylindrical cup, over and over, until after a couple of years I knew all about that cup, everything that could go wrong, every millimeter of the anatomy of that cup. With practice, one’s hands and eyes can detect differences of less than a millimeter without conscious discrimination. Awareness of this physical sensibility helps hold conscious discrimination and corporeal knowledge in balance, and I believe the act of creating as a whole can also be described as this kind of balancing on a larger scale. In 1999, I “graduated” from my apprenticeship, with the pronouncement, “Now you have the skills to teach yourself anything else that you may need to learn.” So I returned to New Mexico, bought land in a remote mountainous region about an { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �bob eckert {Visual Think er s} hour north of Santa Fe, built a house and studio, and then my own wood-fired kiln. I’ve been working away ever since, trying to bring my well-trained self and my creative self into a kind of balance, while making a living doing it. My work relies heavily, even now, on repetition, but in a new way: drawing on the visual impact that multiples carry. My wallhung cup grids, which range in size from three cups to 180 cups, emphasize sameness and difference of their components at once. The cup becomes visible in its relationship with others in a way that one cup alone cannot. Currently I am working on a grouping of 52 teapots, one for every week of the year, for a show entitled “Imagine” that will open at our gallery in May. (www.riftgallery.com) St. John’s continues to have a positive influence on my career. Over the past summer, St. John’s student Carolyn Lobeck (SF07) was an apprentice in my studio through the Ariel Internship Program. She was introduced to many of the basics that are essential to a career in clay, in accordance with what I learned during my own apprenticeship. This opportunity to pass on to another young woman some of what I have worked so hard to learn is really important to me. St. John’s also presents one of my handmade cups to each of the graduates of the Eastern Classics program every year. That the college recognizes the importance of the handmade object in today’s society, its importance as a symbol and as a way of life, is huge. At left, MATTER AND TIME, wall-mounted cubes. Above, Betsy Williams apprenticed in Japan for four years before opening her studio in New Mexico. At right, a 4-inch tea caddy. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } 27 �28 {Visual Think er s} Natural Proofs Karina Noel Hean (A00) is a painter and teaches drawing, painting, and design as visiting instructor of art at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. She has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows. In fall 2008, she will complete a twomonth artist fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Center in Ballycastle, Ireland. Hean grew up near the Annapolis campus, where her mother, Miriam Callahan-Hean (AGI87), is graduate admissions officer for the college. I am a planner. From eighth grade on, I took art-making seriously. As much as public school and free time allowed, that is what I did, taking every art class I could at my public school, earning scholarships to classes at the local art center, and, though it clearly has not improved my social skills, I spent most of my teen and pre-teen years alone in my room painting or drawing. While I was very concerned about what would happen to my “art career” if I did not attend an art school, I knew that St. John’s would provide me with the intellectual exposure, critical thinking, and verbal skills I would need to be an artist who was not only technically proficient but thoughtful as well. When the conditions are right, I work 14-hour days in the studio. The rhythm of these days is paradise. The places my mind and hands may take me and the work fluctuate: unpre- { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{Visual Think er s} “When the conditions are right, I work 14-hour days in the studio. The rhythm of these days is paradise.” Karina Noel Hean (A00) dictable, exciting, reassuringly familiar, ridiculous, calm, transcendent. For several years my work was concerned with communicating a sense of reverence for nature and understanding nature as a source of spirituality. My Pendular Motion Series monotypes and Emotional Proof Series explore the aesthetic and intellectual capacity of geometric and dynamics diagrams and theorems. Studying the history of Western mathematics and physical sciences at St. John’s exposed me to Euclid’s Elements and Huygens’ On the Motion of Bodies from Impact amongst other heavily diagrammed attempts to explain the nature of our world and how it functions. What initially strikes me about these proofs is the clear beauty of their lines and shapes. As a visual communicator, I am intrigued by the quantity and quality of information these images can convey. In addition to this is a skeptic’s pondering of the kind of knowing they claim to present. The Emotional Proof Series are improvisations that riff off of the Euclidian proofs that I studied at St. John’s. These proofs are logical and predictable. My version of the proofs is a humorous comment on the contemporary desire to categorize and comprehend human emotions. They ask questions such as: How far can we take the relationship between word and image? How much distance exists between these two supposedly distinct forms of communication? “Learn by doing and making mistakes” has become one of my pedagogical mottoes that stems from my own experience as an art student and artist. If you are not frustrated, you are probably not learning anything or challenging yourself. Karina Noel Hean is drawn to the beauty of mathematical proofs, as shown in these untitled works. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } 29 �30 {Visual Think er s} Daja Music Billy Lieb (class of 1945) attended film school at UCLA after his graduation from St. John’s. Following graduate school and teaching film making, Lieb worked in Los Angeles as a motion picture cameraman and film editor until his retirement in 1984, when he began his career as a sculptor. His artwork includes two different media: assemblage (making things out of found objects) and abstract wood sculpture. I have enjoyed collecting things since I was a kid. First it was postage stamps, then shells, rocks and minerals. As an adult I started to go to flea markets and swap meets where you could buy interesting things cheap. Gradually, I learned to put some of these things together to make constructions of assemblages. After I retired from the film industry in 1984, I moved to the Ocean Park district—right on the Santa Monica beach. That summer there were storms that brought piles of driftwood onto the beach. I soon discovered that some of it was very heavy and was carvable. A surfer classmate of mine (from grad- A surfer told Billy Lieb (class of 1945) where to find the manzanita burl—prized by sculptors—that washes up on Malibu beach. (UNTITLED) uate school, UCLA) suggested I drive 20 miles north to the Malibu beaches. He was right. For the next 10 years, my I started exhibiting at the factory and local galleries. Meanbest wood came from Malibu, mostly manzanita burls. while, Sony Music was building its West Coast headquarters on I had also started collecting art posers. I found out about the our block. When it was finished, the president of Sony Music Picture Framers Guild, which would help you learn how to invited our college, the Santa Monica College of Design, Art, frame art posters. The next year, I started The Magic Picture and Architecture, to decorate their new building. They wanted Gallery, my own framing operation in Malibu. us to submit art “with a musical theme.” As I started making Soon I started taking drawing and art history classes at Santa Silent Musical Instruments they finally accepted 14 of my assemMonica College. There I learned about a new art school being blages including The Daja Music Machine and The Daja Guitar. founded at Santa Monica College, using an empty furniture The word “Daja” became my brand name for my style of assemfactory for its classrooms. All of the faculty were professional blage, being a sum of “Dada” and “Jazz.” I have entered several artists, including Laddie Dill and George Herms, who became wood sculptures and assemblages in the alumni art show at my favorite teacher. St. John’s in Santa Fe. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{Visual Think er s} 31 Playing in the Mud by Eleanor Peters ven as a small child I loved playing in the mud. My mother is an artist so there were always opportunities to try out new things at home. When Mike was in grad school in Seattle and our children were young there was a great recreation center program that included pottery classes—a place where adults were encouraged to play in the mud! Perfect. I was hooked in no time. Long before Santa Fe was in the picture for us, I discovered the work of legendary San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez and was intrigued by her work. I haven’t adopted her Native American techniques but the respect and awe remain. I never dreamt that one day we would be practically in her neighborhood, surrounded by her legacy. Imagine my delight when we arrived at St. John’s to find a wonderful pottery right in the Fine Arts Building. Not only could one throw pots, but be variously serenaded by sophomore music, jazz groups, piano, bass, drums or horn playing. There is a very knowledgeable instructor in the person of local artist Sadiq Kahn. Our pottery assistant is Carolyn Lobeck (SF07), who spent last summer as apprentice to Betsy Williams. A small but dedicated group of students find their way to the studio. Some become regulars; others come for a season as their class schedules allow. Some bring considerable pottery experience, and some are beginners. All bring enthusiasm. What I really enjoy is that our intersection in the Pottery Studio gives me an opportunity to get to know students in a non-academic setting. But, being Johnnies, it also means there are conversations about what they’re E Eleanor Peters, wife of Santa Fe President Michael Peters, is a regular at the campus pottery studio. She entered these works in the Santa Fe Community Art Show. reading in seminar or the topic of their current paper, as well as how to throw a tall cylinder or make a plate. x In August 2006, I bought a home in a senior mobile home park in Poway, California. I did this to be near my daughter Joy and my two great grandsons Danny and Alex. When my dear friend Jonnie Zheutlin learned of my move, she sent me funds to build an art studio as part of my new home. Few artists are lucky enough to be able to open their front door and enter their art studio! x For color images of art by Betsy Dixon, Billy Lieb, and Karina Hean, visit the St. John’s Web site; click on Publications and on The College magazine. An avid collector, Billy Lieb sculpts driftwood and makes eclectic sculptures from items lost and found. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �32 { S t u d e n t Vo i c e s } I F J O H N N I E S RU L E D T H E WO R L D by Jennifer Wright (A08) chelsea stiegman W ith global events whirling around us, recently I have been putting thought into what the world would be like if run by Johnnies. Initially euphoria overwhelmed me. The notion of a place run by “philosopher kings” most obviously points toward The Republic. I can’t imagine we would strictly follow Plato’s notions if only because we might prove woefully disinclined toward the whole martial aspect of Socrates’ utopia. But we could surely expect a society in which everyone at least knew of Plato and, when one exclaims that she loves him in the course of conversation no one would reply, “Yeah, I loved Play-doh too, but I kind of grew out of it.” When I mentioned this notion of a world run by Johnnies to other students, almost everyone responded with wild enthusiasm. “Can you imagine?” asked one boy. “Everyone everywhere would be really well read. Also, undeniably sexy in that way that Johnnies are.” A freshman remarked, “Think about it— it would be amazing. We’d just go up to people in the streets, and instead of saying, ‘How are you?’ we’d say, ‘And how do you feel about the Cartesian Dichotomy?’ ” Then I queried one of my best friends who may have been feeling a tiny bit bitter about writing her sophomore enabling essay that day. “Well,” she said, “I think we’d still be sitting around in caves. I think that if someone tried to free us from the cave, we wouldn’t notice, let alone kill him, After three years’ acquaintance with Program authors, Jennifer Wright (A08) has a few ideas on how Johnnies would run things. because we’d end up debating the definition of light, and whether or not it was a form. Then we’d debate the definition of, say, the rocks in front of us. We’d make some tepid attempt to figure out whether or not rocks were edible, using research gleaned from Harvey, which { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } would be totally irrelevant. The rocks wouldn’t be edible, but we’d end up talking about what it means to be ‘edible.’ Eventually, we’d all starve to death.” She sighed, and resumed writing about Dante’s depiction of God’s divine love. �33 { S t u d e n t Vo i c e s } She may well have had a point. But then can it really be the case that Johnnies are as wholly impractical as the cloud-dwelling Laputans of Gulliver’s Travels? Would we be doomed to perish if left to our own erudite devices? We might not starve to death, but in a world governed by the ideals of the Program we might have to deal with some substandard food, if the case of Glaucon or Cato is anything to go by. Relishes, we remember, are for the epicurean and indulgent. So we are going to have to begin frequenting cafés that make their food entirely without relishes, which, as ketchup-wielding modern Americans, might prove pretty difficult. However, if we pay attention to the Program sophomore year, we will happily realize that wine will be everywhere. Wine abounds in Shakespeare, it abounds in The Canterbury Tales, and it abounds especially in the Bible. To the relief, I’m certain, of our Reality archons, at no point in the Program do we come upon characters who don’t love wine; even Socrates, our paragon of moderation, is particularly in his element at drinking parties. The abundance of alcohol in our brave new world may make us considerably less concerned—indeed indifferent to—the lack of relishes in our food. When Johnnies are in charge: The Johnnie Beauty Salon: No one who has ever seen a picture of Immanuel Kant can possibly think that beauticians would be frequently patronized by those who emulate the Program authors. Ultimately, beauticians will fade into obscurity, patronized only by those followers of Socrates who believe that beautiful people offer us insight into the good–and those people will mostly be regarded as drunken degenerates by anyone following the ideals of later Program authors. Hairdressers will become obsolete in favor of brain-dressers who will be capable of straightening the mess under the head of hair. They will be known (to those in the know) as ‘tutors.’ Of course, this may lead to a slightly less beautiful world. The Johnnie Department Store: Despite the proponents of Karl Marx standing outside the store and adamantly A nation comprised of very hungry alcoholics might not seem like the best setting for, well, anything, but it would have certain redeeming features. The food of love, at least, would abound with all its relishes intact. Music would be everywhere, provided that the philosopher kings in charge were not paying overly close attention to St. Augustine. If they were, music lacking polyphony would be ubiquitous (but surely Palestrina put an end to that argument). Of course, it might not be the music that the vast majority of the nation listens to. We would relish our Mozart, our Brahms, our Shostakovich but whenever “Louie, Louie” came on the radio people would (and I find this truly tragic, as I love “Louie, Louie”) sniff dismissively and remark upon the simplistic 1-3-5 pattern. “Surely,” people would exclaim, “this piece is lacking in the dynamic qualities Zuckerkandl describes in The Sense of Music!” Classical stations would quickly become the most popular in the nation, and listening to “Louie, Louie” would prove one to be a harmless but quirky eccentric. Other forms of entertainment would undergo drastic alterations as well. Reality shows and dating games would become passé in favor of PBS and the BBC, which would re-create our favorite literary pieces in loving, eight-hour miniseries. Buddy protesting that the items within it shouldn’t exist (and those reading Kant and Hume declaring that that’s fine, because they don’t) everything would probably function as usual until people realize that mathematics tutorials have left Johnnie cashiers with an inability to do simple mathematics. Instead, they will be left trying to explain to patrons— eagerly awaiting change from the $20 dollars they gave for a $3 dollar purchase—what the nature of infinity and the ultimate actually are. The Johnnie Music Store: These would be located in very close proximity to religious institutions, as sophomore year has taught us that the two are closely intertwined. Far from being a carefree environment, Johnnies would stand listening to bars of music playing over the intercom in such stores, and would nervously call out “1-3-5! 1-3-5!” Then they { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } comedies would feature a wily, irascible bloke named Socrates, and his timid pal Plato. Young women everywhere would stand in line for hours to see new interpretations of Jane Austen. (Johnnies must find it nice to note that many young women already do this, given the success of Pride and Prejudice, a selection featured proudly on the Program list, which is to say, we knew it was cool before the rest of America did.) And as for sports? People would sigh and dismiss the rare sorts who wanted to toss a football around, but in the croquet players would reside the hopes and dreams of a dapperly dressed, hat-wearing nation. For every Johnnie knows that nothing says “athletic prowess” and also “hand-eye coordination” like croquet. While I will save my notions on Johnnies in the boardroom and our diplomatic prowess, at least in the basics of life our rule will pursue the form of the good. We might wish that we did not have to spend another day eating Cato-approved portions of gruel. But then, we would realize that we could wear wonderful outfits and go to our local stadium or park to watch a rousing game of croquet, with Haydn blasting in our iPods. And whatever, the fact would remain that we would stay sexy in that undeniable way that Johnnies are sexy. x would engage in fervent discussion about whether or not they had gleaned greater insight into the nature of the divine. The Johnnie Grocery Store: The Johnnie grocery store would feature a fairly ordinary assortment of items save the fact that no apples would be sold, nor a variety of other “unclean” items. Johnnies, after all, have not spent an entire semester reading the Bible only to make the same mistake twice. The enormous supply of wines, however, would compensate for it. The Johnnie Bookstore: Bookstores would immediately establish themselves as the social hub of the Johnnie society. The philosophy section in each of them would expand magnificently, and trashy paperbacks would be relegated to back corners, near the restroom. In a tribute to great writers past, everything would be categorized by the Greek alphabet. x �34 Back to Basics A Summer Crash Course for Readers How to Read a Book Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, Simon and Schuster, 1940, revised 1976 How to Read a Page I. A. Richards, W. W. Norton, 1942 How to Read Two Books Erasmus G. Addlepate, Frederick Stokes Company, 1940 (out of print) by Emily DeBusk (A06) s long as St. John’s is in the business of asking gadfly-ish questions, here is one to ponder: do you know how to read? Paradoxically, you must read to learn how to read. It is no coincidence that the philosopher Mortimer Adler (HA86), a selfdescribed “educational evangelist” and co-author of How to Read a Book, was instrumental to the shaping of the Great Books movement in the late 1930s. An underlying premise of Adler’s book is A {Bibliofile} also the lifeblood of St. John’s; as Einstein put it, “Information is not knowledge.” Newspapers, encyclopedias, and textbooks, while valuable in a particular way, do not add up to the kind of knowledge valuable to a Johnnie. Nor will a single one of our great books magically radiate knowledge to the reader as soon as the first page is turned (with the possible exception of Lucretius). Ultimately, what is read is secondary to how it is read. For Adler and co-author Charles Van Doren (class of 1946), reading well is something of a superpower. “With nothing but the power of your own mind, you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from a state of understanding less to one of understanding more.” Skilled reading, the authors write, is our only defense against a pre-packaged opinion. How to Read a Book is an exhaustive presentation of the four levels of reading: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical. Elementary reading is what a kindergartener does, or a freshman just learning to piece together the Greek alphabet. Inspectional reading, or “timebound, systematic skimming,” is familiar to the student who procrastinates on a seminar reading and must try to piece it together in an impossible amount of time. (When not forced to take the place of analytical reading, inspectional reading is a valuable skill to have.) Analytical reading is the fount of a good seminar. This is reading for understanding, applied to material that is perhaps slightly out of the reader’s grasp so that it takes analysis, first to get through the book and secondly, to talk about it. Finally, syntopical reading is analytical reading of multiple books, synthesizing ideas from various sources, which ideally leads the reader to a unique idea from the many. “The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection,” the authors write. What is at stake in the quality of your reading? If you are reading for more than just information, the authors posit that it is { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } What is at stake in the quality of your reading? If you are reading for more than just information, the authors posit that it is the life of your mind. the life of your mind. If you ask a challenging book a question, “it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking and analysis yourself.” It is almost necessary to read How to Read a Book in order to read How to Read a Page: A Course in Efficient Reading with an Introduction to 100 Great Words, written by British literary critic and semanticist I.A. Richards in 1942. Like Adler and Van Doren, Richards offers his book as a remedy to poor reading, poor thinking, and the consequent downfall of civilization. “What is the point of toiling through thousands of pages, if the chief outcome is an accumulation of misunderstandings?” he asks. How to Read a Page delves deeply into the theory of language, uncovering the “systematic ambiguity �35 {Bibliofile} (or ‘resourcefulness’) of all our most important words” in order to read and think afresh. The book combines reading exercises with the gradual development of a doctrine of the fundamentals of reading. Nevertheless, Richards does not aim to strictly codify the art of reading. For Richards, as for Adler and Van Doren, reading is an almost sacred act of communion, not with authors, but with ideas. “There is no such thing as merely reading words; always through the words we are trafficking or trying to traffic with things—things gone by, present, to come, or eternal. So a person who sets up to teach reading should recognize that he may be more ambitious than he seems…” Once the reading of a page and a book have been mastered, we may now move on to Erasmus G. Addlepate’s tongue-incheek parody, How to Read Two Books, published in 1940. The book aims to show non-thinkers “how to become near-thinkers, part-time thinkers, and for those who wish to follow the Rules, how to become mental giants.” Although the author pokes fun at the idea of a “How To” book that aspires to true education (and although he would call I.A. Richards a practitioner of that “technique of thought What Tutors are Reading We asked tutors from Santa Fe and Annapolis what non-Program books they were making time for: a few novels, many nonfiction works, and a book about a teddy bear made the list. Basia Miller: “Céline’s Mort à Crédit is a long term project.” Also, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil. “After seeing the movie version, I found the plot-lines simpler and more delicately woven [in the book].” Emily Langston: Obasan, by Joy Kogawa, about Japanese Canadians interned during WWII. Also, The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton. Jon Tuck: Plowing the Dark, by Richard Powers, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Pillar of Fire by Taylor Branch, The Last Samaurai by Helen DeWitt, and Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Henry Higuera: The Wild Ass’s Skin, by Honoré de Balzac and The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. “As to why I read them: both were just to keep sane.” Sherry Martin: Winkie, by Clifford Chase, “in which Meletus testifies at a trial of a teddy bear. Yes, really. On a recent road trip, I listened to the new Le Carré novel, The Mission Song. I like to read novels during the holidays to decompress.” Joseph Macfarland (A87): Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World and The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe, both by Patrick J. Geary. Jacques Duvoisin: The Ancient City, by Fustel de Coulanges, “a classic study of the religious foundations of Ancient Greek and Roman cities. It is a real eyeopener. I heartily recommend it.” Susan Stickney: One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw, by Witold Rybczynski; The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan; and Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, by David Hockney. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } Greg Schneider: “Since I took a small group of Santa Fe campus folks on an alternative spring break experience in Haiti, I have been reading about the country. In particular, I recently read Breath, Eyes, Memory, by Edwidge Danticat, is a Haitian-American, and Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder, a nonfiction book about improving health care in Haiti.” David Starr: is doing some syntopical reading: Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History; Margaret Barker, The Great High Priest; Robin Fox, Pagans and Christians; and Jean Danielou, The Christian Centuries, vol. I: The First Six Hundred Years. “I am reading most of them because I am interested in the question, why the early Christians were willing to risk their lives for their faith. This, of course, presupposes the question, what was their faith (or Gospel)? I do not think it is very well understood by most modern and post-modern scholars—Christian or not.” �36 {Croquet} H A P P Y B I RT H DAY, C RO Q U E T by Emily DeBusk (A06) N eed there be more reasons for merry-making on croquet day? In addition to the muchanticipated victory of the Johnnies over the Mids (5-0), the reunion of dear friends, delectable picnic spreads, flowing champagne, and springtime on the Annapolis campus, Johnnies had five more reasons to be of good cheer. The first is that it has been a quarter of a century since the fateful wager between St. John’s student Kevin Heyburn (A86) and a Naval Academy officer that sparked the good-natured rivalry. Both Heyburn and the first Imperial Wicket for St. John’s, John Ertle (A84) attended the 25th croquet match, along with Ertle’s wife, Kathy, who goes by “First Lady Wicket.” That first year, the Mids were clearly outmatched, Imperial Wicket Ertle recalls with pride. “I did a chop shot and the Mid turned to his buddy and said, ‘I think we’re in trouble.’” Ertle points to a snapshot of the 1982 mallet-wielding teams on the steps on Barr Buchanan, which is eerily similar to the present day, complete with boater hats and the trophy securely held in a Johnnie’s hands. Instead of trophies and mallets, this year Ertle and Heyburn held champagne flutes. The commemorative glasses were a gift to St. John’s alumni in honor of croquet’s 25th birthday. Old Roots, New Tree The Liberty Tree that once stood on the front campus of St. John’s was a piece of American history in our midst; each of the 13 colonies had a Liberty Tree, which patriots used as a meeting place as well as a symbol of their revolutionary ideals. The 400-year-old Annapolis Liberty Tree, the last surviving tree, had to be taken down after it was critically damaged by Hurricane Floyd. This year croquet spectators celebrated the dedication of a new Liberty Tree, a gift from the 2007 senior class. The senior class voted to purchase the tulip poplar, located between the Barr Buchanan Center and McDowell Hall, as a perennial gift to both St. John’s and the Annapolis community. Before the start of the croquet match George Zahringer (A07), president of the Senior Class Gift Committee, spoke briefly on the seniors’ choice. “Of all places, no ground is more receptive to this symbol of liberty; here, where the ideal of liberty in thought is so strong,” he said. “It makes me proud as an American and as a member of this Polity to offer this tree on behalf of my class, to reinforce the ideal of liberty.” President Nelson accepted the gift on behalf of the college, and the ceremony was made complete when an ensemble of Johnnies offered their rendition of “Liberty Tree,” a poem by the famous revolutionary Thomas Paine. gary pierpoint A Gift from the Croquet Gods In 2005, the unthinkable happened: the St. John’s croquet team lost the Annapolis Cup to the Mids. The match was two for two on that drizzly day, and victory in the fifth game depended on partners Christopher Mules and Tristan Evans-Wilent, both juniors at the time. They lost. “We were so distraught when we lost, we took a year off from school,” Evans-Wilent says. Two years later, Mules and Evans-Wilent were back on the team, sporting Springsteen-inspired “Born in the USA” attire, determined to make this match a victory for St. John’s. The croquet gods smiled upon them. “I went rover, then Tristan played a great turn,” an ecstatic Mules says after their triumph. Christopher Mules (A07) demonstrates the “whack-n-watch” pose adopted by many players after a tense shot. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �{Croquet} “We [lost] the decisive game five two years ago, so this is retribution. I feel amazing!” Love is in the Air While the croquet teams might have had the jitters about the day’s competition, no one was as nervous as G. August Deimel (A04). Deimel had been planning for weeks to propose to his girlfriend of two years, Sara Wagner (A08). He and some friends tricked her into looking for stereo speakers in Barr Buchanan while Deimel and Wagner’s families, both from Pittsburgh, were brought out from hiding. When she emerged from the building, Wagner was puzzled to see her family. “Then August got on one knee and asked me and I said yes, of course,” she recounts. After a champagne toast, the couple—planning to marry next summer—danced in front of Barr Buchanan. People Watching, Balzac Style Nostalgia, the Annapolis Cup, champagne glasses, Liberty Trees, divine justice and romance—what more? Croquet 2007 also had its usual fantastic parade of characters. “I love the endless variety of people,” said Bryan Smith (A08) as he surveyed the teeming assembly of Johnnies, Mids, alumni from both institutions, and Annapolitans. “It’s like entering a Balzac novel; you get a whole social scene with all their foibles and eccentricities, ” he said. x Clockwise: Souvenir glasses celebrate a silver anniversary; The original Imperial Wicket John Ertle (A84); George Zaringer (A07), Eric Honor (A10), Sara Luell (A09), Lindsay Wyett, Rachel Bartgis (A09); Lining up the shot; The prized cup; Young boy; A Springsteeninspired team; the original 1982 croquet team. photos by gary pierpoint { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } 37 �38 {Alumni Profile} A Humanitarian Calling Christian Acemah (SF05) by Rosemary Harty united nations/mark gasten T hat he would pursue a career in the field of international development was essentially a foregone conclusion for Christian Acemah (SF05), a native of Uganda. His father was a deputy ambassador for his country; his mother had worked as an attaché to the U.N. Security Council. That he was able to land his first professional job based in Geneva, Switzerland, with an international nonprofit was beyond expectation. His studies at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service played a role in that good fortune, he says. But as a foreign student who suffered several personal tragedies, he wouldn’t have gotten to Georgetown or Geneva without the support and encouragement he found at St. John’s. Acemah won two merit-based scholarships to attend Georgetown University’s highly regarded Walsh School of Foreign Service. Being at Georgetown was a wonderful experience, if a little intimidating, he says. His fellow students were serious, ambitious, and already quite accomplished. “I was the youngest one there,” he says. “I entered my first class and the professor started to talk about Thucydides—everyone else in the class had no idea what she was talking about. I could at least relate to what she was saying, and that was great.” As a graduate student, Acemah conducted research and worked as a teaching assistant in the African Studies Program. In the summer of 2006, he served an internship with the Lutheran World Federation in the Uganda/Sudan Country Office. He analyzed the federation’s health policy in the context of Uganda’s national policy and helped provide health workshops. Through Georgetown, he heard about a job with a division within UNICEF that worked to get vaccines and immunizations to children in developing countries. After he put in his application, he heard nothing for months, and he braced himself for disappointment. Finally, a call came for an interview, and Acemah eventually landed the job, which was based in Geneva and would start in a matter of weeks. Because it Christian Acemah (SF01) greets former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan during an event Acemah organized at Georgetown. The event celebrated Annan’s lasting legacy to Africa. would mean interrupting his studies, he consulted his graduate adviser, who urged him to accept the job. “It would have taken me eight years to get to this level, and even to get into the UN system is so difficult. Most people give up along the way,” he says. Acemah’s official title is Executive Officer, Policy and Research, for the GAVI Alliance Secretariat. The GAVI alliance is a public-private partnership focused on increasing children’s access to vaccines in poor countries. GAVI unites UNICEF, the World Bank, and major international foundations in setting mutual goals, sharing strategies, and coordinating efforts. “We bring principles from the private sector and apply them to the public sector,” he says. One of the agency’s goals is to improve the mechanisms involved with getting new vaccines out on the market as soon as they are ready. It also seeks to create sustainable, long-term financing for immunization programs in the countries in which it works. “Being in such an intense environment is { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } quite interesting for me. We work from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on almost any given working day,” he says. “There are constant briefings and writing pieces to compose. Travel is also a huge part of this office. I cannot believe the amount of responsibility I have been given.” Most recently, Acemah is working on HPV vaccine advocacy and leads GAVI’s relationships with African initiatives. Though he grew up with privileges, Acemah was raised to be aware of responsibilities and obligations to others. He undertook his education with those goals in mind. In Uganda, aptitude tests identified him as gifted in science and mathematics, but Acemah wanted to study literature and was stubborn about it. “My mother came to the school and told them, ‘he knows what he wants to do, and it’s going to be difficult to change his mind,’ ” Acemah recalls. The school wouldn’t budge, so Acemah found himself at Olney Friends School in Ohio, where he learned about St. John’s. He had already accepted a full scholarship �39 {Alumni Notes} 1944 CARL S. HAMMEN, a Maryland scholarship student at St. John’s College, married Deborah Reinhold-Kazor on March 31, 2007, in St. Petersburg, Fla. Since retirement from the University of Rhode Island, he has served as a tax-return preparer, census enumerator, and adjunct professor at several Florida colleges. Carl likes to run, and in 2006 was ranked second in the state, in the men’s 80 age division in the 10K and third in the 15K. Deborah won the 1500-m run in December 2004 at the state senior games, where they met. She is an equestrienne, and her quadrille team was second in the nation in 2001. Surrounded by Mountains A fter 15 years as head of school at Friends School of Minnesota, MARK NIEDERMIER (A84) has moved on. He is now head of school at Pacific Northern Academy in Anchorage, Alaska. His 8-year-old daughter, Sophie, is a second-grader at the school, and his 3-year-old son, Caleb, will soon enroll as well. Mark’s wife, Karen, is a nurse practitioner at Anchorage Midwifery and Women’s Health, and they all enjoy an active lifestyle, surrounded by mountains and wildlife. x Carl is the father of five children, four living, all highly successful, and the grandfather of seven, all of whom he dearly loves. Deborah and Carl, when he completes his duties as teacher of “creative geometry” at Ringling School of Art & Design in Sarasota, will travel to Portugal, Spain, France, and England. to Earlham College, but St. John’s intrigued him. He called the Santa Fe Admissions office, rushed to get his material in, and was offered admission. Acemah says he was drawn to St. John’s primarily because he could pursue all his varied interests. “The place spoke to me from the first moment I learned of it,” says Acemah, though it took some time for him to feel confident in the Program. “I was very scared at first, reading Euclid. David Carl was my math tutor, and by the time he called on me to do a proposition, I did it my own way, and it worked. From that moment, I just enjoyed everything.” Acemah experienced two great losses during his St. John’s years. His mother, Monique Kwagala, died when he was a sophomore. As a foreign services officer in Uganda, she had helped people escape the regime of Idi Amin. “She had always been the anchor of my life,” he explains. “The day she died, I got up and went to class, and I got called to do a very long proposition of Apollonius. Continuing at St. John’s was important to me. I think that strength came from her, saying I have to go on.” A year later, Acemah lost his grandfather, Nicholas Magoola. Acemah had spent several years living and working with his grandfather on his farm, and he learned how to observe and respect the natural world through him. “He was one of those people 1960 MARY CAMPBELL GALLAGHER presented “Easier than IRAC: The Under-Here-Therefore Legal Writing System” at the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Conference at the University of Nevada Las Vegas on March 10. Mary first who can just see right through you, see the things you can do, and try to encourage you to look fear in the face,” says Acemah. “Now, my second anchor was gone.” His tutors and friends saw through his stoic demeanor, Acemah says. “They would always check in with me, and that was a good thing,” he says. When it seemed finances would force him to drop out, his tutors went to the administration on his behalf, and then-president John Balkcom (SFGI00) found money for Acemah to continue. Career Services Director Margaret O’Dell watched Acemah evolve from a “quiet, polite freshman into a mischievous, determined, self-assured senior who would not let any obstacles stand in his path to Georgetown University and graduate school. He needed to take two economics classes as prerequisites before entering Georgetown,” she explains. “Most students would have taken a year off and finished those classes in a leisurely fashion, but not Christian. He found the classes he needed at the University of New Mexico, figured out how to manage the tuition, found a way to commute to Albuquerque, convinced the professors to let him enroll for the summer session, and passed both classes with flying colors in the space of eight weeks.” Odell is not surprised Acemah is already serving a humanitarian cause; she has { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } described her writing system, which is based on Aristotelian logic, in the first edition of her book Scoring High on Bar Exam Essays, published by ARCO in 1991. BarWrite Press brought out the third edition in 2006. 1967 LARRY (A) and HAZEL SCHLUETER (A69) report from New Orleans: “Hazel has an oldtime country and bluegrass music show every Sunday morning, 10 a.m. to noon at www.wwoz.org on the Web for her style of what is happening in New Orleans postKatrina. We are restoring the house and enjoying having all the family here.” always felt that Acemah’s drive stemmed from his desire to return to Uganda and work to improve the lives of others. “This inner drive could have made him dour or overly intense but in reality the intensity you felt from Christian was his love for learning and for his friends,” she says. At St. John’s, Acemah met his fiancée, Marie Craig (SF05), who now teaches at Olney Friends School and will begin graduate studies at Columbia University in the fall. They will marry this July at a lodge on Murchison Falls in northwest Uganda. Many of his classmates and tutors are planning to attend, he says. In the meantime, Acemah is adjusting to life in Geneva, where finding affordable housing is a challenge. “The city is very beautiful, very clean, so many gardens, and it has a multicultural feel to it because the UN is here. I can eat the food that I would eat in Uganda! My favorite is green bananas with chicken—I can buy it at the grocery store, go home and prepare it for myself.” Living closer to his father, Harold Acemah, ambassador to the European Union in Brussels, is another plus to his location. In the long run, Acemah wants to find a happy medium between conducting field work and policymaking. “I don’t know yet what that blend will look like,” he says. “I hope it will be exciting and challenging.” x �40 {Alumni Notes} on. Daughter HANNA (A96, Georgetown Law ’01) had a beautiful wedding on Tilghman Island to Stephen Goldstein in November 2005, in which I participated in Highland dress plus yarmulke; they live on Capitol Hill, and it’s great to be nearby. Catch us at the New Orleans Jazzfest!” 1968 A good long classnote from JOSHUA GILLELAN (A) covers a lot of ground: “I finally made my escape from the Office of the Solicitor of Labor in June 2004, to start my own practice, the grandiosely entitled Longshore Claimants’ National Law Center, practicing primarily before the federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. I can’t imagine why I waited so long (except, of course, that the new practice, though busy from the start, produced almost no cash flow for the first two years). My wife, writer Allison Blake (be sure to get the current edition of her widely available Chesapeake Bay Book: A Complete Guide before your next trip to the area), and I have a second home in New Orleans (bought four months before Katrina—great timing—but in the ‘sliver by the river’ that didn’t flood, though it was an anxious two and a half weeks before we could make sure it was still there and not pancaked by the water oak in the back yard or the live oak in the neighbor yard), and intend to spend half the year there (appellate practice is wonderfully portable) from now 1975 Publishing news from ERIC SCIGLIANO (SF): “Been grounded in Seattle, helping start a magazine (Seattle Metropolitan, nominal position ‘news editor’). Article “The Mind of an Octopus” picked for Best American Science Writing anthology. Last book, Michaelangelo’s Mountain, was finalist for Washington State Book Award. Lost to Tim Egan’s The Worst Hard Time, which went on to win the National Book Award.” C (SANDERS) SOKOLOV (SF02) and her husband, Christopher, welcomed their second son, Gregory, on November 22, 2006. He joins his brother, Nicholas, in contemplating the two greatest inventions of the Western world: fire trucks and helicopters. x RYSTAL Institute of St. Louis (www.kabbalahmadeeasy.com), along with publishing poetry: “In 2005, my poem was featured alongside Maya Angelou’s in a poetry anthology called, Cosmic Brownies—Poems about Lessons Learned in Life. In 2006, I was the original winner of the only scholarship (based solely on merit) given by the Washington University Summer Writer’s Institute, which I turned down because it wasn’t a full scholarship and due to health reasons at the time. I also help one of my friends with her matchmaking business.” 1976 ALICE JOY BROWN (A) works as an office assistant while doing promotions for the Kabbalah Another Croquet Fan alex fotos T heodore Gammon (A28 or A30 if he is slow like his father; SF28 if contrary like his mother) reports that his parents, ALEX and BETH (both A94), are doing well in Baltimore. Other places, too. He is trying to teach them that as long as you sit under the maple once a day, get dirty once a day, eat some currants and dance a little, you should smile more than frown. x Fire trucks and Helicopters 1988 For the last year and a half, JULIET BURCH (A) has been working at the National Center for Jewish Film, an archive located at Brandeis University and dedicated to the preservation and restoration of Jewish-themed films. “I feel as though I’ve really found my niche in this interesting and quirky collection,” she writes. “It’s great to have a job I love!” ERIN MILNES (A) writes that she was married in June 2006 to Chuck Guest, a writer and musician, in Oakland, Calif.: “We had more fun than anyone should all weekend, with family and great friends, including half a dozen Johnnies from the infamous class of A88.” In March, KIM PAFFENROTH (A) was named a recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for his nonfiction work, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006). His book tied with Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die, by Michael Largo. The award is bestowed in recognition of “superior achievement” by the Horror Writers Association. Winning the award puts Paffenroth in the company of writer Stephen King, and he takes home an award that is an eight-inch replica of a haunted house with a door that opens to reveal a brass plaque engraved with the name of the winning work and its author. Gospel of the Living Dead is a non-fiction book connecting social and religious views with the classic American zombie and horror genre; it has attracted much critical acclaim. 1991 JONARNO LAWSON (A) has received the 2007 The Lion and the Unicorn Award for excellence in North American poetry for his book Black Stars in a White Night Sky. continued on p. 43 { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �41 {Alumni Profile} What was so special about the Class of ’66? by Emily DeBusk (A06) e came to St. John’s from having marched with Martin Luther King on a hot day, holding hands, singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Kennedy was President. Bras were to be burned. We had come to St. John’s as prospectives, gone to seminar, become converts. We came to the college, the Program, with something resembling religious reverence. I can’t speak for my classmates, but my guess is that it was more the rule than the exception. We read seminar with Jacob Klein, complete with pipe and joyous love of Plato; sang in freshman chorus for/with Victor Zuckerkandl, who had but to lift his hand for us all to feel held by angels; studied the Bible in small groups with Mr. Kaplan, whose humanity almost eclipsed his brilliance; read Greek with John Kieffer, whose cadence still echoes. Elliott Zuckerman, Joe Cohen, and John Sarkissian were the ‘young ones.’ Al Main was in charge of the laboratory. Bob Bart, Charles Bell, Paul Scofield, were our guides, with Winfree Smith, and Sam Kutler, Beate Ruhm van Oppen, Douglas Allanbrook, Tom MacDonald. Life with them was totally engrossing. We were obsessed with books, dialogue, discovery. Annapolis was tacky and rundown, not at all its up-market today self. McDonald’s was new and had just sold a million burgers. The night the Cuban missile crisis threatened, there was silence around the seminar table until Mr. Klein broke in with the opening question and we were off, again, in the traditional search. Afterwards, we sat in a dormitory room, listening to the radio. The Russian fleet turned back. And later, W Kennedy was shot. The only television on campus was turned on, day and night. I didn’t watch, but that was a choice I’m not sure I don’t regret. Anyway, in 1963, or maybe it was 1964, we heard the first Beatles recording wafting out from Humphrey. We sat and watched the sunsets over College Creek, and fell asleep reading Aristotle or Kant or Cervantes or Tolstoy (all four just the right size for a pillow), drank coffee in the eponymous shop, and partied as soon as lecture—or sometimes the question period—was over, making good use of the Sin Bins in Campbell, and walked down to the shabby dock dubbed ‘Piraeus.’ I guess sometime in there, we grew up–sort of–and then, of course, we left. Where did the class of 1966 go and what did they do? Like every graduating class, the diverse career paths taken by alumni reflect the versatility of their education: a news executive, several clergy members, an internationally acclaimed playwright, doctors, lawyers, artists, and even a lighting technician for Grateful Dead concerts. bruce preston (A65) Constance (Bell) Lindgreen (A66) and her classmates came of age during an extraordinary time of metamorphosis in America. Growing up in tumultuous times, and immersed in the great books as they were, they were bound for great things. Connie retired as a vice president in IBM’s European operation and took on the role of “class leader” for her reunion last year. Collecting news of her classmates inspired her to reflect. She writes: For Lindgreen’s classmate Mel Kline, it was sophomore seminar on the Bible that was an especially formative experience. “Sophomore seminar, when you face the Bible and religious questions, had a strong effect on me and my Jewish roots,” Kline says. Soon after graduation, he moved to Israel, where he lives today. “St. John’s really helped me find my life’s work. About 25 years ago I began a research project dealing with Jewish texts without commentaries, which is unheard of in Jewish studies. I made a number of discoveries utilizing the tools of inquiry I developed at St. John’s.” Theodora Carlile echoes Lindgreen’s memories of cultural change: “When I entered in 1962, Beatnik folk was the cutting edge of music. By the time I left, it was The Stones, Dylan, The Beatles. As far as the Program goes, it was a charmed experience for me. I was thrilled with the conversations.” So much so that Carlile went on to become a professor in the liberal arts program at Saint Mary’s College in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } Irene (Lindermayer) Dortch and Connie (Bell) Lindgreen, both class of 1966. California, a position recommended to her by Brother Robert Smith. “I get to go through the Program over and over again,” she says. “I never really left in a way. I also remember that my class was known as “the Matriarchy” because of the many wonderful and strong-minded women in the class.” Margaret Winter was one of them. “In late ’66 there was beginning to be a lot of political ferment,” Winter recalls. “I wanted to work for social justice. I decided the best thing to do after St. John’s was to go to law school and use that as a tool for political activism.” Today, as the associate director of the National Prison Project of the ACLU, she works to protect the constitutional rights of prisoners. x To exchange memories, post pictures, and help tell the story of your class, visit and join the online community of alumni. http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu /?AlumniAssociation �42 {Alumni Profile} Planting Seeds of Peace Munir Hussein (A90) by Patricia Dempsey D and expose young people to their ‘enemies’ at a time in their life when they’re forming their opinions and perceptions. Hopefully this will help create a new generation of leaders who will be wiser and perhaps less judgmental of someone’s looks or beliefs.” He discovered the organization while studying for his MBA at Columbia University, through a Jewish colleague who was serving on the Seeds of Peace board. “He came to me and said, ‘I think you will really appreciate what this organization is doing,’ ” Hussein says. Observing the camp in action inspired Hussein to offer his considerable management skills to Seeds of Peace. He volunteered on the Young Leadership Committee, managing fundraisers in Manhattan and mentors former “Seeds” with career advice. Last year, Hussein joined the organization’s board of directors and is currently its only Palestinian American member. As a board member, Hussein hopes to provide a leadership model for teenagers who come from Palestine. “I want to set a good example and use my Palestinian heritage as a positive thing,” he says. “There are many occasions—business meetings, parties—when I’ll hear comments christopher huston ressed in khaki shorts and sneakers, he could easily have passed as one of the camp counselors. But Munir Hussein (A90) a real estate dealmaker, had come to this peaceful spread of tall pines and clear lakes near Lewiston, Maine, to observe. As a guest of Seeds of Peace summer camp, he quietly listened to a tense dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian teenagers. “The professional facilitator opened with a question: ‘What do you think about the wall between Israel and the West Bank?’ There were 14 teenagers from Israel and about 10 from Palestine,” recalls Hussein, a Palestinian American. “They were probably on their best behavior because there were visitors in the room, but it was a very open, candid dialogue. They bunk together, sail, do the ropes course, and have discussions that remind me in some ways of a St. John’s seminar-starting off with a question.” As a managing director in real estate acquisition and development for a private equity firm in Manhattan, Hussein skillfully arranges financing and structures lucrative real estate deals. Yet for all the delicate negotiations he has managed, nothing prepared him for this first visit to Seeds of Peace in 2003. The camp brings together teenagers from both sides of a conflict area, such as Palestine and Israel, India and Pakistan, the United States and Iraq, and the Balkans, in order to foster mutual understanding.“I was dazzled,” Hussein says. “Here’s an organization that is really doing something about the problems in the world. They’re seeking to educate or someone will ask ‘where are you from?’ I say, ‘Rye, New York’ and they say, ‘No, where are you really from?’ It depends how diplomatic people are, but in this climate of fear the tiniest little difference stands out. I want people to see that I’m not just like an American, I am an American.” Last summer Seeds of Peace touched Hussein personally when his then 13-year old cousin Dana attended the camp in Maine. “She lives in a small village in Palestine, Zeita, near Nablus, of about 2,100 people,” says Hussein who has numerous relatives on his father’s side who live on the West Bank. Hussein has visited Palestine several times, and when he traveled there in 2000 with his parents he spent time with Dana, whom he describes as “exceptionally bright.” Yet the opportunities for a young woman like Dana in her village were, and still are, limited. “The tiny village where Dana was growing up has dirt roads, stone houses, olive trees, and chicken farmers,” Hussein says. “The women are raised in a totally traditional Middle Eastern culture and handle the children and household chores. Although they are given the opportunity to go to college, they typically do not have the same choices that men do.” Hussein’s father, a Palestinian immigrant who spent his career with large consumer product companies, and his mother, a classics professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey and an advocate for woman’s rights, later returned to Palestine to convince Dana’s parents to let her attend the program. “Her father was cautious,” says his corporate life is about deal making, but with Seeds of Peace, Hussein builds bridges. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �43 {Alumni Notes} continued from p. 40 1993 RACHEL BLISTEIN (A) is in Michigan: “I completed my master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at Morgan State University in Baltimore, graduating in 2003. After working in Baltimore for several years, I met my future husband, Paul Alexander, and decided to re-locate to Ann Arbor, Mich., where he was completing his PhD in Mechanical Engineering. We were married in October of 2004 and, one and a half years later, bought our first house in nearby Ypsilanti. My husband works for General Motors as a research engineer and I recently began my own residential design firm, Veris Landscape Design, L.L.C. We love Michigan, despite the cold winters and troubled economy. The surroundings are beautiful, the people are friendly, there’s a funky local music scene and lots of great food (it goes with the cold winters). Anyone who wants to get in touch is welcome to reach me at rblistein@yahoo.com.” OMAR S. MANEJWALA, M.D., (A) writes: “Over the last six years (since finishing up as Chief Resident in psychiatry at Duke) I’ve become very interested in the treatment of addicted healthcare professionals. In July 2006, I moved to Virginia to become the Associate Medical Director of the William J. Farley center, a program for chemically dependent professionals. I also spend a few days a month lecturing across the country on various topics in addiction medicine. This is exciting and rewarding work, as about half of my patients are addicted medical professionals including physicians, pharmacists, veterinarians, dentists, etc. It’s really been an honor and a privilege to participate in their recovery. When I’m not working I’m still traveling like crazy. Last year I climbed Kilimanjaro and hiked the overland track in Tasmania. Last month I returned from my fourth trip to India, this time to attend my brother’s marriage at the Taj Mahal.” 1998 1997 DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) has been encountering great success in the board game business: “Our latest party game, “Wits & Getting the Word Out K EVIN BROCK (SF96) and KHIN KHIN GUYOT BROCK (SF88) hope to add a new member to their family soon: “We married in 2004, after meeting in a summer alumni seminar on Jane Austen in 2000 and in several more over the following years. For our honeymoon we did the Coast-to-Coast walk in England, a 200-mile hike from the North Sea to the Irish Sea through Yorkshire and the Lake Country. We live in Mountain View, Calif.” Kevin is a software engineer with a networking start-up in Santa Cruz and Khin Khin teaches first grade in a local public school. “We are currently trying to adopt an infant through domestic open adoption,” he adds. “Open adoption is very different from international adoption, because the birth mother and the adoptive parents know more about each other, and there is usually some degree of continuing contact after the baby is born. The birth mother chooses the adoptive parents who she wants to raise her child, so there’s a lot of uncertainty involved while waiting for a match. The biggest challenge is getting the word out, so if you know someone who is pregnant and considering adoption, please feel free to give them our contact information: 408-806-9190; brock@kevin.com.” x Hussein. “She’d never been out of the village and it’s a big leap to go from this tiny village in the Palestinian countryside— not only to go to the United States, but to a camp where she would be bunking with roommates from Israel.” By June 2006 Dana joined fellow Palestinian “Seeds” at an orientation session before they took a plane from Tel Aviv to the United States with the teenage Israeli “Seeds.” Hussein, his parents, and his uncle from Boston visited Dana on her second day of camp in Maine in part to reassure her parents that she was thriving. “She was wearing her headscarf and she was a little nervous, but she got out and was playing soccer with the kids. She’d never been swimming before; she played all kinds of sports and went boating and did crafts, and of course they do a ropes course, where you’re learning to spot one another and build trust.” Hussein says Dana’s English, along with her confidence and world outlook, reached new heights. “Now she’s back in her village and she’s started a Seeds of Peace type { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } Wages,” won 11 industry awards last year including Games magazine’s ‘Party Game of the Year,’ ” he writes. “It will be carried nationwide at Target starting in August! I am very excited.” JEAN (TULLY) FLAHERTY (A) and her husband, Seamus, joyfully announce the births of their three children, Aoife Marie, born December 1, 2003; George Anthony, born March 26, 2005; and Saoirse Anne, born October 7, 2006. They live in Plantation, Fla., and will move to South Bend, Ind., this autumn. DAWN (SHUMAN) BORCHELT (A), Matthew, and Wolfgang welcomed their new son and brother, Robin Wylde Borchelt to the world in their new home on May 2, 2006. He was 7 lbs. 9 ounces and 20 inches long. 2000 ALEXIS BROWN (SF, EC03) recently joined the Board of Directors of Creative Santa Fe. She has added this to her list of other volunteer efforts at the Santa Fe Rape Crisis and Trauma Treatment Center, Santa Fe Cares and AIDS Walk, and High program there,” he says. “It’s had a tremendous impact on her life and broadening her horizons.” “It’s funny,” Hussein adds, “back when I was at St. John’s, I was never aware of being that different in college. People were just people. This is the way I was brought up, a face is a face, a mind is a mind, an idea is an idea, you don’t look at a person’s culture or ethnicity–you look at who they are as a human being.” x �44 {Alumni Notes} A Journey to China B TURNER (EC03) has been accepted to CIEE’s Teach in China program. He will teach Oral English and American Literature classes at Jiaxing University in the city of Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. “Beginning this August, this appointment will last an entire academic year (10 months), and I couldn’t be more excited,” he writes. “I took classical Chinese courses under the eminent Mike Bybee at the Santa Fe campus, and his classes were the initial impetus for this journey of mine. Apart from my teaching load, I intend to diligently study Mandarin with a private tutor, thereby returning to the States slightly more fluent than I am now. “Not only did I want to share my good fortune with the Johnnie community, but I also wanted to invite others to offer their advice and suggestions. If any others have embarked on similar experiences, I would love to glean some sage advice with regard to living conditions, textbook choices, etc.: bennett.turner@gmail.com.” x ENNETT Mayhem Emerging Arts Studio. She is excited to work on promoting the prosperity of Santa Fe’s creative industries and their economic potential. If you want more information on Creative Santa Fe, please feel free to contact Alexis at: alexis_i_brown@yahoo.com. 2001 “I’d like to give an update on my whereabouts to my fellow alumni,” writes WILL BONNER (SF). “In February 2007 my wife and I moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. We keep a daily blog about the experience at www.willbonner.com.” “This is just a shameless note to let you all in on some personal news,” writes NATHAN WILSON (AGI). “I recently signed a fourbook deal with Random House for young adult novels, the first of which (Leepike Ridge) will release May 22. I shamelessly rip-off some of the greats in service of my plot (Twain and Homer mainly). In a very different market, I also have a piece of short fiction in the February issue of Esquire. It’s sort of mixed- media, I guess—typed on pieces of a cocktail napkin (their idea, not mine). Another short story was just nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I feel a bit cheesy telling you all, but is the phrase alma mater meaningless? Can’t I brag to my mater?” 2002 STEVE ROSE (AGI) sent in a note for himself and MAILI SHAFFER (AGI), who look forward to traveling together in Europe this summer: “Ms. Shaffer, after teaching first grade since graduation in May 2000 is about to finish her first year of law school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her firstyear summer law position will be in Baltimore, and she is looking forward to beautiful evenings in Annapolis. Maili would be delighted to hear from classmates or Johnnies interested in UM Law School. For myself, I have been teaching in Annapolis since May 2000, with two lengthy interruptions for visits to Iraq with B Company, 4th Light Armored Recon Battalion. Our most recent vacation was to keep the rivers and lakes safe for fishermen and farmers, and we received many thanks from the Iraqis for providing some small measure of security. I’m delighted to be home and look forward not only to hearing from former classmates, but most of all to backpacking through Europe with Maili in August.” SHELLEY (WALKER) SAXEN (SFGI, EC03) writes: “Doug Saxen and I are now married and enjoying all the skiing and hiking we can get while in Montana for another year. While I finish up my doctorate in Natural Resources Management, Doug is in the throes of writing a children’s book series. There’s always room for SFGI alumni at our place if you happen to be in western Montana and we would love to hear from you.” Since last spring MICHAEL SULLIVAN (A) has been trying to teach Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Nietzsche to semi-grateful freshmen at Marymount University in Arlington, Va., and and The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is also working on his doctoral dissertation, on the debate over universal hylomorphism in 13th-century metaphysics, for Catholic University. RACHEL ROCCIA SULLIVAN (A) is nearing the end of her third year of medical school at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Md. Options for specialization remain open, but she is strongly considering a future in psychiatry. Their younger daughter, Grace, has had two eye surgeries and a heart surgery since her birth last July, but she’s doing very well; their older daughter, Clare, is, hopefully, coming out of her terrible twos as her third birthday approaches. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } 2004 GIDEON CULMAN (SFGI, EC05) is living in the District of Columbia and organizing alumni gatherings every week; alumni in the D.C. area should look him up to get on his e-mail list. The group provides networking opportunities, camaraderie, and fun get-togethers with other Johnnies. 2005 CHARLES CLAUNCH (SFGI), now in the master’s program in politics at the University of Dallas, has been accepted to that school’s PhD program for the fall term in 2007. If anyone has any interest in this program, please direct questions to him at cclaunch@alumni.stjohnscollege.edu. JOHN PETERSON (A) and CAROLYN ANN STRIPLING (SF07) were married in July 2006. x What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in October; deadline for the alumni notes section is August 10. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu �{Alumni Notes} 45 A Greek Adventure Runs Aground ack Ladd Carr, class of 1950, and his wife, Lois, had been looking forward to a stimulating trip to the “Greek Islands and Beyond,” as the tour operator billed it. But on the day that their cruise ship, the Sea Diamond, was scheduled to make an afternoon trip to Santorini, the excursion provided a bit more excitement than they had bargained for. Just a few days into their twoweek trip, the couple had already visited several Aegean islands and made stops in Patmos and Crete. “We were to sail into the harbor at Santorini,” Carr recalls. “The island is spectacularly beautiful; there are these very unusual cliffs, and they go straight down into this deep caldera. We were preparing to disembark for a brief run to the island when for some reason the ship struck a rock ledge.” While the crew prepared to evacuate passengers, the ship began listing to starboard. “Everybody was calm,” he says. “The crew managed to calm every one down. There were some youngsters, teenagers from a school in North Carolina, and they were in good spirits, clowning around, snapping each other’s pictures.” Carr and his wife are both in their 80s, and another passenger, a young French woman took notice of them, got them life jackets, and made sure the couple were safe. “She made certain that in the crush of people that we were not pushed down, and J she took her own life jacket off and put it on Lois,” Carr says. “She spoke no English, and we speak no French, but we managed to communicate our gratitude to her.” While many passengers climbed down ropes to rescue vessels, the Carrs were evacuated to a waiting ferry by means of a makeshift chute, assembled of mattresses, which linked the automobile ramps of both ships. Jack and Lois Carr on dry ground after the disaster, and below, “Thank God I Lois, after sliding to safety. didn’t have to climb down a ladder,” says Carr. woman named Rea, and Rea arranged for “The last time I climbed down a ladder into our group to go to a very nice, new hotel in the boat was during the second World War the village,” says Carr. when I climbed down cargo nets into “We got there by going up the cliff in a landing boats, which I did several times. sort of funicular, and after a short walk It was scary when I was 19, and it would be a through the village, caught a bus that took lot scarier at 82.” us to the hotel. They gave us dinner, a Carr has read many reports room, and breakfast the next morning. And that people panicked, that at breakfast, I found out the ship had sunk. there was chaos, and that the That was the only time we sensed any fear.” crew wasn’t helpful, but their Carr had a shoulder bag with some euros, experience was much better. credit cards, and glasses. The couple’s They saw no panic and clothing and everything else in their thought the crew acted professuitcase, including souvenirs, were lost. sionally. “We decided to keep The group’s passports were also safe and calm and observed everything returned to them on the next leg of their with great interest,” he recalls. trip. Each passenger was provided with “We were separated—they did 200 euros to pick up some clothing and the women-and-children other items in Athens. Then they continued thing. That’s when I began to their trip for another 11 days. “We lost only feel that I was on the Titanic. one day of the tour,” Carr says. By this time, the ship was The accident won’t stop the Carrs listing at 15 degrees.” from traveling, says Carr. “I’m not Lois was rescued first; Jack a superstitious,” he says. “But I could do little while later, and their tour with less adventure.” x group of 39 was brought —rosemary harty ashore together. “Our tour guide was a wonderful Greek { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �46 {Obituaries} LILLIAN VANOUS NUTT FRIEND OF THE COLLEGE “Of course, Lillian also loved to paint, and exhibited in juried shows all over the area. I Lillian Vanous Nutt, who died earlier this spring at imagine that I have seen thousands of her waterage 99, was a generous and dedicated supporter of colors, mostly on note cards, pieces of paper St. John’s College in Annapolis. Her gifts not-to-be-thrown-away. And in the last 10 years, supported scholarships for St. John’s students, I’ve been pleased to gaze upon hundreds of painted helped establish the Mitchell Gallery, and under“jolins”, flowers designed by Lillian as a gift in wrote the renovation of a room in the Greenfield honor of my wife, Joyce Olin . . . four years ago, we Library to serve as the Nutt Room, a second added to our personal collection of framed “jolins” exhibition space for art on the Annapolis campus and other “still-lifes,” a bell pull, hand-painted by which also serves as an elegant reading room. Lillian with beautiful roses. I still pull on the darn The following excerpt, from a eulogy given at thing, but nobody comes a-running. I suspect her memorial service by Annapolis President Lillian knew that too. ‘Each of us was meant to Christopher Nelson, celebrates Mrs. Nutt’s attend to his own needs,’ I can hear her say. many contributions: “I have loved Lillian’s colorful and vivid “Lillian was born four weeks shy of 100 years ago imagination . . . In 1964, Lillian wrote a brief poem in a small wooden house on the corner of Taylor about herself. I think it captured her rather well. Lillian Vanous Nutt Avenue and Annapolis Street. She grew up in a It was titled, “Me” and opened as follows: ‘If I am home her parents soon thereafter built on Revell anything/ I certainly am prolific/ No matter what Street. Lillian remembered it for its central heating the merit/ My output is terrific!’ with gold radiators and two bathrooms, but also for its large fishpond “Indeed, it was. How many of us in this room have received with a fountain in the middle. She recalls the parties at the outdoor envelopes stuffed with hand-painted note cards (on recycled paper) fireplace, and the use of red-checked tablecloths and cloth napkins, to be used for friendly “thank yous” or just to lift the spirit. She was not the paper products of today which she shuddered to call “throwgenerous but tough and always faced down the advance of age. . . aways.” No one who knew Lillian could forget her abhorrence of She befriended St. John’s College many years ago and generously throwaways: Everything to its purpose, at least twice over . . . provided student scholarships for those with need. She also “Lillian remained at home until 1943 when she was married to Hi, underwrote the renovation of the Lillian Vanous Nutt Room in a marriage that lasted for her remaining 64 years. She attended the the Greenfield Library, where regular shows of local artists are Peabody Institute for her music lessons, traveling back and forth to exhibited through the year. Her gifts are put to use over and over Baltimore on the old B&A Railway. She even remembered giving a and for multiple purposes . . . recital at age 13 in McDowell Hall at St. John’s College. She also “A small group of us gathered in Lillian’s and Hi’s home last May remembered her youthful parties at St. John’s and the Naval for her 99th birthday. Anna Greenberg (HA96) asked her what she Academy. By the time she was 20, she had her own car and began considered was the most important thing she had accomplished in teaching piano, something she did for three generations of her lifetime. She answered quickly, ‘without a doubt, it was my Annapolitans . . . teaching children to play the piano and appreciate art!’ ” DR. PETER HAMILL CLASS OF 1949 Dr. Peter VanVechten Hamill, class of 1949, died on March 10, 2007, at the age of 80. He had forged a remarkable life and career as a scholar and scientist, an avid sportsman, accomplished sailor, and collector of fine wines. Dr. Hamill was born in Baltimore in 1926, and grew up in Detroit. He earned a bachelor’s in philosophy from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and medical degrees from Michigan and Johns Hopkins University. He served in the Navy during World War II and had a career as a commissioned officer in the United States Dr. Peter Hamill Public Health Service. He was the scientific director of the Surgeon General’s Study on Smoking and Health and also designed the Growth and Development charts for use in charting the growth of juveniles. Eva Brann, who spoke at Dr. Hamill’s memorial service, described him as “first and last” a Johnnie, with an “acute, detailed and wickedly judgmental memory.” In 2002, Dr. Hamill sent Miss Brann an oral history of his role in the 1962-64 study on smoking, which is now in the JFK Library in Boston. The study was the first declaration from the government that smoking causes cancer, as the Senior Surgeon in the Commissioned Officer Corps of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } the Public Health Service, Dr. Hamill played a key role in establishing the criteria for the study and assembling the staff and professional personnel for the committee, but the oral history also demonstrates qualities far beyond professional ability: “He was passionately engaged as Peter the man and desperately objective as Peter the scientist. He was impatiently temperamental as a man with a mission and generously understanding as a man with an administrative charge. He was naively forthright and dutifully cunning, fascinated and repelled by personal and bureaucratic obstructionism. . . �47 {Obituaries} “But besides personalities there was Peter’s main principle, which, I imagine, made everything work. He was a believer in dialogue. ‘When I say dialogue,’ he told his recorder, ‘remember I’m a St. Johnnie and the dialectic process of antithesis and eventually synthesis is part of my whole being.’ And this was a true self description: Peter was passion tempered by appreciation, prejudgment mitigated by receptivity, spiritedness leavened by self-doubt.” Dr. Hamill is survived by his wife of 54 years, Margot Henry Hamill; four children, and 11 grandchildren. successive “most powerful” computers in their time. He was also the first corporate technical director at Computer Usage Company, the world’s first software company. He was system engineer on the first large electronic publishing system. His experience spanned the full spectrum of systems software and support packages and included a tremendous variety of disciplines, including system programming, data communications, publishing, command and control systems, scientific/engineering applications, statistics, and operations research. GEORGE TRIMBLE CLASS OF 1948 KENNETH KRONBERG (SF68) George R. Trimble, a pioneer in computer development, died March 13, 2007, at the age of 77. He made many original contributions to both the design and application of data processing equipment in a career that spanned the computer industry from ENIAC in 1949 to the most advanced large-scale computer systems. After graduating from St. John’s he studied numerical methods at the University of Delaware and in 1951 earned a master’s degree in mathematics. Mr. Trimble developed mathematical analyses and machine applications for a variety of the earliest electronic computers, including ENIAC, EDVAC, and ORDVAC, to minimize data reduction errors in rocket trajectory calculations for captured German V-2 rockets. As a senior staff member in IBM’s Applied Science Division, 1952-1956, Mr. Trimble was involved in the logical design and application requirements of virtually every computer made by IBM in the early 1950s. Between 1955 and 1966, he was involved in the development of numerous Kenneth Kronberg, a member of the first graduating class of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, died April 11, 2007, at the age of 58. He was the husband of Marielle (Molly) Hammett Kronberg (A70) of Leesburg and the father of Max Kronberg, a 2006 Annapolis graduate. After graduating from St. John’s, Mr. Kronberg spent a year as a junior fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, Calif., and later did graduate work at the New School for Social Research in New York. He was an editor for the American Institute of Physics and for John Wiley & Sons before founding WorldComp in 1978. He had been a member of the National Caucus of Labor Committees since 1974. He directed amateur theater, and taught poetry and drama classes to children and adults for many years. He edited The Campaigner, a cultural magazine, for a number of years. In 1992 he co-founded Fidelio, a quarterly journal of poetry, science and statecraft, which he edited until 2006. Kenneth Kronberg At his memorial service on April 19, his wife, Molly, described him as “a man of character, honor, and integrity—old-fashioned virtues. He was a man of his word. “He weighed words carefully, always trying to say precisely what he meant, because he understood the connection between morality and right use of language, and on the other hand, the enormous damage done to truth and therefore people by perversion of language. His love of language reached back to his earliest childhood—for example, his discovery at the age of eight of the poems of Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti. By the time that, barely 16, he went off to college, he was a practicing poet himself, a calling he followed for many years thereafter. “Ken’s poetic instinct could be found in everything he did: his efforts to make every publication on which he worked a harmonious composition; his efforts to bring beauty in visual form to the printed page; in written form to the articles he wrote or edited; in aural form to the audiences of the dramas he directed. “The same beauty could be found in his gentleness, his abhorrence of brutality, his kindness to all who encountered him (kindness { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } mixed with the sardonic brusqueness he deployed as an educational device), and his truthfulness. His enthusiasm for learning and teaching, for new ideas and for the more precise expression and rigorous examination of venerable ones, was the content of the Socratic art of midwifery he practiced in directing plays or in editing. He was like the Clerk of Oxford of whom Chaucer writes, ‘And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.’ ALSO NOTED REV. DUNCAN BROCKWAY (CLASS OF 1953), JANUARY 23, 2007 JEREMY DAWES (SF01), JANUARY 15, 2007 NANCY FARIDANY (CLASS OF 1962), SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 ROBERT GOLDBERG (CLASS OF 1950), SEPTEMBER 3, 2006 JOHN GORECKI (CLASS OF 1960), DECEMBER 12, 2006 JOSEPH HOFMANN (CLASS OF 1942), APRIL 2, 2007 MARION JENKINS (SFGI89), JANUARY 13, 2007 ANDREW KLIPPER (A80), JANUARY 22, 2007 JOSEPH LEGUM (CLASS OF 1933), JULY 26, 2006 SUSAN LEUBUSCHER (A68), FEBRUARY 28, 2007 DOROTHY LUTTRELL (CLASS OF 1960), MARCH 26, 2007 VICTOR PERRETTA (CLASS OF 1932), APRIL 13, 2007 ALBERT POPPITI (CLASS OF 1942), FEBRUARY 9, 2007 RAY SMITH (A94), MARCH 1, 2003 DOLORES STRICKLAND (SF71), MARCH 16, 2007 �48 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } Even the Dead Know No End of War A Reporter in Iraq Nelson Hernandez (A99), a reporter on the Washington Post’s Metro desk, covered the war in Iraq from late December 2005 to February 2006, and again from mid-April to mid-June 2006. The Post has assigned some Metro reporters to two-month rotations in Iraq; Hernandez was the first to volunteer. He agreed to a second rotation because his younger brother, Thomas, a Marine reservist, would be serving at the same time. “I wanted to relate to him when he got back,” Hernandez says. Hernandez interned for the newspaper while at St. John’s and joined the Post staff after graduation; he took a year of leave in 2004-05 to earn a master’s degree in history at Yale. He now covers education in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The events described in his essay took place on May 9-10, 2006. inutes after leaving the port of Umm Qasr at the southeastern tip of Iraq, the land turned to desert. The convoy sped north to Baghdad. Outside the window of a pickup truck, the earth, flat and pale and lifeless, met a dull gray-blue sky. It could be Mars. In this wasteland the road was like a river. Food and money flowed up and down it, allowing life to cling to its edges. Sometimes this took the form of thin, yellow grass that grew like peach fuzz, or mud huts with thatched roofs. Weathered men in red-checked kaffiyehs tended sheep and camels; they were as hungry and filthy as their animals. Barefoot boys ran out to the side of the road as we flew past, waving. The guards riding in the beds of the trucks, helmeted men cradling machine guns, flung ration packs to them without slowing down. That was the closest connection they had with the people of Iraq. For the private security contractor in the front passenger seat, a Welshman named Mark, every sign of life by the road was a potential threat. The mujaheddin stalk these lands. Every parked car could be a M Nelson Hernandez volunteered to cover the war in Iraq. bomb, every highway overpass an ambush and every man, woman and child a killer. The insurgents have sometimes hidden bombs in the carcasses of animals lying by the roadside. In Iraq, even the dead do not know the end of war. They made a brief stop. I walked a few yards off the road, out into a desert barren as far as the eye could see. Mark urinated on the tire of his pickup truck. “Don’t get too far away,” he warned. “We don’t know what’s out there.” The convoy was on a mission of peace. Mark and his group of British and Iraqi contractors were escorting a convoy of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } about a dozen water trucks. The trucks were made in Texas and cost over $120,000 apiece. They were a gift from you, the American taxpayer, to the people of Iraq. Such convoys are not shepherded on their way by the military, but by an invisible army of private contractors: drivers, engineers, logistics specialists, stevedores and security men, usually former soldiers. This convoy had a journalist attached. That was me. As the sun set, we arrived at an oasis called Camp Scania. It is the major refueling stop in southern Iraq, a massive gas station run by the U.S. military. Here, �{ A l u m n i Vo i c e s } in the middle of the desert, are parked hundreds of trucks that carry supplies of every kind up and down the road. The cost of creating and maintaining this piece of America on a patch of sand across the globe is stupefying. Sophocles had a point: Many are the wonders, but none is more wondrous than man. The Iraqi drivers and guards, who made up the majority of the convoy’s crew, slept outside the base. They settled down to meals of rice and chicken, sleeping in the cabs of their trucks. The four British security men, all ex-soldiers, went inside the base and ate what was, by Iraqi standards, a delicious repast: Cornish hen, potatoes, fruit smoothies, ice cream— the base’s cafeteria was well stocked. Mark ran into another team returning from a delivery. On their way home a bomb exploded in the road, destroying one of the heavily armored pickups. The bomb was four artillery shells tied together, enough to obliterate the front half of the truck. Everyone in the truck survived unhurt—a miracle—and they showed off a picture of a man standing in the waist-deep crater left by the bomb. Hours passed in a large tent filled with cheap bunk beds. Mark watched a movie, Big Momma’s House, while another man in his team, Leon, played a video game. In the back of the tent, the other team was still talking about their close call. “You used up one of your nine lives today, lads,” one of the men said quietly. For the first time I felt a quiver of fear. I imagined what it would be like to be driving along the road one moment, and in an instant be torn apart by flying shards of jagged steel. Would it hurt? Would I have time to give a noble soliloquy or expire with an undignified groan? The feeling was fleeting. I wish I could say for you that having read the Great Books gave me some preternatural calm. It would make for a better story. War is full of such concessions to romantic imagination. But in war, the physical trumps the philosophical. So it was with me: I was too dirty and tired by that point to care about something so totally beyond my control, and so I went to sleep. At midnight, the tent began flapping madly. The air tasted like dust. Then water began flying in horizontally. Outside, a massive storm was bearing down on the camp. The tent shook savagely as the desert tried to scrub itself clean of us. Half-awake men grunted at the tent entrance, trying to seal it shut. Outside, sentries scurried for cover. Eventually they gave up and moved beds farther away from the entrance. And in half an hour, the storm blew itself out. In the morning we rode for Baghdad. The country was no longer desert. The convoy had entered the verdant valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers— the cradle of civilization, and a place more dangerous for being more habitable. The journey was tense but uneventful. When the convoy rolled into the water directorate, a large, walled compound “I imagined what it would be like to be driving along the road one moment, and in an instant be torn apart by flying shards of jagged steel. Would it hurt? Would I have time to give a noble soliloquy or expire with an undignified groan?” Nelson Hernandez (A99) with a heavy iron gate, Mark arranged the trucks in a defensive perimeter. The gate was closed, the better to protect against car bombers, and the Iraqis began slowly unloading the trucks. Mark gave the director an envelope carrying the keys to the trucks. The unsmiling director, a corpulent man with an arm in a sling, counted the keys twice, seemingly suspicious of being cheated. He refused to say anything to me. A boy walking by greeted my wave with a blank stare. We soon discovered the reason for the chilly reception. Our hosts were planning to kill us. Some time later, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded nearby. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } 49 “Get in the truck!” Leon screamed. The contractors fired back at unseen enemies as the civilians scattered, running for cover. I crawled over a pile of lunches and body armor in the truck’s back seat, lunging at the doors to close them. By the time I turned on my video camera, the shooting had reached a crescendo of long machine gun bursts and cracking rifle shots. An Iraqi guard standing in front of my truck fired his rifle wildly, clearly terrified and having no idea what to do. After this spasm of violence, the firing died down. Only the frenzied gunner atop our truck kept shooting, ripping chunks of concrete out of a nearby building. “Tell him to stop firing!” Leon yelled at the Iraqi driver. Mark ran at our car, raised his hand, and cried “Stop!” The gunner stopped shooting. Leon shouted at the frightened Iraqi contractor. “You!” He hit the truck’s horn twice to get his attention. “Get in here!” The young man did, breathing heavily and shaking as he sat next to me. As he slammed the door shut, the shooting started again. The next few minutes were a babble of urgent commands, shouting in Arabic, scratchy radio chatter, gunfire, confusion, confusion. Why were the guards shooting it out with them? Why weren’t we moving? What was going on? “Mark, are we gonna get out of here or what?” a voice over the radio pleaded. They were trapped because the gate to the complex was closed, though I did not understand that until later. Under fire, one of the British guards ran out to the gate to open it. This act of heroism allowed them to escape. The gunfire continued on the way out and down the highway. The whole engagement had lasted about five minutes. “Is everybody okay?” Mark asked over the radio. Yes. They raced past election posters and checkpoints to safety. Behind us they left two dead insurgents. Behind us they left the Iraqi truck drivers they were escorting; three or four did not make it back. Behind us they left the water trucks. All we were left with was our lives, and this memory I have related to you. Every day, as it reels past in my mind, I give thanks that the desert was so generous. x �{Alumni Association News} CHAPTER CONTACTS ALBUQUERQUE alumni@sjca.edu BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen, A77 410-472-9158 deborahwcohen@ comcast.net DALLAS/FORT WORTH Paula Fulks, SF76 817-654-2986 puffjd@swbell.net DENVER/BOULDER Tom Byrnes, SF74 720-344-6947 tbyr@pair.com MINN./ST. PAUL Carol Freeman, AGI94 612-822-3216 Freem013@umn.edu SALT LAKE CITY Erin Hanlon, SF03 916-967-2194 PHILADELPHIA Helen Zartarian, AGI86 erin_hanlon@juno.com 215-482-5697 SANTA FE helenstevezartarian@ Richard Cowles, mac.com SFGI95 505-986-1814 PHOENIX rcowles2@comcast.net Donna Kurgan, AGI96 623-444-6642 SEATTLE dakurgie@yahoo.com James Doherty, SFGI76 206-542-3441 PITTSBURGH jdoherty@mrsc.org Joanne Murray, A70 724-325-4151 SOUTH FLORIDA Joanne.Murray@ Peter Lamar, AGI95 basicisp.net 305-666-9277 cplamar@yahoo.com { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } Jason Walsh (A85) Alumni Association President SOUTHERN CALIF. Elizabeth Eastman, SFGI84 562-426-1934 e.eastman@verizon.net TRIANGLE CIRCLE, NORTH CAROLINA Elizabeth (A92) & Rick Ross (A82) 919-319-1881 Elizabeth@ activated.com ’s C ohn olle .J mn u AUSTIN Joe Reynolds, SF69 512-280-5928 jpreynolds@ austin.rr.com CHICAGO Rick Lightburn, SF76 847-922-3862 rlightburn@gmail.com SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico, A86 619-429-1565 srico@sandi.net two-thirds of the funds are from alumni, and the percentage of alumni giving has grown remarkably. These funds will support the institution through capital improvement projects (including new dormitories, a Graduate Institute center, and much-needed enhancements to buildings and grounds, especially in Santa Fe); increased endowment to support financial aid, and additional support for increases to faculty salaries. With the conclusion of the campaign approaching, the college has embarked on a broad strategic planning process. The Alumni Association, along with the Alumni Relations committee of the Board of Visitors and Governors, will be actively involved in this process to articulate the specific programs that can better support our alumni throughout their lives. These are all part of the Alumni Association’s mission to foster opportunities for more Alumni to connect more often and more richly. x Al ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin Gammon, A94 410-332-1816 emartin@crs.org NORTHERN CALIF. BOSTON Reynaldo Miranda, A99 Dianne Cowan, A91 415-333-4452 617-666-4381 reynaldo.miranda@ diannecowan@rcn.com gmail.com PORTLAND Jennifer Rychlik, SF93 503-547-0241 jlr43@coho.net Jason Walsh (A85) ge Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. NEW YORK CITY Daniel Van Doren, A81 914-949-6811 dvandoren@ optonline.net “We are working to expand our outreach to recent graduates...” n I n January in Santa Fe and April in Annapolis, the Alumni Association hosted our annual senior dinners with the senior class. These events offer a chance for 15-25 alumni to toast and celebrate the upcoming graduations, when students become “permanent members” of the college as alumni. We also now provide the students with brief bios of the hosting alumni. In Annapolis, a senior I spoke with was thrilled to find that she was not alone in her interest in neuroscience; she had an opportunity to meet an alumna and speak at length about her career path. This is a key first step the Association takes to help Johnnies in the transition from the warm confines of the campuses to the seemingly daunting world. We are working to expand our outreach to recent graduates (more than 50 percent of our alumni have graduated in the last two decades), through programs tailored to appeal to Johnnies beginning their lives and careers, and who often want to take a break from seminar readings. In New York for many years we’ve had a recent graduates’ reception each fall, where newly arrived alumni can reconnect with classmates and meet alumni established in the region. This year in Portland, Oregon, and New York City, we’ve begun chapter “bar nights,” open to all but sponsored by the Recent Graduates group leaders and at very casual locations that help build a community of younger alums in these cities. On the campuses, we’ve been working to enhance the events welcoming alumni back, for both intellectual and social pursuits. This spring we introduced the “Piraeus” program, several long-weekends of alumni seminars. Within two months after announcing the program, the first April weekend was a terrific success and the June and January 2008 weekends had filled to capacity. A waitlist has begun with the possibility of opening a second set of seminars to satisfy alumni demand for those weekends. In addition, we are working as advocates for the alumni community as the college develops its strategic plan. In 2008, the college will conclude its most successful capital campaign in St. John’s history. The tremendous success is overwhelmingly due to the contributions of alumni. About WASHINGTON, DC Deborah Papier, A72 202-387-4520 dpapier@verizon.net WESTERN NEW ENGLAND Peter Weis, SF84 413-367-2174 peter_weis@ nmhschool.org io From the Alumni Association President St 50 i A s s o cia t Providing opportunities for more alumni to connect more often and more richly �{Alumni Association News} Celebrating Chicago In a Cultural Mecca, a Chapter Thrives by Patricia Dempsey In his rare free time when he isn’t providing video and editorial content from the Midwest for ABC news, including shows such as “Good Morning America” and “World News,” television producer Kevin Kraus (A82) reads reams of newspapers, periodicals, and online reports. Yet Kraus, one of five Chicago chapter officers, says, “It’s a different experience to read Plato or Thomas Mann. The news-related material isn’t truly thought-provoking.” Kraus, who moved to Chicago six years ago from southern Florida, where at that time there was no alumni chapter, says he was “starved for substantial reading and conversation.” The long-established (since 1982) Chicago chapter offered him both – and a chance to share his love of architecture with fellow Johnnies who live in this urban cultural Mecca. In 2005 Kraus helped organize a well-attended chapter visit to his “favorite building in America,” the Farnsworth House by architect Mies van der Rohe. For another event, the group visited the late 19th-century Auditorium Building, which houses a National Historic Landmark, the Auditorium Theater. While the chapter members do not usually have a formal seminar on the architectural sites they visit, they do typically “duck into a restaurant afterwards to talk about it,” says Kraus. “We’re all architecture junkies,” says Rick Lightburn (SF76), current Chicago chapter president and a self-employed marketing strategist for consumer groups. “In August, we have an annual potluck picnic and business meeting. We have it with the Grant Park Music Festival held downtown in Millennium Park, beneath a fabulous trellis designed by Frank Gehry.” These architectural jaunts complement the traditional seminars that focus on readings as diverse as the city itself. “This fall we’re hoping to start the year with a children’s literature piece. We also try to relate to events in this fabulous city,” says Lightburn. “For instance we had a science reading on Mendel’s paper and tied this to a visit to an exhibit on Mendel’s research at the Field Museum.” Along with Kraus and Lightburn, readings are suggested by chapter officers Elizabeth Long (A86), a University of Chicago librarian and an artist; Barbara Schmittel (A76), a librarian for the city of Chicago; and Paul Frank (SF82), an editor at the American Medical Association. The chapter hosts most of its monthly seminars on Sunday afternoons at The Great Books Foundation, where Don Whitfield (SF68, SFGI84) is the director of college programs. “Don was one of the rugged pioneers who attended Santa Fe in the early years and he very kindly allows us to use rooms at the foundation,” says Lightburn. Typically, about a dozen Johnnies attend the seminars. “We always have more, of course, when Class of 2007 members, now alumni: from left, Eric Torgerson, a tutor is here to lead Christopher Bea, Andrew Romiti, John Dodge, Lee Branner. it,” says Lightburn. Senior Dinners { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } 51 ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates association news and events of interest. President – Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President – Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary – Joanne Murray (SFGI95) Treasurer – Richard Cowles (A70) Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. In April the chapter hosted a seminar on Plato’s Phaedo, led by Annapolis tutor Robert Druecker. Lightburn says Druecker first led the chapter in a seminar two years ago in a reading from Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, and they were delighted to have him back. The seminar on Plato’s Phaedo used the translation by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem. Among those who attended are younger members including Stassia Sullivan (SF06), Grae Drake (SF05) and Tom Hammerman (A93). The Chicago chapter officers seek to attract more young members, but they realize young alumni don’t have the time to commit; they’re busy establishing careers and raising families. Lightburn, who is self-employed and has a more flexible schedule than his fellow officers, serves as the chapter’s de facto president. “We have a revolving group of officers,” he explains. “We shared the responsibility of president except for Paul [Frank], who was doing such a good job as treasurer it made sense for him to continue. None of us really wanted to be chapter president because we didn’t have the time. I became de facto president, but how would we like our future president to be chosen? That’s been established in our bylaws. Those are online on the Alumni Web site, for everyone to see and use for other chapters.” x �52 greenfield library {St. John’s Forever} Seventy Years of Genuine Conversation I n the summer of 1937, Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan arrived in Annapolis, preparing to launch a “radical” new academic program at a small college that had lost its accreditation and teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Neither of the two men, according to various reports, wished to be president. However, Barr proved very good at it: telling the St. John’s story to outside audiences and to the media, wooing prospective donors and foundation executives, and working with Maryland’s legislature and the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors to set the college on firm ground. Far from a figurehead, Barr always made time to be part of the community of learners, as Charles Nelson (class of 1944) writes in Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work: “…Barr, despite the heavy travel and speaking schedule, regularly led seminars, tutored in Greek and French, and could often be found in the coffee shop to converse with students and tutors about the coming war, the relevance to the European crisis of the Melian Conference in Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, or perhaps the meaning of the allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } After leaving St. John’s in 1946, following a successful fight to protect the college from annexation by the Navy, Barr joined Buchanan in attempting to establish another college based on the St. John’s model; however, their efforts did not come to fruition. Barr later served as president of the Foundation for World Government, taught at the University of Virginia and at Rutgers, and later was a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in California. He died 25 years ago, in Alexandria, Virginia. x �{Alumni Events Calendar} Alumni Calendar Santa Fe Homecoming 2007 September 14-16 Annapolis Homecoming 2007 September 28-October 1 Friday, September 14 9 a.m. Dixon Studio and Winery tour Friday, September 28 1 to 6 p.m. Water activities (sailing, boating) 3 p.m. Registration 12 p.m.Lunch 12 p.m. Classes of the ’30s and ’40s luncheon 1 to 5 p.m. Activities for children 2 p.m. Freshman chorus, Revisited Wine and cheese reception for alumni, tutors, GIs, and undergraduate upperclassmen to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Graduate Institute 4 to 8 p.m. Registration 3 p.m. Mitchell Gallery tour 5 p.m.Barbecue for the Class of 1982 4 p.m. Alumni booksigning 5 p.m. Dinner for the classes of the ’30s and ’40s 4 p.m. Soccer Classic 5:30 p.m. 40th Anniversary Celebration for the Graduate Institute 5:45 p.m. Fiftieth Reunion Dinner for the Class of 1957 8 p.m. Homecoming lecture 6 p.m. Welcome reception for Graduate Institute 7:30 p.m. Alumni Association Banquet Evening Waltz/Swing Party and Rock Party 10 p.m. Coffee Cabaret & open mic 8:15 p.m. Homecoming Lecture Saturday, September 15 8 a.m. Yoga 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Registration 6 p.m. Cocktail party Sunday, October 1 11 a.m. President’s brunch Rock Party 1 to 5 p.m. Water activities 10:30 a.m. Seminars Saturday, September 29 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Registration 12 p.m. Fiesta Picnic 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Water activities 1 p.m. Search and Rescue Team open house 9:30 to 10:15 a.m. Breakfast and AllAlumni Meeting 1:30 p.m. Family nature hike around Monte Sol or a hike to Atalaya Mountain Peak 10:30 a.m. Seminars Questions For more information about Homecoming logistics, details, and events, contact the alumni office at 410-626-2531 or alumni@sjca.edu. 2 p.m. Family Fun afternoon 5 p.m. “Speaking Volumes” lecture 6 p.m. Seventh Annual All-Alumni Art Show and Reception 7 p.m. Homecoming dinner dance Sunday, September 16 8 a.m. Yoga 11 a.m. President’s Brunch Joanna Stone (A07), her husband Donald Stone (A06), and Travis Price (A71) at the Washington, D.C., campaign event in April. Back cover photo by Chelsea Stiegman { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Spring 2007 } �P ERIODICALS P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , MARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 2007 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 33, Issue 2 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2007. 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_2007 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/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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2009. 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 <em>The College </em>(2001-2017) Description An account of the resource The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni.  It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, Md. Santa Fe, NM Contributor 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 <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2010. The College