19 20 5655 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 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. 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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/9e4a948ec92a592da63c86d2bb24741a.pdf 31fff4781372c92f39f0cb8ef2d6fc17 PDF Text Text College The SUMMER 2012 • S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E • ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Shakespeare Is All the World a Stage? �ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �from the editor The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Editor Patricia Dempsey patricia.dempsey@sjca.edu Contributing Editor Gabe Gomez Associate Editor Gregory Shook Art Director Jennifer Behrens Contributors Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) Chelsea Batten (A07) Susan Borden (A87) Jillian Burge (SF12) Charles Fasanaro Catherine Fields (A12) Joseph McFarland (A87) Laurence Nee Anna Perleberg (SF02) Leo Pickens (A78) Deborah Spiegelman Babak Zarin (A11) Design Consultant Claude Skelton The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis: 410-626-2539 Santa Fe: 505-984-6104 On Shakespeare “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. . .” As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7 William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born, and died, in the village of Stratford-upon-Avon. The man is less known than his works. Shakespeare, sometimes called “Bard of Avon,” penned some 38 plays and 154 sonnets. It has been more than 400 years since Shakespeare began staging his works in the late 1580s in Elizabethan England, but we are compelled to return to them again and again. “Shakespeare in our seminar list would be as inevitable as Plato, or the Bible, or Kant,” says Annapolis tutor Jonathan Tuck, for a feature in this issue in which several faculty members share observations. At St. John’s, notes Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling, students “inhabit the poetic form” when they encounter Shakespeare, the great poet of the English language. As Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus notes, “We encounter Shakespeare’s work in various ways: through tutorials, study groups, preceptorials, lectures and question periods, annual essays, orals, and dramatic performances. . . . he instructs and inspires us daily.” In his essay, Santa Fe tutor Laurence Nee explores how Shakespeare reveals “our dearest and most powerful desire” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. At St. John’s and beyond, Shakespeare’s works remain timeless. For the alumni profiled in the story, “All the World’s a Stage,” Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets inspire transformation: these Johnnies have built careers around the stage. Actress Sara Barker (A98), describes a modern retelling of Mary Stuart through her work with the Washington Shakespeare Company. Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) melds “science, art, and alchemy” as a set and stage designer in New York City. A junior-year preceptorial inspired Jack Armstrong (SF83) to devise plot charts for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre in which “every scene . . . advances...like rising and falling notes.” Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (SFGI01) “ listens” to his characters. Recent graduate Maria Jung (A12) landed a role in the in Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of The Comedy of Errors. The College magazine, in a way, is like a stage— ready to transform your stories. We hope you enjoy the changed set, the new design for The College, unveiled in this issue. Thank you to the more than 400 readers who responded to the Reader Questionnaire on The College, and those who joined informal focus groups on campus. Thank you for your many excellent, candid suggestions and ideas. As readers, you want The College to be “distinctive, without gimmicks,” and to “convey excellence,” brimming with stories about fellow alumni in their careers, the Program, and the college community. You shared countless insights: you want to hear from alumni who are beginning their careers, as well as those who are established; you like to read historical stories, in-depth essays, want to see more photos, and are intrigued by the idea of Johnnie trivia. Although you love the classic black-and-white design of the past decade, many of you said “yes” to a mix of color and blackand-white photos and illustrations, and many see a future that includes electronic formats. Each issue will have a black-and-white feature or photo essay. In this issue, A. Aubrey Bodine’s iconic view up Main Street sets the stage for Susan Borden’s (A87) story on desegregation on the Annapolis campus. As in the past, the magazine connects you to the voices of tutors, students, and fellow alumni. Since you want to hear from more members of the college community, new short sections—such as “Mentors,” “Conversation with the Chair,” and “Briefly Quoted”—have been added, along with color photos of student and campus life. At the back of each issue, you will find the familiar “St. John’s Forever.” This is your magazine, a work in progress. As we unveil changes, please let us know what you think! —P.D. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 1 �su m me r 2 01 2 volume 37, issue 1 A. AUBREY BODINE PETR JERABEK HENLEY MOORE (A13) Shakespeare’s plays provide an unsurpassed depiction of abiding human desires. Like mirrors, the plays use characters’ poetic speeches and deeds to reflect for our consideration the objects of our desires and the reasons we seek their fulfillment. —Laurence Nee, tutor F E AT U R E S page 18 Love and Desire: “What Fools These Mortals Be” Faculty members reflect on Shakespeare, and modern and archival images of the King William Players provide visual history. p a ge 25 “All the World’s a Stage” Meet five alums whose repertoire includes acting and writing “drama so intense you’d feel it even if the actors weren’t speaking,” set design, and plot charts for cross-dressing comedies. on the cover: Shakespeare illustration by Marc Burckhardt 2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 page 34 Rule of Reason What can the oral histories of St. John’s veterans returning after World War II tell us about freedom and injustice? For the first African Americans who enrolled at St. John’s, the college was a haven from discrimination. �DEREK STENBORG D E PA R T M E N T S ALUMNI From Our Readers Bibliophile Profiles 4 6 39 46 Shakespeare Stories Letters From the Bell Towers 8 40 Eva Brann (HA89): Tutor, Traveler, Pendulum Pit: A Gift for Learning and 10 10 11 12 12 13 14 14 15 16 17 Mentors early activism leads him to Navajo railroad workers. Alumni Notes 53 In Memoriam Alumni News 55 Notes from the Chancellor Johnson House Apollonius’s Conics New Winiarski Student Center Hodson House Underway Johnnie Traditions 50 Croquet 2012: A new school song christens the annual match. Sarah Morse: Director of Admissions in Annapolis Jay Youngdahl’s (SFGI03) Michael Fried (A82) on the lost book of A Hunger for Shakespeare Fulbright Fellow to Teach in Malaysia 51 Fred Bohrer (A78) examines photos of excavation sites around the world. New Board Members Talk of the Towers crafting furniture by hand. 42 41 Tutor emeritus Charles Fasanaro on Perry Lerner: New Board Chairman Conversations with the Chair Geremy Coy (A06) finds truth Jorge Aigla’s Intimate Microscopy Homerathon: An Oral History Singing Joshua Parens (A83) and Joseph C. Macfarland’s (A87) sourcebook on medieval political philosophy Thinker, American 9 Andrew Krivak (A86) comes of age as a writer with The Sojourn, National Book Award Finalist. 58 56 Homecoming 2012 above: Theatrical set design by Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07). St. John’s Forever The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 3 �from our readers Readers Share Shakespeare Stories The Bard as Teacher When I came to the Annapolis campus as a prospective student— croquet weekend of 1992—a King William Players’ production of Love’s Labour’s Lost replaced the Friday night lecture. That same week, the sophomores were discussing Hamlet in seminar. St. John’s did not teach Shakespeare’s plays; it allowed the Bard to teach me. Shakespeare led me to Freud in my sophomore year when I attempted to define Hamlet’s madness in my enabling essay. Were it not for his plays, I would have had little cause to ponder the nature of madness or the human condition in such a way. The poor young scholars of Love’s Labour’s Lost revealed to me the problem of the divided will far better than St. Augustine or St. Paul had been able to do, although the fault was entirely mine. After my own conversion, I found great comfort in returning to those two saints because they understood the battle that I had originally faced alone. Since then I have had the chance to share those plays with my own students, and see them loved anew. I teach seventh through twelfth grades at Holy Rosary Academy, a small, Great Books-styled Catholic school in Alaska. My 7th and 8th graders just finished performing some of the Bard’s notable monologues as part of their first acting project; soon I will be reading Julius Caesar with the 9th grade and Hamlet with the 10th. During the last couple of years, we have performed Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My students are clamoring to do The Taming of the Shrew next year. Shakespeare teaches them far better than I could. —Erin (Hearn) Furby (A96) Conversational Epiphanies My seminar experience of Shakespeare was strangely cold. Our Shakespeare seminars were dull soup. For some reason, our seminar group never got into the Elizabethan swing of things—never effervesced around the object under discussion. After graduating, I earned a PhD on Shakespeare (along with Homer’s Odyssey, Hellenistic romances, and medieval romances) and, specifically, Shakespeare’s last four plays, at the University of London and with the assistance of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-uponAvon. Something at St. John’s must have helped to get me there. Two or three off-the-cuff conversations with key tutors of my St. John’s generation— Mr. MacDonald and Mr. McGraw— led me to click with Shakespeare. I complained that Shakespeare wasn’t accessible, wasn’t satisfactory somehow. McGraw quoted Shakespeare sonorously, really sang it as lyrics, when we discussed it while walking up from town to the Bell Tower. Suddenly I saw behind the curtains: The text was illuminated. Later, discussing Shakespeare with Mr. MacDonald, I made the same idiotic complaint about Shakespeare’s inaccessibility. Mr. MacDonald breathed deeply, looked at me with his gimlet eyes, and said, “You really have to dig deeper there. Listen to the man. His work is packed with treasure. What are you looking for?” They both provoked me with Socratic techniques. They whet my hunger. It’s those epiphanylike conversations that spark interest—sparks that lead to real bonfires, as it turns out. —John Dean (A70) 4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Christel Stevens (A72) as Rosaline and Richard Ferrier (A69) as Berowne illuminate the stage in the King William Players’ production of Love’s Labour’s Lost circa 1969. A Prospie’s Point of View As You Like It was the seminar reading during my prospective visit to the Santa Fe campus. I had always been a voracious reader, but sitting in that seminar room, I realized that I hadn’t been much of a thinker. I could actually feel my mind come alive with ideas. This little play, which I had read as an historical curiosity on the flight out, was suddenly the gateway to where I needed to be. By the end of the evening, I knew that St. John’s was going to change my life. —Steve Hillson (SF86) On Par with the Pros I acted in Measure for Measure at St. John’s in the spring of 1997. Ably directed by Heidi Jacot (A97), the show’s fabulous leads were Sara Barker (A98) and Weldon (Michael) Goree (A98), who are both now involved in Washington, D.C.-area theater. Since leaving St. John’s and continuing to watch, read, and act in Shakespearean plays, I have come to appreciate the passion that Johnnies brought to the classic plays mounted by the KWP. Although we had [sparse] sets and costumes, the commitment to the acting and the desire to bring the text to life was amazing. I had the privilege to be in both Measure for Measure and Electra. Later I saw a production of Hamlet that, in its acting at least, truly rivaled the Shakespeare Theater Company’s Free for All production that same summer in Washington, D.C., which starred professional actors. The fencing scene at the end was truly memorable. —Jill Nienhiser (A/SFGI97) A Bravura Performance This picture (above) of Richard Ferrier (A69) as Berowne and me as Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost is from the King William Players’ 1969 production. (Others may chime in with the correct date.) Directed by Michael Victoroff (A71), it also featured such luminaries as Patrick D’Addario (A71) in the role of Dumaine, Patti Posey (A70) as Katharine, Harry Koenig (A69) as Holofernes in a bravura performance, and my own brother, Richard Stevens (A69), as Constable Dull. —Christel Stevens (A72) A Life-Altering Moment I had the opportunity to act in two Shakespeare plays at St. John’s, and I directed The Winter’s Tale while writing my senior essay on it. Our cast was an eclectic mix of undergraduates, GIs, and tutors. Imam Sawez (A95) stole the show with his cameo as the bear! Encouraged by my experiences at St. John’s, I auditioned for a classical theater training program in London and spent the year after graduation studying with amazing British actors and directors. I had a life-changing experience while playing the patriarch Leonato in an all-female production of Much Ado About Nothing in London. �from our readers During one of the performances, I found myself fully inhabiting this character whose worldview and priorities couldn’t have been more different from my own. I was suddenly able to understand this man at a fundamental level and feel a deep sense of compassion for him. I now strive to bring these same qualities of awareness and open-mindedness to my work. My life-altering moment wouldn’t have been possible without Shakespeare’s powerful words— and my time at St. John’s that led me to them. —Adee St. Onge Swanson (A95) Wild for Togas My favorite Shakespeare memory from St. John’s was As You Like It in 1980. When Johnny Moron appeared as the god Hymen on his leafy throne, resplendent in his toga and crown of flowers, surrounded by fairies, the whole audience went wild. —Jack Armstrong (SF83) “The Player King” When I was a student at St. John’s, there was, mysteriously, a record album of the entire play, Richard II, on a side table in the seminar room. Mesmerized, I listened to it repeatedly. Years later, as a graduate student at Tulane, the major dramatic offering was—you guessed it—Richard II. I auditioned and got the part! I went on to an illustrious acting career, including much Shakespeare. I consider Richard II one of Shakespeare’s finest plays, containing some of his best poetry. The character of Richard is one of his best portrayals. By the way, my senior thesis, “The Player King,” was an analysis of Richard II. —John Chase (A56) Moved by Henry V The scene in Shakespeare that has always moved me most is perhaps a minor part in Henry V, in the history series beginning with Richard II and concluding with Henry VIII. Richard II sets up the tragic sequence; although Richard’s kingship is depicted as mercurial and capricious, Shakespeare cannot morally justify the usurpation by Bolingbroke, later Henry IV. Bolingbroke’s son, Henry V, pleads with God regarding his offerings of Masses for the soul of Richard II, who was murdered. Yet Henry senses that Masses cannot compensate for the injustice of Richard’s deposition, however better Bolingbroke ruled England than Richard did. The audience knows that the tragedy will culminate in the deposition and murder of Henry’s son, Henry VI, during the War of the Roses, which will not end until the triumph of the Tudors at Bosworth Field and the birth of Henry VII’s granddaughter, the future Queen Elizabeth. —Steven Shore (SF68) Dramatic Memory The first time I went to St. John’s, in the early 1950s, a lecturer from Harvard University spoke on Macbeth, listing all the times the word “blood” appeared in the play. I never heard anything so exciting in my life—I had goose pimples on my arm! A few months later, I met this man, (whose name, I believe, was F. O. Mathiesen), in the Harvard University Library, and tried to congratulate him on the excitement he generated with his lecture. He refused to talk to me. A few months later, I read in the newspaper that he committed suicide. Now that is drama at its highest. —Alvin Aronson (A72) “As I teach Shakespeare to my students, I am still in wonder at how well he captured the transformative qualities of human beings. Be it an army of Englishmen or an angry shrew, Shakespeare always left room for his characters’ capacity to change.” Tobin Herringshaw (a05) Recollecting the Shrew In my sophomore year at Santa Fe, I had a role in The Taming of the Shrew. I mainly recall using the time when I was not needed onstage in rehearsals memorizing the opening passage from Book Three of Paradise Lost, which remains with me to this day, some thirty years later. Happily, I have little recollection of how well I played the role of the hapless lover. —Don Dennis (SF82) Is Change Possible? I directed Hamlet in 2002 at St. John’s. Naturally, I wrote my junior essay on that paragon of plays. The real focus of my essay was on the reversal and recognition moment of Aristotle’s Poetics. I argued that Hamlet’s moment In 2002, Joe Hyde (A03), playing the role of Hamlet with the King William Players. occurred on the pirate ship, when Hamlet, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, discovers himself anew. Now, as I teach Shakespeare to my students, I am still in wonder at how well he captured the transformative qualities of human beings. Be it an army of Englishmen or an angry shrew, Shakespeare always left room for his characters’ capacity to change. Through his work, I continue to believe that people can bring change to their lives. Aristotle, in his Ethics, would probably disagree. In the accompanying photograph, Joe Hyde (A03) plays Hamlet in our production. —Tobin Herringshaw (A05) A Prancing Mustard Seed I played the part of Mustard Seed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at St. John’s, which involved prancing around and singing songs that Mr. Zuckerman composed for the occasion. It was one of those lighthearted moments in my otherwise earnest years studying the Great Books and trying to be wise long before I was ready. —Julia Busser du Prey (A66) To Act or Not to Act I can’t remember whether I played Prospero in The Tempest during my sophomore year or my junior year. Jack Landau (A44), who directed it, embarked on a brilliant career in the theater upon graduation. (His life was tragically cut short by a burglary[continued] The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 5 �from our readers Readers Share Shakespeare Stories (continued) related murder at the age of 42.) Rehearsals were great fun at the digs of Captain Dickinson, the U.S. Naval Academy quartermaster, who was reputed to have the Academy’s best liquor supply and whose daughter Laetitia played the role of Prospero’s daughter Miranda. One of Landau’s inventions was to have Ariel appear only as a disembodied voice emanating from loudspeakers placed in the crowns of several tall trees surrounding the open-air stage. The day after the single performance, a Naval Academy English professor, who had seen the play, called to ask if I could spare a few minutes to visit him. When I found his office, he announced that he wanted to lend me a book, Stanislavski on Acting. I have never come to a satisfactory conclusion about the motive behind this generous gesture. On good days, I flatter myself by thinking it must have been due to my stellar performance. On bad days, I wonder whether I could really have been that lousy. At any rate, my role in The Tempest was both the beginning and the end of my thespian career. —Peter Weiss (Class of 1946) Liberated I was exposed to Shakespeare in high school when I was full of zeal for a narrow form of Christianity. I had doubts about reading secular literature, wondering if God approved. The beauty of Shakespeare’s language and the expansiveness of his worldview liberated me. In fear and trembling, I set out to explore a world fraught with the poignant ambiguities of the heart. —Kevin (Johnson) Thomas (A93) “The beauty of Shakespeare’s language and the expansiveness of his worldview liberated me. In fear and trembling, I set out to explore a world fraught with the poignant ambiguities of the heart.” Kevin (Johnson) Thomas (A93) The Singing Sonnet On a sauntering expedition through the stacks of St. John’s library, I found a book of sonnets by Shakespeare. After reading for quite some time, I took the volume home. Then I bought Helen Vendler’s great analysis, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and later, more books on his sonnets. Eventually I got serious about my research, delving into the magnificent collection at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. As a composer, I began to think about setting sonnets to music. As I viewed others’ musical sonnet manuscripts and publications from the Folger collection, my creative muse was awakened. I began to write a 60-minute work for soprano, baritone, and string quartet titled “O, know, sweet love, I only write of you,” based on Shakespeare sonnets. Now I am seeking a premiere performance of this new work—all a result of sauntering through St. John’s College [Greenfield] library. —Hollis Thoms (AGI06) Letters The Real Olympics The “Real Olympics” were an annual athletic event (of sorts) with chariot races, a teeter-totter weighting the Bible against Aristotle, epicycle races in which a woman ran around a man who in turn ran around a large circle . . . . The event was started by Seth Bernadette, a tutor pouring a cup of beer on the ground while muttering in ancient Greek . . . . We decided to spice them up in the spring of 1958 by having Steve Almy (A60, pictured here) run through Annapolis carrying a torch! He was arrested for “parading without a permit” —but quickly released to the cheers of a few dozen students; the [story and photo] appeared later in the New York Times. The following year, we got a permit; the police stopped traffic and allowed Almy to run from Piraeus (Annapolis harbor) to campus amid much fanfare. —Hugh Curtler (Class of 1959) Thank you for your letters on the fall Chopin issue. Look for more letters in the next issue. 6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Thank you A special thanks to those who joined a College magazine focus group or took the time to review ideas: Matthew Calise (A00); Thea Chimento (A10); Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12); Nadia Al’Taie (A14); Erin Fitzpatrick (A14); Beth Martin Gammon (A94); Jessica Kjellberg (A14); Alexander Kriz (SF09); Hannah Pasternak (A12); Alex Plunkett (A14), Babak Zarin (A13); tutors Nicholas Maistrellis, Jonathan Tuck, and John Verdi; Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus; Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus and Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling; A special thanks to Barbara Goyette (A78), Annapolis vice president for Advancement, for her savvy ideas; and to my colleagues: Susan Borden (A87); Jaime Dunn; Susan Kaplan; Susan Patten; Leo Pickens (A78); Victoria Smith (AGI09); Melissa Stevens; Nancie Wingo. Thanks to Claude Skelton for his elegant design. For the photos they provided, thanks to Jen Behrens, Jennifer Bodine and Lucinda Edinberg, Henley Moore (A14), Cara Sabolcik, and Melissa Stevens; thanks to our copyeditor, Cathi Dunn MacRae. Welcome to Gabe Gomez, new director of Communications, Santa Fe. Finally, a standing ovation to my staff who kept their sense of humor during all the deadlines: Jen Behrens, art director; Gregory Shook, associate director; and Katie Matlack, web specialist. It took a village—a collaboration of expertise and ideas—to transform The College magazine. —Patricia Dempsey, editor �“The day after the single performance, a Naval Academy English professor, who had seen the play, called to ask if I could spare a few minutes to visit him. When I found his office, he announced that he wanted to lend me a book, Stanislavski on Acting. I have never come to a satisfactory conclusion about the motive behind this generous gesture.” —Peter Weiss (Class of 1946) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 7 �Eva Brann: Tutor, Traveler, Thinker, American by Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) Homage to Americans: Mile-High Meditations, Close Readings, and TimeSpanning Speculations is a collection of essays and talks by Annapolis faculty member Eva Brann (HA89), published last year. Brann shares her inspirations and stories spanning the scope of the essays and her own life. discover—its spirit is large and generous. At the last faculty meeting we actually discussed whether it ought to be read as poetry or prose. Madison’s rhetoric is elegant and effective; it was a beautiful speech at a time of difficult decisions. Both are certainly worth studying. You mentioned that Madison and Lincoln are heroes of yours. Tell me more. I’ll start with Madison because he seems to have the most practical wisdom. He succeeded in helping to write a Constitution that has stood for over two centuries. And Lincoln is a model for leaders; he was a great leader. While I was the Dean for seven years, I found him to be an inspiring and comforting model. He was firm but not ignoble or mean. You can always ask yourself, “What would Lincoln do?” JEN BEHRENS Why is it important to examine the roots of America? This book pays homage to Americans. Why is it important to you to address the people of America, and those who adopt the demonym? Every article is a celebration of America, North to South. The first is about living with one’s fellow citizens and the last is remembering the Aztec civilization as a part of American history, i.e., North American. The first essay is the most important to me, concerning tolerance, which I think is a flabby virtue and should be replaced with respect, which is active and humanly engaged. The first essay is the one in which I tried to summarize my philosophy; it shows how I thought and think about living here. It begins in the airport where I observed an American couple eating a great deal of gross fast food—but they were also reading a book on classic chess moves and practicing with a travel chessboard. There are also two central essays, one on Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance and one on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. What is the value of Madison’s eloquence? Some think that the Gettysburg Address is the high point of American speechmaking. Do you agree? The essays on Madison and Lincoln are important to me; they are heroes of mine, you see. The Gettysburg Address was a piece of prose that comes very close to poetry. It is close, precise, fraught with meaning and full of things, details, to 8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Roots are important. Particularly in a political world, it is important to look at foundations, to ensure we are holding true to them. It is also important in intellectual matters to go back to ideas that the Civil War introduced. It’s where our current country comes from. And that’s what the [St. John’s] program is about, isn’t it? It’s about the things we take for granted, the roots of our assumptions. It’s not possible to understand what is going on presently if we don’t know what we embody or what we are losing with respect to our foundations. Because it is what we have in common, our country is built on something we have together. The beginnings are always important, in order to have perspective. The last essay connects the Aztecs of Central America. How do you see that history affecting America as a whole? Well, imagine that the Spanish had not conquered and the Aztecs influenced the development of the Americas more than the West. Imagine a modern Aztec influence; it would be very different from what did happen. The god of the West is vastly different from the god of the �PENDULUM PIT: A GIFT FOR LEARNING AND SINGING the Earth’s rotation, as well as some of the math and physics covered in the Program. For example, the Pendulum is a handy resource for demonstrating Newton’s “bucket” experiment, arguing the idea that the Earth is not a true sphere shape, but rather oblate from the effect of centrifugal force due to rotation. Aztecs. There was a great problem in the defeat of the Aztecs, such a large civilization brought down in a matter of a few years. It is important to remember how we influence our neighbors, and how they influence us. So imagine what we could have become if the West had not won. It gives another perspective; what might have been is an interesting way to think about our present condition. Today the Pendulum’s mathematical and scientific applications are studied in the Program. Demonstrations of its mechanics are carried out by Junior Lab classes in their study of Newton’s Laws of Motion as well as attempts to replace the Aristotelian efficient cause with Descartes’ quantity of motion, Leibniz’s “living force,” and other concepts. The Americas and particularly the United States are important to look at. For me, it is partly because I was an immigrant, a refugee. I moved here from Germany when I was 12, escaping the Nazis. I landed in Hoboken first, and then spent my grade school and high school years in Brooklyn, eventually landing here at St. John’s, where I fell in love with the college. The U.S. is my adopted country; typically adoptive citizens have stronger connections to the adopted country. It is certainly true for me. What did you fall in love with at St. John’s? Well, many things—I’ll tell you a few. I had just obtained my degree in archaeology when I visited the college for an interview. I fell in love with it. I had a room in Campbell, which was where they would put interviewees up back then. In the closet of the room, there was a red skeleton painted behind the closet door with the Greek γνωθι σεαυτόν, or “know thyself,” above it. I thought it was charming. That night I was woken up by students singing madrigals in the courtyard. It was wonderful. The same weekend, I had breakfast with Jacob Klein at his house, and Viktor Zuckerkandl. At the time, the bookstore was in the coffee shop in the room where the fireplace is now. There was a big problem with books being stolen, which came up at breakfast. Zuckerkandl said, “What a wonderful school at which we live where students steal books!” I was enchanted with everything. JEN BEHRENS How did you come to America? On Friday afternoons, Mellon Hall dwellers—mostly staff and tutors—cherish the sound of choral singing that emanates from the lobby near the Pendulum Pit. The curious mechanism that hangs in one of the stairwells nearby is a familiar sight to Annapolis Johnnies. The nearly 300-pound pendulum and the space it occupies, affectionately known as the Pendulum Pit, is like a member of the college community. The fact, too, that only a handful of other institutions have a pendulum makes it even more special that Johnnies have one to call their own. For most of its existence, the Pendulum was inoperable. That changed, however, when the class of 2011 approached Annapolis tutor James Beall to donate funds from their Senior Class Gift to pay for the restoration of the Pendulum, a gesture that complemented the previous year’s class gift of a new projector for the McKeldin Planetarium. The Colorado School of Mines gave Beall the design for the Pendulum, which he describes as “very contemplative . . . the motion of a whole swing is 7.1 seconds.” “THE PENDULUM PIT IS THE CLOSEST OUR CAMPUS COMES TO [PRODUCING] THE SOUND OF A RESONANT STONE CHAPEL —THE SORT OF PLACE FOR WHICH 16THCENTURY VOCAL MUSIC WAS WRITTEN.” Eric Stoltzfus, tutor With support from students, whose help included soldering electrical connections and putting together circuitry, Beall embarked on the Pendulum Project. “The students had a fun time getting the electronics running and understanding the Pendulum’s inner workings,” says Beall, a physicist who studied astrophysics at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and received his PhD from the University of Maryland. Modeled after Léon Foucault’s Pendulum invented in 1851, the Pendulum was included in the building’s original 1958 construction to give students and tutors a practical understanding of the effect of The Pendulum has surprising artistic merits, too. Due to the impressive acoustics of the Pendulum Pit, the space is a favorite among musicians and vocalists. The Freshman Chorus and the Primum Mobile ensemble gather there on Friday afternoons to belt out wellloved songs such as William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices, Josquin des Prez’s Missa Pange lingua, and Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Missa O Magnum Mysterium. “I find it moving to sing while the Pendulum is swinging, as if reminding us of our place in the universe as the heavenly bodies silently sing out the music of the spheres,” says tutor Eric Stoltzfus. “The Pendulum Pit is the closest our campus comes to [producing] the sound of a resonant stone chapel—the sort of place for which 16th-century vocal music was written.” Recently students have been meeting there on Wednesday afternoons to sing Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus” for fun. In true Johnnie tradition, this gift will continue to give—and swing—and sing—for generations to come. —Catherine Fields (A12) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 9 �from the bell towers 2011-2012 New Board Members homerathon AN ORAL HISTORY The Board of Visitors and Governors welcomes these new members: HENLEY MOORE (A13) Claiborne B. Booker (A84) has been active in investment management since 1985, when he joined what is now known as LGT Group, a European private bank. During the past decade, he has focused on early stage venture capital and private equity placements and has worked with investors and their advisors to raise capital for companies and new investment funds. He is a 1992 graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he earned his MBA in finance. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Student voices echoed off the quad as the third annual Homerathon paid tribute to the immortal epic of the Greek oral tradition: Homer’s Iliad. Gathered under a partially cloudy sky from 9 a.m. on Saturday, April 14, to 1 a.m. on Sunday, Annapolis students dropped by to read aloud a hundred lines or a whole chapter of the epic, giving voice to the gods and heroes of Homer. Homerathon began in 2009 when Bradley van Uden (A10) “just wanted to have someone read the entire Iliad out loud” to him. Virginia Early (A13), one of the participants in the original Homerathon and current leader of the event, decided to continue because it’s “worthwhile,” she explains. “It’s beautiful reading the poetry out loud and hearing it— it hits you more deeply.” Thus a new Johnnie tradition was born. Logan Dwyer (A12), who has attended all three Homerathons, recalls, “The fancy struck me to sit and listen to the entire Iliad when it first started. It appealed to me to reenact what Homer and the Ancients did. It smacks of St. John’s.” Homer brings Johnnies together with a nostalgia and fondness unrivaled, perhaps, by any other book on the Program. Part of the appeal lies in returning to the Program’s first book. “This year,” says Early, “hearing the Iliad read by a lot of people “IT’S SO ORGANIC; IT’S A CREATIVE OUTPUT EMBRACING THE JOHNNIE NERDINESS. I GOT TO READ THE BEST PART IN THE ENTIRE ILIAD! IT’S ACHILLES’ REPLY TO ODYSSEUS AFTER AGAMEMNON TOOK HIS BRIDE.” Lucy Ferrier (A12), a three-year Homerathon veteran and from many translations brought out different things in the poetry and story. I get more out of it—the forgiveness of Achilles really spoke to me in a new way. The whole experience brought home the force of the Iliad and Achilles as a character.” The participants’ shared enjoyment of the story deepened as they not only read aloud but performed swordfights, voiced Poseidon’s 10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 speeches with an underwater burbling achieved by a finger on the lips, and carried out a funeral of Patroklus as it was read. “Homerathon has a very communal spirit,” says Early. “Everyone is involved in the story together; we all booed when Hektor died.” A staunch few triumphantly lasted all 16 hours with a gallon of wine in hand for the necessary libations to Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Apollo. Lucy Ferrier (A12), also a three-year Homerathon veteran, says, “It’s so organic; it’s a creative output embracing the Johnnie nerdiness. I got to read the best part in the entire Iliad! It’s Achilles’ reply to Odysseus after Agamemnon took his bride: ‘For hateful in my eyes, even as the gates of Hades, is that man that hideth one thing in his mind and sayeth another’ (9.310-315). “I shouted, declaimed it for Achilles. This was definitely my top experience this year; it’s fitting to hear Homer echoing off the quad. It’s part naïveté, part being not so cool—just being able to listen and love Homer and embrace what we do here.” —Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) Lee Katherine Goldstein (SFGI90) received her bachelor’s degree in criminology from the University of Florida in 1988 and her JD from the University of Miami in 1993. She has been an active part of the St. John’s College alumni community for many years and is the current president of the Alumni Association. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado, where she is an attorney practicing in the areas of civil and commercial litigation. Joan M. Haratani (SF79)is a litigation partner based in San Francisco, for Morgan Lewis. In her 27 years of practice, she has handled all phases of pretrial and trial proceedings, with a particular emphasis on complex products liability and high stakes commercial disputes. She has received numerous awards for both her practice accomplishments and service on behalf of minority and female practitioners. Among many, she has been named a Northern California Super Lawyer (2004-2012). She lectures on topics of diversity and trial work, and is a board member of several philanthropic organizations. Harold Hughes (A84) is senior managing director, Alliance Bernstein, head of retail for the Americas. He is also the CEO of Alliance Bernstein Investments Inc. in New York. Mr. Hughes joined Alliance Bernstein in 2004 as managing director of the Washington D.C. Bernstein Private Client office. In 2008 he moved to London, U.K., to head Bernstein Private Client for the U.K. and Europe. Previously he was with Legg Mason in Baltimore as senior vice president and head of wealth management. �from the bell towers New Board Chairman: A Conduit for Ideas “Barring asteroids falling on the Earth, St. John’s will remain strong. We have a broad base of support. As long as we do our jobs well, we will continue to have support. We need to focus on enrollment, control our budget, and build our endowment.” Perry Lerner takes the helm of the Board of Visitors and Governors (BVG) at a time when liberal arts colleges are defending the value of the education they offer, and families are struggling in an uncertain economy to pay the high costs of four-year college programs. “St. John’s is committed to sustaining its Program and its standing among liberal arts colleges,” he says. “St. John’s excels in ensuring that our students develop the knowledge and skills which are critical to leading successful and fulfilling lives.” A graduate of Harvard Law School and Claremont McKenna College, Lerner is a former international lawyer who has also managed several business ventures. A member of the BVG since 1999, forward-thinking Lerner has a visionary, collaborative strategy for St. John’s future. “The role of the BVG is to act as stewards of the college, providing strategic direction and leadership while avoiding involvement in the college’s day-to-day operations. Notwithstanding today’s challenges, we are an extraordinary institution.” He shares his priorities with The College. What is the legacy of Mike Uremovich, the previous chairman? He was very effective. He became chair in 2007 when the economy suffered many shocks. Under Mike’s leadership we balanced the budget, grew the endowment, and have developed a greater awareness of issues affecting our sustainability. By streamlining board operations, he enabled the BVG to be more effective. Our new structure will have fewer committees and members, which should help us be more focused on our goals. What are your priorities for St. John’s College? Our first priority is to improve our admissions program. It is important that we attract and retain excellent students during these difficult economic times. Second, we must look at our branding, whether we are receiving the kind of recognition that our unique education offers to our students. There was a time when our brand was easily identified in the market—now there is more competition for good students, and too many potential applicants rely on external measures such as blogs and popular ratings. Accordingly, we must do more to strengthen our brand so that we attract students who would benefit from the St. John’s Program. A BVG committee chaired by Robert Bienenfeld (SF80) is charged with the responsibility to examine our branding and is hard at work on these issues. As an exceptional and extraordinary institution, our brand should not be drowned out by “noise” in the marketplace. Third, we must strengthen our financial resources. In the last few years, our endowment has held steady despite difficult fi- nancial markets. The BVG has been exceptional in its support for the college, having increased its giving by 20 percent this last year. BVG support needs to continue as we focus on gifts to meet our current needs as well as our endowment. Fourth, the BVG must support the Instruction Committees on both campuses as they consider broadening the curriculum; they should be free to examine ways to create opportunities for students to be exposed to new readings, ideas, languages, and cultures. I believe that students are anxious for opportunities to learn and travel during breaks and vacations, and we should make this possible. Finally, we should attract more students outside the U.S. We do not want to ignore new markets where the college’s Program can attract students from other parts of the world. What will ensure the sustainability of the college? Barring asteroids falling on the Earth, St. John’s will remain strong. We have a broad base of support among BVG members, graduates, faculty, staff, friends, and foundations. As long as we do our jobs well, we will continue to have their support. We need to focus on enrollment, control our budget, and build our endowment. We need to do better in all these areas. Describe your leadership style. Good leadership is enabling others to do their best work. I will be a conduit for ideas and a supporter of innovation. I am primarily an enabler, encouraging others to do their best. As chair, it is my responsibility to help set priorities and to see that the important work of the college is done. I believe that everyone in our community will work hard to meet our challenges. What is the importance of St. John’s? I believe that the education at St. John’s opens unrivaled opportunities for acquiring the ability and understanding needed to live a good and balanced life. Very few have those opportunities. —P.D. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 11 �from the bell towers A Hunger for Shakespeare On a Tuesday evening last fall, Annapolis students occupied every seat around the enormous table in the Barr-Buchanan Center’s elegant General Hartle Room. Tutor John Verdi led a discussion on William Shakespeare’s Richard II. This discussion was one of many voluntary evening seminars—“Shakespeare in the Fall”—organized by the Student Committee on Instruction (SCI). The limited number of Shakespearean plays and poems that students study at St. John’s leaves many hungry for more. Johnnies are particularly interested in revisiting the plays they may have read or encountered in high school. Paul Wilford (A07), who was then a member of the SCI, began “Shakespeare in the Fall” nine years ago. Each year the dedicated following grows. Tutors John Verdi, Louis Petrich, Daniel Harrel, Michael Grenke, and Eva Brann led the sessions this year; Ms. Brann also read some sonnets for the last meeting. The SCI chose a historical play theme—Richard II, Henry IV parts one and two, and Henry V. “Students ask me to lead a session and so I help them out,” says Mr. Verdi, who has participated for many years in “Shakespeare in the Fall.” He finds it a “project worth doing. It’s always enjoyable to get all the different classes together—like the all-college seminar. There is always a mix: freshmen, Graduate Institute students, other tutors as well.” Last fall, Mr.Verdi led two sessions on Richard II. Mr. Verdi enjoys returning to Shakespeare, finding different pieces suitable to mood or time. This time around, his favorite quote happens to come from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Mentors “It’s Cleopatra speaking, from Act V, Scene ii, 279-289. She’s about to let the poisonous asps bite her. She and Antony have shared a passionate, consuming love, a true love, I think. He is already dead. As she is about to take her own life, she hears him praising her deed, which is an act both of love and of royal autonomy. Their very physical love gives way in the face of death to one of the highest spirituality:” Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me: now no more The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip: Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear Antony call; I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act; I hear him mock The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come: Now to that name my courage prove my title! I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life. The hunger for Shakespeare is not a singular phenomenon; students and theatergoers around the world have been devoted to his works for centuries. Through “Shakespeare in the Fall,” Johnnies can look at Shakespeare’s poetry and eloquence with a new understanding. The word “mentor” has its roots in the Odyssey, in which Pallas Athena’s guise before Telemachus and Odysseus is that of Mentor, the elderly advisor and “shepherd of the people” who rules in Odysseus’s absence. The goddess of wisdom’s advice and assistance to those under her care is a fitting comparison to the benefits of career mentorship. A recent mentorship in the field of finance introduced Brian Warczinski (A13) to Laura Strache (A01), a managing director of operations for a Wall Street hedge fund, who was profiled in the Fall 2011 issue of The College. Strache mentored and connected Warczinski with two internships in the competitive and intimidating world of finance in New York. The benefit is not one-sided: alumni who mentor, host an Ariel or Hodson internship, or participate in forums or panels reconnect to the college, often restoring a link that they have missed. Director of Career Services in Annapolis Jaime Dunn recalls, “An alumnus and attorney in Philadelphia, Andrew Schwartz (A91), signed up to be a mentor last year, and I invited him to participate in a law panel, which he did. He hadn’t been back to the college in 10 years but found himself reconnecting in a meaningful and fulfilling way.” —Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.” Richard II 12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services, Annapolis HOST AN INTERN OR FORUM Contact Jaime Dunn (jaime.dunn@sjca.edu) or Margaret Odell (modell@sjcsf.edu) to host a forum or panel, and for internship opportunities or tips on hosting an intern. Visit www. stjohnscollege.edu/admin. Click on Annapolis or Santa Fe Career Services. �from the bell towers MELISSA LATHAM-STEVENS NEW WINIARSKI STUDENT CENTER OPENS IN SANTA FE Agora: Career Network “A virtual mentoring network” is how Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services in Annapolis, describes Agora, an initiative launched by the offices of Career Services in 2011. Agora reflects the Greek concept of a gathering place and was named by students in a college-wide competition. Job seekers, employers, and mentors register on the website according to the campus from which they graduated. Tribute to Laurence Berns (ha00) This year, tutors Eva Brann (HA89), Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (A77) published a translation, with an introduction, glossary of crucial Greek terms, and an exploratory essay, of Plato’s Statesman, dedicated to their friend and colleague Laurence Berns, who died in March 2011. In addition, befitting tutor Berns’ love of music, at a memorial service held during Annapolis Homecoming 2011, tutors Eric Stoltzfus and Elliott Zuckerman performed Beethoven’s moving “Sonata in A Major for Cello and Piano,” and the Madrigal Choir sang “Aura Lee,” “Mon Coeur,” and “The Silver Swan,” a tribute that captured Says Margaret Odell, director of Career Services in Santa Fe, “Students no longer need to wait for on-campus, face-to-face opportunities for interaction with alumni. That’s the beauty of the constant availability of mentors through Agora.” Bill Gregoricus (SFGI01), an Alumni Association Board member, is also working on the site. “What Agora represents is a reliable web-based point of access to the college and to all registered students and alumni, regardless of where you are, across the globe,” he says. “Agora will also help students and alumni seeking Berns’s warmhearted, spirited nature. President Christopher Nelson’s (SF70) remarks touched on Berns’s “boundless energy and engagement in the life of learning at the college.” Tutors Harvey Flaumenhaft, Joseph Cohen (A56), and Eva Brann (HA89); and former students Jerrold Caplan (A73), Theodore Blanton (A75), Sharon Portnoff (A85), and Daryl Li (AGI10) shared stories about Berns’s scholarly contributions, storytelling, and generosity. Berns’s wife, Gisela, read “L’Envoi,” the final section of “The Seven Seas,” a long poem by Rudyard Kipling. An obituary for Laurence Berns (1928-2011) was published in the Fall 2011 issue of The College; www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/ memoriam-berns.shtml Barbara (Class of 1955) and Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952), and their daughter Julia (SF92) joined Santa Fe President Mike Peters, members of the St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors, and Santa Fe city leaders and community members for the dedication on June 30 of the new Winiarski Student Center. The Center will accommodate 45 students and is expected to earn a LEED Silver Certification. Mr. Winiarski is the founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley, Calif., and was inducted into the California Vintners’ Hall of Fame in 2009. employment to develop closer ties with top employers and recruiters by delivering interview opportunities, hosting great career fairs, connecting with alumni mentors, and more.” For Agora’s success, the criteria are simple: all alumni and students should register online, which takes less than five minutes. www.stjohnscollege.edu/admin/agora —Genevieve Dufour-Allen (A12) briefly quoted “It is meant to integrate the classroom with the living experience. Another way to think about our Program is that it is interdisciplinary. This is an effort to try to bring these things together, both the living experience and the learning experience, in one.” Mike Peters, Santa Fe president, on the dedication of the new Winiarski Student Center Santa Fe New Mexican, June 24, 2012 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 13 �from the bell towers briefly quoted CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CHAIR “If we play, if we make ourselves present to the joy of using the Books to exercise our will and chose our life in a daily way, they will be a fountain of happiness for the rest of our lives.” Salvatore Scibona (sf97), noted author and novelist, 2012 Commencement speaker, Annapolis Hodson House Underway Hodson House, a multi-use building that will hold a seminar/meeting room, faculty offices, and administrative offices, will be constructed on the Annapolis campus in 2012. Subsequently, a full renovation of the 18th-century Carroll Barrister House, which holds the admissions offices for the college, will be undertaken. The majority of the funding for the project has been provided by the Hodson Trust; some funding is also being provided by the State of Maryland through the MICUA capital projects program. We meet at last. If someone had told me when I was a small footstool that one day I would be given the honor of holding court in The College magazine, I would have thought him out of his mind— πλαγκτός. Yet here I am, resting on my easy rug at home, a well-thumbed copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Grandfather’s Chair on my seat, musing on a headline. Hodson House, east entry elevation 14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Johnnie Chair, or JC, as my friends call me. I was born in Madison, Virginia, where I spent my childhood under the watchful eye of my maker in the company of my many, many kin. Time passed, and like many other chairs, I found myself desiring an adventure. Therefore, when I reached what you, our “sitters,” call “legal age,” I found myself joining the Class of 1941 at a small college in Annapolis, Maryland, that was on the cusp of something new. I doubt many of my classmates remember me—I was a rather quiet chair, one that tried to embody the Johnniechair trivium of steadiness, tolerance, and poise. I have spent the roughly seventy years since then as a member of the Polity, doing my best to lead by quiet example. I have attended every tutorial, seminar, lecture, waltz party, and don rag, albeit as a wallflower at times. I have also tried to join every club and student organization that I can. That doing so has required my re-engaging in the Program every four years, as if I was a scholastic phoenix, has kept things interesting. Much has changed since 1941. When the Internet found St. John’s, it was only a matter of finding a few souls willing to type for me before I had a Facebook following. I had no idea what it would become, that there would be so many thoughtful conversations regarding literature, good writing, philosophy, or what role members of the Polity ought to have. I confess your conversations tend to be more interesting than my own musings! Nevertheless, I have felt needed there. I have confronted easy questions (yes, it is wrong to go white-water rafting when you should be in seminar) and challenging questions (while worthwhile, starting a conversation about politics or sexuality is not always the best idea). I attempt to write little notes or answer questions in the hope of having more avenues for conversation, something that Facebook’s many changes continually frustrates, though the connections it brings encourage me on. However, I digress. My responsibilities as First Chair (both in seniority and in rank) are varied. Beyond aiding my sitters, I seek—and offer—advice, consolation, curios, even trivia. So please send your questions, dear readers, and let’s have a conversation. For instance, Q: Do you have children? JC: Not yet—finding a spouse is a bit difficult for a chair. Yet I suspect watching over thousands of present and former sitters—as well as managing a Facebook page— makes for good preparation. Until we speak again, JC (www.facebook.com/johnnie. chair) �from the bell towers talk of the tow ers collegium At the end of every fall and spring semester in Annapolis, the Great Hall in McDowell fills to the brim with students and tutors attending Collegium, an opportunity for St. John’s students to showcase their musical talent in a formal performance. (Above), Zachary Wells (A13), Alex Lankford (A12), Frank Pecoraro (A15), and tutor Peter Kalkavage sing in the 2012 Spring Collegium in Annapolis. briefly quoted “St. John’s provides one of the most distinctive forms of liberal education in the country.... But for such an education to be accessible to all requires a great commitment of financial resources,...we have added more than $4 million to our financial aid budget in just the last few years when our students and families have needed it most.” Christopher Nelson, Annapolis president, guest blog, “Yes, You Can Afford the College of Your Choice,” Huffington Post, March 14, 2012 Santa Fe Tutor Arcelia Rodriguez, who has been at St. John’s since 2008, was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. She will work with the Department of Political Theory and Thought at the University of the Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, and develop course materials and curricula for undergraduate and graduate classes in American political thought. Four new tutors have joined the faculty—two in Annapolis and two in Santa Fe. In Annapolis, Gregory Freeman comes to the college from the University of Chicago, where he received his PhD, Committee on Social Thought. Tutor Steven Crockett returns to Annapolis part-time. He was a tutor in Annapolis from 1970 to 1977 and at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe during most summers from 1976 to 1981. In Santa Fe, Sarah Davis and David Levy (A03) join the faculty. Davis received her PhD in anthropology from Emory University; Levy received his PhD in political science from Boston College. Annapolis tutor Joseph Cohen (Class of 1956) retired from the Annapolis faculty on December 31 after nearly 50 years with the college. Santa Fe tutor David Bolotin has formally retired. Queens College and at St. John’s University in New York. Leo Pickens (A78), who held that position for the past 23 years, became director of Alumni Relations, replacing Jo Ann Mattson (A87), who became director of Individual Giving. Gregory Shook is the new associate director of Communications. In Santa Fe, tutor David Carl became the new director of the Graduate Institute. He has been at St. John’s for 12 years, and in that time he has also served as assistant dean. Jim Osterholt retired from the position after more than seven years as vice president for Advancement. Victoria Mora, tutor on the Santa Fe campus since 1992 and dean from 2006 to 2011, will become the new vice president of Advancement. Susan Patten is now the director of Development. Gabriel Gomez joined the college as the director of Communications in Santa Fe. He was the director of External Affairs with the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts: Santa Fe Indian Market, where he directed the marketing and development departments. Larry Peppin, formerly the finance director of Las Cumbres Community Services, a nonprofit in northern New Mexico, became the new controller for the Santa Fe campus. Susan Kaplan, formerly director of Corporate and Foundation Relations in Santa Fe, became the associate vice president for Advancement. Do you know a student who belongs at St. John’s? Let us know. annapolis : admissions@sjca.edu or 410-626-2522 santa fe : admissions@sjcsf.edu or 505-984-6060 In Annapolis, Michael McQuarrie, formerly director of the Office of Recreation and Intramural Sports at the New School in New York, became the new director of Athletics on July 2. He received his MA in sports management from California University of Pennsylvania and taught sociology at The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 15 �from the bell towers As a recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, Aparna Ravilochan (SF12) leaves for a year in Malaysia in January 2013 to teach English in a rural primary or secondary school in the state of Terengganu, Pahang, or Johor. Ravilochan has not yet received her Malaysia assignment, but she knows that any town will hold treasures as she takes her love of teaching and English with her. Ravilochan’s typical Malaysian workweek will include 20 hours of teaching as well as theater and choral music. Ravilochan hopes that these activities, along with her teaching and general community presence, will help foster meaningful relationships. “The relationships are what I’m most excited about. It’s an opportunity to connect with people I otherwise would never be able to meet and to live with them in a completely different lifestyle,” she says. “I’ve come to love talking to people, hearing their stories. I think having an exchange like that across cultural boundaries will be even more illuminating and exciting.” Ravilochan also looks forward to sharing her knowledge of English. As a writing assistant for two years at St. John’s, she discovered a passion for English and teaching. Although Ravilochan has much to bring to her Fulbright teaching position, Aparna Ravilochan (SF12) SANTA FE STAGES MAN OF LA MANCHA CORRIE PHOTOGRAPHY Fulbright Fellow to Teach in Malaysia This spring, the Santa Fe campus community presented the musical Man of La Mancha in three soldout performances. Directed by Artist-in-Residence Roy Rogosin (SFGI08) Man of La Mancha featured a cast of 15 students, two tutors, and a staff member, as well as a four-piece orchestra of students and an alumna of the college. Man of La Mancha, with book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion, and music by Mitch Leigh, is inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’s 17th-century masterpiece, Don Quixote. It tells the story of the “mad” knight as a musical play-within-a-play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Pictured (l. to r.): Rachel Reid (SF15) as Antonia; April Cleveland (SF15) as Aldonza; James Irwin (SF14) as Don Quixote/Cervantes; and Felipe Motta (SF13) as Sancho. she knows that Malaysia will have much to teach her as well. Ravilochan will be living in her village among her students and their families, learning their culture and lifestyle from the inside. She is excited about the illuminating experience, but is a little nervous as well. “I’ll have to live in a way I’m not used to, without the creature comforts here. I’ve been to India for a few weeks before, but it will take some getting used to for almost a year,” she says. “I’ll miss my parents, my brother and sister.” Family has been a source of constant encouragement, and Ravilochan is also grateful to the tutor community at St. John’s for their support. “The tutors are interested in who you are in class, and take that to the next level and are interested in who you are as a person. We have something special here that you couldn’t find anywhere else.” —Jillian Burgie (SF12) 16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 briefly quoted “One of the great things about our St. John’s education is that most people won’t know what to do with you. You don’t fit a mold. Make it to your advantage. Try being a little over-confident, and a little bit of a risk-taker.” Robert Bienenfeld (sf 80), senior manager, Environment and Energy Strategy, American Honda Motor Co., Inc.,member, St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors, 2012 Commencement speaker, Santa Fe. �from the bell towers Sarah Morse: New Director of Admissions in Annapolis For Morse, a graduate of Smith College and a former Annapolis resident, her new role at St. John’s is a natural, albeit unexpected, fit. Originally from St. Louis, she has worked for more than 25 years in the education field, including 15 years as an admissions and financial aid director at two independent schools in the MidAtlantic region—St. Timothy’s School and Jemicy School—and as eastern regional director and national director of special projects for American Field Service (AFS) Intercultural Programs. Morse is also committed to volunteer service, including a six-year term on the Commission on Ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, as regional alumnae admissions coordinator for Smith College, and mentor to AFS exchange students. Morse’s role at St. John’s is her first in higher education; her expertise and insight are embraced by the college community. “Sarah brings with her a genuine liking for people, especially young people. She has imagination, resourcefulness, and a collaborative spirit, all of which are essential to this office,” says Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus. Morse reconnected with the college when she attended Executive Seminars in Baltimore last year. Her seminar experience resonated deeply, as “a terrific example of what St. John’s is all about. Once a month, that Tuesday morning was an oasis. Having discussions about great books JEN BEHRENS At a time when the world appears transfixed by technology, Sarah Morse, the new director of admissions at St. John’s in Annapolis, emphasizes in-person conversations to help prospective students get to know St. John’s and understand the Program. “We work very hard to bring students to campus so they can meet tutors, staff, and students. We encourage them to spend a night on campus, go to seminars, and sit in on labs and tutorials,” says Morse. Her reach extends beyond prospective students; the Admissions Office recruits staff volunteers to have lunch with parents of prospectives who are visiting campus. “We link prospective students who have particular interests with alumni who are working in those career fields. St. John’s alumni represent the college so well—their passion for the college really shows.” with interesting people got me excited about the Program,” she says—and propelled her to accept the position at St. John’s. That exposure helps her articulate to the outside world the heart of the college’s curriculum. “It’s challenging, of course, for me coming from the outside, but I have a love and appreciation for the college.” Morse looks forward to enlisting Johnnies to engage prospectives around the country. “There is tremendous potential for involving alumni in admissions. Alumni volunteers have been extremely helpful at various events for students and prospectives, including recent receptions in New York City and Baltimore,” she says. Those receptions give prospectives an opportunity to have informal discussions with alumni about the college and their careers. “We link prospective stu- dents who have particular interests with alumni who are working in those career fields. St. John’s alumni represent the college so well—their passion for the college really shows. We value alumni involvement and are eager to involve them more in our admissions efforts.” Morse also reaches out with a robust virtual presence. “Recruitment has changed, and using that technological aspect is crucial. I’ve talked with a lot of students who watched our videos, read our materials online, and learned about the college from the website and our social media sites.” Above all, Morse wants prospectives to know why St. John’s is special. “From the first class, Johnnies practice and hone skills in critical thinking, careful listening, and thoughtful analysis,” she says. “They learn to support contributions to the discussion with structured reasoning and become comfortable with trying out a variety of ideas. Taking intellectual risks and seeking out other viewpoints is woven into the Johnnie fabric. Students learn to be fearless in approaching new and challenging situations. They become skilled at asking questions to get to the heart of the matter. And they understand the value of considering a variety of viewpoints, unimpeded by a fear of ‘getting it right’ the first time. This is unique to St. John’s.” —Gregory Shook The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 17 �Love 18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �and Desire PHOTOS: HENLEY MOORE (A13) “What Fools These Mortals Be” Junior Henley Moore (A14) shows us Shakespeare through her camera lens, a counterpoint to decadesold images of the King William Players from the Greenfield Library Archives on the following pages. Shown here, the King Willam Players perform Titus Andronicus with Alex Lankford (A12), opposite, as Aaron and Tessa Nelson (A12), above, as Lavinia. How do we encounter Shakespeare at St. John’s? The deans and several tutors share observations on Shakespeare and his place in the Program, “as inevitable as Plato, or the Bible, or Kant,” tutor Jonathan Tuck notes. In his essay, tutor Laurence Nee considers how Shakespeare holds “mirrors” that reveal “clear reflections of our dearest and most powerful desire—love,” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. Many Johnnies hunger for more than their encounters with Shakespeare in the Program. Some, such as the King William Players in Annapolis and the Santa Fe student theater troupe, inhabit Shakespeare by staging his works. How do we encounter Shakespeare at St. John’s? One way is through Shakespeare’s sonnets. When we turn to English poetry, we look at Shakespeare—the metric scheme, poetic form, how it is structured. In sophomore language, many students memorize and recite Chaucer and Shakespeare. They are also asked to compose poems—a sonnet, for example. In this way, students inhabit the poetic form; it is a pathway to understanding it. We do run a risk with poetry. Some critics would say we turn everything back to philosophy: “What is the thesis of the poem?” Poems are meant to be read aloud, recited. Plays, to be performed. Music, to be performed and heard. The Psalms, to be prayed. But we certainly don’t require students to pray. To some degree, we take these art forms out of their natural habitat and put them into our habitat, one of inquiry. However, when we do turn to poetry in the language tutorial (and music in the music tutorial), we go as far as we can in recognizing this and correcting for it. —J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 19 �How do we encounter Shakespeare at St. John’s? We encounter Shakespeare’s work in various ways: through tutorials, study groups, preceptorials, lectures and question periods, annual essays, orals, and dramatic performances. Perhaps the greatest genius in English literature, he instructs and inspires us daily. —Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean Why is Shakespeare on the Program? Most tutors would agree that if you are on a sinking ship full of Program books and they have to be thrown overboard, Shakespeare would be one of the last to go. It has even been said that Plato, Shakespeare, and the Bible could be the whole Program. He is a universally recognized genius. We are living in a world that Shakespeare helped shape. Some great writers become parents and creators of their language. Homer is the teacher of the Greeks and of the Greek language; Dante of Italian; Shakespeare of English. Our linguistic memory and architecture is saturated with Shakespeare; he lies behind our consciousness and our living language. For English speakers, he is our governing genius, our great, great poet. —J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean Why do we read Shakespeare at St. John’s? I would think that Shakespeare in our seminar list would be as inevitable as Plato, or the Bible, or Kant—perhaps more so, since he writes in English. A more interesting question might be which plays to read. I have long thought that Shakespeare’s comedies are underrepresented in our program, as comedy is generally. I gave a lecture a number of years ago (“Restoring Amends: Philosophy and Forgiveness in Shakespeare’s Comedies”) in which I argued that the comedies are a tutor’s view The Greatness of Shakespeare’s Plays by Laurence D.Nee, tutor Shakespeare’s plays provide an unsurpassed depiction of abiding human desires. Like mirrors, the plays use characters’ poetic speeches and deeds to reflect for our consideration the objects of our desires and the reasons we seek their fulfillment. Clear reflections of our dearest and most powerful desire—love—can be found in the opening scenes of two of his most familiar and popular plays: a comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a tragedy, King Lear. A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins by vividly depicting the problematic nature of love. Theseus has “wooed” and “won” the “love” of his future bride, Hippolyta, with the conquering force of his sword and longs to enjoy her “[n]ow” (AMND 1.1.1-17). But this conqueror has also been conquered—he is a slave to the internal compulsion of satisfying his “desires.” Wedding harsh images of rape to his servile need for immediate gratification, Theseus presents love as the violent satisfaction of bodily lust. The temptation to assume that this initial presentation provides a complete picture of love is moderated, however, by Theseus’s subsequent restraint, which is as strong if not stronger than his lust. Wishing to “wed [Hippolyta] in another key,” Theseus willingly delays his gratification for four days until the new moon appears and brings his “triumph” (1.1.18). The speeches of the young Athenian lovers suggest why a lover might exercise restraint: “true love” depends upon it. Egeus interrupts Theseus’s nuptial plans for “merriments” and “reveling” in order to marry Demetrius—who previously loved Helena—to his daughter, Hermia, who loves Lysander and would die rather than resign herself to her father’s “will.” When 20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Hermia and Lysander are alone, they recount the tales from which they learn that the “course of true love never did run smooth”—it must bear a restraining “cross,” which transforms the character of their desires and their beloveds (1.1.199). The tales depict mere “desires” as “momenta[r] y,” “swift,” “brief,” and “short as any dream”— nothing more than the “base and vile” bodily urges or impulses of the “spleen” (1.1.143-145). They present “true love” in the “form and dignity” of a religion through which enduring devotion will replace the inconstant, fleeting rewards of lust. The “translated” beloved appears to be a “god,” before whom the lover offers “prayers” (1.1.197, 232; 2.1.203). HENLEY MOORE (A13) Q&A Lysander bestows From l. to r.: Danny Rodrinumerous gifts upon guez (SF15) as Chiron, Alex Lankford (A12) as Aaron, Hermia without reand Andrew Hastings (A13) ceiving any immedi- as Demetrius in the King ate reward; he ap- William Players’ production pears not merely to of Titus Andronicus. restrain his needs but to possess a godlike freedom from them. Seeking to emulate her divine Lysander, Hermia will “starve” herself, display “patience,” and endure the “trial” of being deprived of her lover’s “food” (1.1.134-142, 150-155, 222-223). By enduring pains and restraining her desires, Hermia imitates the “true love” of her divine beloved and hopes to transcend her embodied, mortal, and �the greatness of shakespeare’s plays Q&A more “philosophic” than the tragedies, more interested in themes and general ideas, less dependent on our empathetic identification with individual characters. I still hold this view. At the very least, I wish we could add Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. I know they have often had it on the seminar list in Santa Fe. It would also be wonderful if we could find room for the other two plays in the second English history tetralogy. We now read, as we should, both Richard II and Henry IV, Part I, but Henry IV, Part II and Henry V are remarkable works, too. Many people think that the four plays were conceived as a single work…(Naturally, I am violating the most sacred obligation of anyone who proposes to tinker with the seminar list—I have not said which books I would drop to make room for these.) ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY It is good to be reminded that any of Shakespeare’s plays will yield extraordinary and unlimited insights if we can find the time to read slowly and carefully. In the sophomore language tutorial, we can read scenes dramatically together, perhaps commit whole speeches to memory, and look at individual words as we would in a sonnet. We may be frustrated that we can’t do all this in the seminar, but it’s exciting to be able to think about each play as a whole. We are free to treat our seminar reading of Shakespeare as an invitation to go deeper, whenever we can find the time. needy condition. The strong temptation to reduce the lovers’ willingness to bear these “crosses” to mere delayed gratification must be moderated by their own accounts of their love. They experience their sacrifices as free from future rewards. Despite their myopic vision, their unrecognized hopes John D. Oosterhout (Class of 1951), George A. Sperdakas (Class of 1954), and Richard T. Congdon (Class of 1950) onstage during the King William Players’ rehearsal of Shakespeare’s King John (ca.1950-1951). imply that they endure these restraints or crosses for the sake of future rewards. They may starve themselves for an evening, but they expect to feast on their “lovers’ food” tomorrow. Helena will deliberately “enrich” her “pain” by telling Demetrius where Hermia has fled, but she suffers in the hope that his “sight” will turn “back again” to her (1.1.222-223, 250-251). The reward received from this “sight” can be distinguished from that received from other goods. Helena could relieve her hunger by con- As Dr. Johnson remarked about London, I would say that the man who is tired of Shakespeare is tired of life. –Jonathan Tuck, tutor Might we read Shakespeare at St. John’s in order to experience the joy and sorrow of a desire like love? We read Romeo and Juliet and long to feel the love that can make a “pilgrim” lover view his beloved The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 21 �Q&A a tutor’s view ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY as a divine, “holy shrine.” We suspect, however, that love may be only a dangerous “dream”—not only “blind,” “rude,” boist’rous,” and “like [a] thorn” but also so variable as to transfer Romeo’s devotion from Rosaline to Juliet with a momentary gaze. We persistently hope for the elevating weight love brings and, therefore, angrily defend it against the hedonist and materialist attacks of the Nurse and Mercutio. And we fear that the story of these and all lovers is one of “woe.” —Laurence D. Nee, tutor We read eight of Shakespeare’s plays in sophomore seminar (four tragedies, two histories, two comedies) because he is the best of the playwrights and these eight are among the best of his plays. No one writes equally well in the tragic and comic modes. No one expands the possibilities of English speech more than he does. No one is as intensely theatrical and deeply literary as Shakespeare. He contains half the world. For the other half, there is the rest of the Program. —Louis Petrich, tutor Describe an opening question on Shakespeare’s works that still fascinates you. Are there fairies in the woods (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)? The lovers escape tragedy, and enjoy the prospect of happiness, because the fairies intervene. The fairies, however, seem and do not seem to exist. They are only visible to one character, under very peculiar circumstances, and yet are seen by the audience. They are said to act providentially to care for particular human beings and yet appear reducible to natural phenomena. They may be little more than “airy nothing” and yet point to our deepest desires and hopes. —Laurence D. Nee, tutor The lovers’ account of their desire for love reveals that what appeared as a tension between lust and restraint is, in fact, a tension between their desire for bodily gratification and their desire to enjoy a godlike freedom from bodily needs. Their account asks us to consider whether both desires can be satisfied. suming any “food,” but she cannot overcome her “starv[ation]” for her lover’s “food” simply by physically gratifying her lust. The hungry are indifferent to whether an apple “consents” to be eaten, but lovers are not satisfied simply to take, “force,” or consume their beloveds, as Theseus’s restraint demonstrates (1.1.134-142, 150-155, 222-223). Lovers desire their beloveds’ voluntary reciprocation of their affections, which shows that they are worthy of being loved by their divine beloveds—that they are nothing less than godlike themselves. When these lovers are “well derived,” “possessed,” or “fair,” have endured considerable sacrifices for their beloveds, and yet remain unloved, they are filled with anger, which destroys the friendship of the women and sets the men on a course to deadly war (1.1.99-103). The lovers’ account of their desire for love reveals that what appeared as a tension between lust and restraint is, in fact, a tension between 22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Above: Charles Finch, their desire for bodiformer director of financial ly gratification and aid, as King Henry and their desire to enjoy Harold O. Koenig (A69) a godlike freedom as Prince Hal in the from bodily needs. King Williams Players’ production of Henry IV, Their account asks Part I, Francis Scott Key us to consider whethAuditorium, November 1970. er both desires can be satisfied. The opening scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, then, poses the question of whether the desire for love is inherently tragic. King Lear begins by drawing our attention to the difficulty of thinking about the desire for love. King Lear intends to bestow equal portions of his kingdom on his sons-in-law, the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall. His trusted advisors, Kent and Gloucester, cannot discern “which of the Dukes he values most.” Kent had previously “thought” that Lear “affected” the Duke of Albany more than Cornwall; Gloucester concurs—it “did �the greatness of shakespeare’s plays Q&A ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY There are two works for which I have asked opening questions that are based on past performances that altered the endings in misguided ways. One was the Don Giovanni (allowed by Mozart himself) that omitted the final sextet; the other was the 18th-century King Lear that saved Cordelia and married her to Edgar. I wasn’t “fascinated” by these questions, but they did set off good discussion. I couple Shakespeare with Mozart because they are poets whose inclusion in any program needs no good reason simply because the question ought never to come up. —Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus always seem so.” What both had “thought” does not accord with what now “appears” to be the case (KL 1.1.1-6). According to Lear’s original plan— designed prior to the proclamations of love by Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia—his two vicious daughters, Goneril and Regan, and their husbands, the Dukes, would be relegated to the extremes of the kingdom. The favored daughter, Cordelia, would receive the most “opulent” portion and the foreign support of her husband-to-be (1.1.86). Lear would live with Cordelia as King, attaching his “retainers” to his beloved daughter so they would remain loyal to her after his death. Focusing on the Dukes, Lear’s advisors fail to see that his “division of the kingdom” would wisely overcome the absence of a son and ensure that the kingdom would pass to his “best” daughter (1.1.214-216). They also fail to see that Lear divided the kingdom to reward the merit of the daughter he “loved . . . most” (1.1.123). The play’s opening suggests that thinking clearly about Lear’s plan is intimately linked to thinking about his love for Cordelia. Lear quickly destroys his own prudently devised plan when he believes that he has been George A. Sperdakas (Class of 1954), Richard T. Congdon (Class of 1950), Jeremy P. Tarcher (Class of 1953), and John D. Oosterhout (Class of 1951) in the King William Players’ production of King John [ca. 1950-1954]. unjustly deprived of Cordelia’s public proclamation of her love for him. Goneril and Regan attribute their father’s “poor judgment” in casting off the daughter he “always lov’d . . . most” to the fact that “he hath ever but slenderly known himself” (1.1.322-323). Lear and his trusted servants corroborate this claim (1.1.120-166; 1.4.148; 1.5.24). Lear’s failure to know himself is directly attributable to his failure to recognize that he longs to be loved by Cordelia as much as he longs to love her. The duality of Lear’s love is encapsulated in his remark to the soon-to-be banished Kent: “I lov’d her most, and thought to set my rest on her kind nursery” (1.1.123-124). Lear loved Cordelia “most” and sought to reward her through his division of the kingdom. He also desired to be rewarded for his service: to receive her “kind nursery.” Lear does not recognize, however, how deeply he desires to be rewarded by Cordelia for what he has allegedly given to her. The King of France’s subsequent discourse on love provides a possible explanation for Lear’s blindness: “Love’s not love when it is mingled with regards that stand aloof from th’ entire point” (1.1.239-240). Lovers do not think of or experience their love as self-interested; rather, their love is kindled or inflamed when they believe that their beloveds cannot benefit them because they are “poor,” “forsaken,” and “despis’d.” A lover There are so many fundamental questions that will always remain fascinating because their answers go deep into what Lear calls “the mystery of things.” For example: what causes the death of Cordelia? Why is Macduff able to kill Macbeth? Why does Shakespeare bring Falstaff onstage during the climactic sword fight between Prince Hal and Hotspur? And a question of particular fascination for all lovers of books and believers in the liberal arts: why does Prospero drown his books before retiring to Milan, where every third thought is of his death? —Louis Petrich, tutor Describe a defining moment for you in one of Shakespeare’s plays. The opening words of a Shakespeare play explicitly or implicitly raise a critical question. Hamlet, for example, begins “Who’s there?” The play could be said to ask how human beings can determine whether apparitions are “there” if they live in a hamlet—a land without a church. The struggle to confront such an opening question is a defining moment in reading a Shakespeare play. —Laurence D. Nee, tutor The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 23 �Q&A a tutor’s view Are Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies so very different? like the King of France or Lear believes that he loves only for the sake of his beloved—for “thee and thy virtues” (1.1.250-255). In the duality of his love and his blindness to what he truly desires, Lear especially resembles the young Athenian lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The sources of Lear’s blindness emerge if we consider more carefully the confusion of his two advisers who open the play. Kent refuses to flatter Lear with “glib and oily” speech when Cordelia shows her “love” for her father by being “silent”— even though she claims to “know” her sisters for what they “are” and that time “shall unfold” their “faults” (1.1.61, 94-95, 269-275, 280-281). He offends the King with “plain”—or non-flattering—speech and refuses to persuade him that his daughter’s silence reflects her great love for him. Kent claims to have “loved” Lear as a “father” but leaves him in the hands of the wicked Goneril and Regan (1.1.141-153). He believes that his plain speech arises from selfless love—a devotion to the King’s life above his own—but later admits that his allegedly noble, selfless speech is self-inter- The answer to whether the comedies (I should say the Romances) and the tragedies are (very) different is yes, except perhaps in the case of Measure for Measure (and the two neighboring plays), which are known as Problem plays, not so much because they have plots about moral problems but because we have a problem classifying them. —Elliott Zuckerman, tutor emeritus All of Shakespeare’s comedies occur in Christian settings (including A Midsummer Night’s Dream). The young men in these plays seem beset with a peculiar melancholy and appear remarkably unimpressive when compared to the women of the comedies. Thinking about what changes Christianity brings, particularly to young men, would be a fruitful place to begin thinking about how Shakespeare’s comedies differ from his tragedies. —Laurence D. Nee, tutor Different, yes; so very different, no. I laugh more during Hamlet than any of the comedies makes me, and the lonely sadness that endures to the end of Twelfth Night is as deeply felt as the happiness of requited love. At the end of his career, Shakespeare wrote four comedies (culminating in The Tempest) that feel different from the earlier comedies because they take account of the actions of the preceding tragedies. A great challenge for me is to try to understand the wholeness of Shakespeare’s career as a writer, with comedy prevailing in the end over tragedy. I happen to prefer the tragedies, so I hope to learn from Shakespeare how to take comedy as seriously. —Louis Petrich, tutor to ask what they are; he assumes that gratifying passions like lust is good for him. Theseus cautions Hermia against making a similar assumption: she should “question” her “bewitch’d” desires and “examine well” her “blood” (1.1.27, 67-68). Gloucester does not believe that he needs to scrutinize his passions because, as his pun on conceiving suggests, thinking and desire are indistinguishable for him; reason would not direct him to goods distinct from those desired by his immediate bodily impulses. He believes that his body inherently leads him to what is good for him and, as a result, enjoying these good things is as easy as gratifying the motions of the “spleen” (1.1.143-145). Just as Kent fails to see what he ought to do to salvage Lear’s plan because he does not recognize his desire for reward, Gloucester fails to see the true character of his bastard son because he assumes that he must be rewarded for gratifying his immediate desires. The opening scene of King Lear presents obstacles that impede us from thinking clearly about our desire for love. By presenting penetrating depictions of the desire for love, Shakespeare’s plays serve as mirrors in which we may see both the desire for love in ourselves and the obstacles that prevent us from understanding it. Yet like the characters in these plays, we are blind. ested: he believes that “plainness” brings honor (1.1.146-148, 155-157, 223-233). Like the Athenian youths who emulate the honored lovers of the tales they recite, Kent blindly assumes that being recognized as honorable is a great good—perhaps the greatest good. His unwillingness to question this assumption causes him to bring certain harm to himself, Lear, and England. Kent fails to see what is good for Lear or himself and, hence, what the foundation for loving and being loved is. Gloucester blindly assumes that gratifying his immediate desires must be good for him. He holds Edgar, his legal son, “no dearer” than the perpetually-absent “bastard” Edmund and longs to believe that the “good” lust which attracted him to Edmund’s “fair” mother must be rewarded with “good” fruit, just as it rewarded him with so much “good sport” at the time of the “making” (1.1.12-18). Gloucester acknowledges that he seeks good things for himself but fails 24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear provide two examples of the way in which Shakespeare fosters dialogue both within his plays and among them. By presenting penetrating depictions of the desire for love, Shakespeare’s plays serve as mirrors in which we may see both the desire for love in ourselves and the obstacles that prevent us from understanding it. Yet like the characters in these plays, we are blind. Through the conversations cultivated within St. John’s classrooms, our own desires and the impediments that prevent us from seeing them can emerge; the fog that impedes us from seeing into these mirrors may be lifted. Our conversations promote the discovery of the reflections made possible by these mirrors and distinguish the education provided by the college. St. John’s considered reading of great works like Shakespeare’s plays, when united with openness to learning from—and not just about—them, fosters our ability to see ourselves with sharpened sight. �setting the stage “All the World’s a STAGE ” For centuries actors, writers, directors, set designers, and many others have been drawn to the stage, interpreting dramatic works and theater. Five Johnnies transform— and are transformed by—the stage. As a set designer in New York City with a flair for opera, Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) is both scientist and illusionist, tinkering with the audience’s perception. When actress Sara Barker (A98) “treads the boards” as Queen Elizabeth, she becomes larger than life and looks like Hillary Clinton. At the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, Jack Armstrong’s (SF83) inventive plot charts reveal hidden notes: “A well-told story,” he says, “can be graphed like a piece of music.” Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (SFGI01) lets his characters lead and morph into themselves on the page. Shakespeare’s strong female leads inspired actress Maria Jung (A12) to take the reins of her life, just weeks after graduation. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 25 �26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �“all the world’s a stage” “MacGyvering Your Way Around” Set designer Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) melds materials and paint with “lots of research” into historic, visual details. Ilana Kirschbaum (sf07) sets the stage by Anna Perleberg (SF02) “This above all: to thine own self be true.” DEREK STENBORG Hamlet PHOTO BY PETR JERABEK—LIGHTIMAGINATION.NET “Science, alchemy, art, practice, and craft,” is how Ilana Kirschbaum (SF07) describes her work in the theater as a scenic artist and designer. One could add tradition, collaboration, and improvisation. In September 2011, Kirschbaum landed an amazing opportunity at the Juilliard School in New York City, as one of two technical theater interns in their scenic painting department. By midMarch of this year, she had worked on 15 productions, and was solving a conundrum for Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni. The stage floor, done in faux wood (to blend with a beautiful half-opaque, halftransparent forest backdrop), needs a ground cloth to look like moss and dirt, but will have barefoot people dancing on it and set pieces coming in and out. “So it needs to read from far away—have a pronounced texture—but be soft, and able to stand up to having scenery moved onto it.” Her current idea involves putting foam in a food processor, mixing the bits with shreds of plastic grocery bags, and putting flexible glue on the material in layers. There’s a good amount of “MacGyvering your way around” in scenic art, Kirschbaum says, “a lot of fake wood, faux finishes, fooling the eye. I’ve done a lot of fake food.” Some techniques in the field are traditional painting methods not used elsewhere; the two-dimensional creation of a three-dimensional space can be traced back to van Eyck’s medieval altarpieces. In that way, she feels she’s carrying on a long tradition. With a long background in the visual arts—“I’ve been drawing and painting forever”—Kirschbaum first dabbled in stage work when a friend volunteered her to paint what she now describes as an “awful” backdrop for a St. John’s production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. “I was amazed by how much time it took,” she says. “I just fell in love with theater.” A college-sponsored summer Ariel internship with Santa Fe artist Paco Benitez put her in touch with David Olson, artistic director of theaterwork, a company that produces plays and perfor- mances of all stripes, from Shakespeare to puppetry. They were a perfect fit for a Johnnie, Kirschbaum found—“They’re interested in developed visual theater, but there’s also lots of discussion of the texts, lots of research, especially in the visual details.” She describes the process as making SJC text exploration “exist in a physical way: now move this, now clean this, now carry this, now paint this.” During several years with theaterwork, she did a little bit of everything, becoming increasingly focused on scenic elements. Kirschbaum got a kick out of participating in a stage version of Anna Karenina, having written her senior essay on the Tolstoy novel. Her favorite theaterwork production was Jean Anouilh’s Sophoclesby-way-of-the-Nazis retelling of Antigone, mounted in a most unusual space: an abandoned swimming pool whose building had moldered unoccupied for years. After a thorough cleaning, it was turned into a 150-seat theater. Lighting the space is a challenge; the electrical system doesn’t have sufficient wattage and the ceiling is inaccessible—regular stage lights can’t be hung. But the atmosphere worked to their advantage for Antigone. The bare space of the pool’s floor became a desert with rivulets of poetry written across it (and also written on the costumes), flowing into the murky depths of the deep end, from which the chorus emerged. The effect is spooky and woebegone, perfect for the tragic story of defiance. This kind of visual storytelling is a huge part of scenic art, Kirschbaum affirms. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 27 �DEREK STENBORG “When you walk in the room, before you see actors, you see the set, and that affects where the audience’s focus is.” Whether scenery is abstract and minimalist or realistic and historically detailed sends cues to the spectators about how to respond emotionally to the work in front of them. “A good set deals in subtle ways with the complexities of the story, its key concepts. This could mean a lush set, or something very stark.” It always means research, particularly for older works, and paying close attention. A play set in the 1940s in the home of aristocracy, for example, wouldn’t have cutting-edge, then-modern furniture and decoration, but would show generations of inherited belongings. Such detail may not be noticed by the casual observer, but Kirschbaum believes that element is always there. At the same time, a balance must always be struck, because the set can’t overwhelm the story. “Sometimes you want to do really cool pieces, but you have to remember they’re in the background!” Expanding her repertoire of scenic art techniques keeps providing Kirschbaum with new subjects of study. “By the nature of the work, you learn a lot about art history and the history of materials,” she says. “If you’re imitating a fresco, you have to know how it was done, and then figure out how to do it in a simpler and quicker way.” She is currently interested in the history of ornament; she finds similarities between a culture’s alphabet and its styles of ornament in architecture and illustration, seeing echoes of the cadences and structures of language in physical forms. Greek and Roman, for example, have individual, separate letters of standard sizes, and one can view the strict, clean lines of their buildings as similarly discrete forms. The loops and mazes of Arabic or Hindi decoration also resemble their connected scripts. A scenic art department operates almost like a medieval guild, with a “master” designer and apprentices who carry out the work. Apprentices don’t have to abandon painting for design, but can discover what aspect of the field they enjoy most. The two groups definitely share a do-or-die emphasis on teamwork. “You don’t know what the word means until you’re standing on a 50-foot painting with two other people,” says Kirschbaum, “and you have to make it look like it’s been painted by one person. And there’s wet paint on it!” Any process must be streamlined so many people can contribute to one smooth result, tailored for different skill levels. “The weirdest thing is how much it makes sense after St. John’s, all the random toolmaking, figuring things out, experimentation—developing methods around the process and hoping it turns out in spite of the variables,” she says. “It reminds me of senior lab.” Although in some ways she’s “behind” in her line of work, as almost everybody has an undergraduate degree in theater, Kirschbaum is happy to be filling in the gaps. She is amazed by how often a little geometry comes in handy: “Euclid construction proofs are a big part of my life right now.” The Juilliard internship has focused her eclectic experience. Kirschbaum was also 28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 lucky enough to work with the Santa Fe Opera for two summers. (She can’t even summon up an articulate adjective for how much she enjoyed it, simply emitting a happy “yeah!”) She has also done visual elements for a project called Lifesongs (brainchild of Santa Fe collaborative art ensemble Littleglobe), which creates music based around the lives of the elderly in nursing homes and hospice care. And she has done freelance work at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California. Not sure if she will spend her entire career in theater, Kirschbaum will be able to apply her skills to other endeavors such as painting murals for natural history museum displays. She also has a passion for working in opera. As for so many artists, the connections she is making in New York City will take her far. And she emphasizes that she would be happy to talk to current students thinking about pursuing their own theater work, on the stage or behind the scenes. �“all the world’s a stage” FROM SHYNESS TO ROYAL HIGHNESS Sara Barker (a98) transforms the stage “When you do dance, I wish you a wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do nothing but that.” The Winter’s Tale Suffering from debilitating shyness as a child, Sara Barker (A98) could have never imagined summoning the courage to speak in front of her class, let alone starring onstage as Queen Elizabeth in the Washington Shakespeare Company’s production of Mary Stuart. “I was the shyest kid in elementary school,” says Barker. “It was so bad that I developed speech problems and needed speech therapy.” Even as a Johnnie in her freshman year, she recalls her tutors urged her to speak up more in seminar. “That whole ‘putting yourself out there’ has always been difficult for me,” she says. “But I counter that with a love of imagination and creativity.” Barker began to dabble in acting during her senior year of high school. While at St. John’s, she studied her craft more seriously. On weekends, she regularly commuted to Washington, D.C., where she took classes at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. She also volunteered as the assistant director for a community theatre show in Annapolis. With the King William Players, she starred in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. “After the show,” she says, “tutor Jon Tuck came up to me and told me that I should [act].” She took his advice to heart. Not long after graduating from St. John’s, Barker landed in New York City, where she acted in a wide range of productions, in roles traditional to avant garde. By 2005 she was entrenched in the Brooklyn theater scene, treading the boards with the Chekhov Theater Ensemble—she also played Paulina in the Hipgnosis Theatre Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Whatever role Barker takes on, she embraces the character, giving her full self— mind, body, and spirit—to make the emotional transformation into somebody new. As an actor, Barker finds that an important part of making that transformation is the costumes she wears. “When you inhabit these characters, you want to experience what it’s like to be that character, and costumes make you move like they did and give you an idea of what they felt like.” Costumes inform both an actor’s and the audiences’ understanding of a character. For example, last year when Barker played the role of Queen Elizabeth in Mary Stuart, instead of donning an elaborate gown, accompanied with the ruffles and corsets one would typically expect, she was dressed as Hillary Clinton in a rather severe fitted blazer and skirt. The austere attire illuminated the Queen’s power and authority then and now. In fact, the production underscores the timeless resilience of Shakespeare’s work; actors and audiences alike remain fascinated by his plays. “He took archetypal stories and brought them to life in such an amazing way,” says Barker. Barker has certainly overcome the intense shyness she experienced as a child. Her work C. STANLEY PHOTOGRAPHY By Gregory Shook “‘PUTTING YOURSELF OUT THERE’ HAS ALWAYS BEEN DIFFICULT FOR ME, BUT I COUNTER THAT WITH A LOVE OF IMAGINATION AND CREATIVITY.” is acclaimed by the Washington Post and the Washington City Paper and has garnered multiple awards, including Best Drama and Best Overall Production at the Capital Fringe Festival 2009. This spring Barker finished up a production of The Nightmare Dreamer at Flashpoint in Washington, D.C. This summer she is juggling her full-time job at an IT solutions company with rehearsing the lead role of Catherine for the world premiere of The Ice Child with the new theater collective, Factory 449, of which she is a founding member; the Washington, D.C.-based company was last year’s Helen Hayes Award Recipient of the John Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company. Sarah Barker (A98) shines as Queen Elizabeth in Mary Stuart. Onstage Barker exudes confidence, though she admits having difficulty looking the audience in the eyes when performing. Like many actors, she relies on what’s known as “the fourth wall,” which in theater parlance refers to the invisible “screen” at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, which separates the audience from the stage. This imaginary wall helps Barker psychologically balance her need to breathe in the energy of the audience without being overly aware of their presence. And she uses her imagination to connect with the audience. During her 2009 performance in The Cherry Orchard, “instead of seeing faces I was seeing cherry trees,” says Barker. “I was describing the trees and what the orchard meant to me—the lines were so beautiful. I could feel that the audience was right there with me, and I was bringing them along for the ride.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 29 �“all the world’s a stage” Graphing Shakespeare Like Music Jack Armstrong (sf83) plots charts by Anna Perleberg (SF02) “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as improbable fiction.” Twelfth Night Jack Armstrong’s (SF83) official title at Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre (PST) is vice president of the board of directors—but his roles are many: producer, fundraiser, dramaturge, and graphic designer. He is also charter of plots, a title all his own, with its roots in a junior-year preceptorial, where Armstrong first encountered Heinrich Schenker’s musical analysis. “Schenker was the first person who codified music theory,” he says, inventing a system of notation to show “how the composer creates and releases tension in each of the lines to form a symbolic whole.” Armstrong sees story structure the same way: “A well-told story can be graphed like a piece of music.” The chart for cross-dressing comedy Twelfth Night, for instance, unfurls in a riot of color and a wealth of information. Columns for each scene run across the top; below, color-coded bars for each actor show who is present in the scene and with whom. A row titled simply “Drama” asks the question the scene poses: “Can Viola land safely in this strange country?” “How far do they dare push Malvolio?” Running down the side, where Schenker might have kept track of major triads, are the myriad subplots of the play, again phrased as questions: “Can Viola keep her female identity secret?” “Will Sebastian be reunited with Viola?” Every scene that advances one of these plots is faithfully noted, and their progress can be tracked across the acts, like rising and falling notes, until they reach their resolutions. It’s both a beautiful representation of data and a handy primer for anyone working with the play—actor, director, or student. Although he acted in high school—and developed a lifelong affection for Hamlet in particular—Armstrong says he would never have worked in the theater without his wife, Carmen Khan, an English actress who credits the Bard with saving her life. “She grew up in a rough family, a rough neighborhood. And she came into English class one day and her teacher recited a passage from Macbeth. It opened her eyes. It was the first time she saw life as more than a trial to be endured, that there could be joy and fulfillment.” One of their first dates was to a production of Hamlet that Armstrong hated so much he had to leave—“she thought I didn’t like her!” “Shakespeare’s plays are full of these passages, which at first blush seem to be a pause in the action for sizzling wordplay. It’s not a pause at all, but drama so intense you’d feel it even if the actors weren’t speaking.” In the late 80s, Khan was working with a classical company called Red Heel Theatre when circumstances thrust her into the position of artistic director. Under her leadership, the company began exclusively performing Shakespeare, changing their name to reflect this. Currently, the PST does two repertory plays every spring—this season Twelfth Night 30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 was paired with the blood-soaked tragedy Titus Andronicus in a unique production inspired by the Grand Guignol puppet theater—in a 120-seat theater converted from a former parish hall. Armstrong freely admits that their preparation for being on the board of a theater company was “nothing.” Then he adds, “It’s like having a baby—that baby teaches you what you need to know about being a parent, whether you like it or not.” He does have a day job—printing election ballots—but he says it’s only busy for three months in the spring and two months in fall, allowing him to spend as much time on the theater as he does on his “paying gig.” Long before the actors tread the boards, Armstrong and Khan go through the script line by line, asking three questions of each: What is this person saying? Why does the character say this—what is he or she trying to accomplish? Why is this in the play? Once they know the answers to these questions for each line, Armstrong writes up an annotated script with all their notes, and then generates his Schenkerian plot charts. It’s a monumental task: He estimates spending at least 60 hours for the close reading and the creation of chart and annotated director’s script. The result of all this preparation, he says, is that “the actors get to know the story so well that five minutes into it you forget you’re listening to archaic language. Sometimes it’s like you’re listening to improv comedy.” The prep work can also bring scenes to life that seem to be just trading lines on the page. “Shakespeare’s plays are full of these passages, which at first blush seem to be a pause in the action for sizzling wordplay. It’s not a pause at all, but drama so intense you’d feel it even if the actors weren’t speaking.” As an example, he offers Twelfth Night, where Duke Orsino �JOHN BANSEMER presses the disguised Viola about “his” favored lady, who, Viola says, is Orsino’s complexion, Orsino’s years. In other words, she’s mustering up the courage to tell him she’s really a woman, and that it’s him she loves. When he keeps not taking the hint, she backs off—and then tries again. Played this way, says Armstrong, “instead of just clever wordplay, you’re on the edge of your seat.” Their mission reaches far more than their main-stage audience. PST has a dizzying array of educational programs: Classes in Shakespeare for teenagers and adults. School matinees. Lectures by Shakespeare scholars. Workshops for English and drama instructors on teaching the Bard. A three-person touring production of Hamlet. An artist-inresidency program in which teams of actors work with a class of high school students for an intense week or two; then the students perform a scene. PST’s plot charts, in poster form, are up on the walls of English classrooms across the city. “A lot of kids are introduced to Shakespeare through our programs. And we’ve been doing this long enough that some of the first generation are now teachers.” Asked what he thinks about the state of theater in the U.S., Armstrong answers with a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “Our generation is a low ebb in the history of the theater. Every generation is a low ebb in the history of the theater.” In other words, he feels the perennial proclamation of the death of live theater is an exaggeration. “I think it’s very healthy! We envy, of course, companies in Canada and England and other enlightened countries where the government supports the theater.” But he admits that the lack of government funding gives them more freedom to do their productions exactly how they wish, even if raising the money to do so is an “endless, exhausting, terrifying process.” Philadelphia, with 80 professional theater companies, has “an extraordinary pool of actors.” Most of the organizations, says Armstrong, are working “on an even more tenuous basis than us. It’s mindblowing what people will give up to be on stage. But the work is amazing! I think it’s a golden age of theater in Philly.” He’s pleased to be able to share it with playgoers from his alma mater, too. “We have been hosting a ‘St. John’s Night’ at the theater for several years. A dozen or so alumni come early, we have a little party beforehand, then watch the play. It has been great to reconnect with old classmates and meet new friends.” For Armstrong, the struggle to bring Shakespeare to all is vitally important work. He recently read an article about a symposium “justifying teaching the humanities,” and although some of the points made by the disciplines’ defenders were interesting—such as that they In one of his many roles, Jack Armstrong (SF83) analyzes each script produced by the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. “can help you get through tough situations”—Armstrong thinks they were really peripheral. “Asking why you teach the humanities is like asking why you put gas in a car. If you know what a car is, you don’t have to ask the question.” Drama, literature, writing, history: these are “the science of being human,” he says passionately. “Through stories we learn to be human. They’re how we expand our vocabulary of possible human behavior, and the bigger our vocabulary is, the better our chances of making a good decision. Hell is the accumulated result of bad decisions. Paradise is the result of education in the humanities.” To view one of Armstrong’s plot charts, visit www.stjohnscollege.edu/news. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 31 �“all the world’s a stage” “A Difficult Pleasure” Playwright Damon Rhea Falke (sfgi01) listens to his characters by Babak Zarin (A11) “ The course of true love never did run smooth.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream Damon Rhea Falke (sfgi01) began his career as a writer because of a girl who broke his heart when he was a teenager. “I thought I could write all that hurt out of me,” says Falke. He also thought he could “keep her with words. Pretty soon I wanted to keep certain places and then certain people and later still, certain memories and stories I’d heard.” Many works Falke encountered at St. John’s continue to inspire him. Among the playwrights on the Program, he leans toward the classics: “Aeschylus reaches us with a kind of ritualized grandeur. Sophocles can be wonderfully ambiguous. Look at Oedipus at Colonus or Philoctetes. Consider even Antigone. What are we to feel at the end of that play? There is real pleasure in this sort of ambiguity,” which “we can learn from deeply.” And then, of course, there’s Shakespeare. “More than once I have opened a play or a collection of sonnets with a willed feeling of skepticism, as if to find out whether Shakespeare is indeed as great as Shakespeare is supposed to be. And, of course, he is.” Falke points out that in The Tempest, “there is something very human” in Prospero the magician “when he longs for his library or his vanquished home. We’re all vanquished from home. Certainly this can be the stuff of tragedy, but Prospero clings to other parts of himself” that are gifts. “So that’s not tragic,” he says. “That’s a comfort in this play.” Falke finds deep satisfaction in playwriting: “It has its own peculiar difficulties, to be sure, but in the beginning stages, in that first draft or two, it’s “Imagine having a Big Daddy in you or an Antigone, or an Ahab or a Sherlock Holmes. I’ve wept over Anna Karenina. There’s some kind of wonder to hold those characters in you.” the pleasure that carries me and sustains the process of the work. I’m glad to start when I start and glad to listen when I do.” “In a poem,” Falke notes, “you might become conscious of the musical qualities some words carry. A pleasure I find in writing plays, however, is in listening to characters for what one is saying or will say.” Although Falke finds it hard to write 32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 a character that stays with him, those who do stay seldom leave. “Imagine having a Big Daddy in you or an Antigone, or an Ahab or a Sherlock Holmes,” he says. “I’ve wept over Anna Karenina. There’s some kind of wonder to hold those characters in you. When characters achieve lives of their own, you experience a gift, and you go on experiencing it.” When asked for a play focusing on characters’ individual stories, Falke wrote The Sun Is in the West in 2010. The idea of telling stories became an important theme. In a graveyard on the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast of Texas, its characters deal with their family stories and their relationship with the region. “Inspiration came when the characters started to talk, and I started to listen,” he says. Although Falke spoke with the director about the play’s set and general look, he wasn’t heavily involved with the staging. “Directors come with their own creative �“all the world’s a stage” LEADING LADY Maria Jung (a12) pursues acting By Gregory Shook “Say, from whence You owe this strange intelligence?” Macbeth Maria Jung (A12) is trying hard not to freak out. Hoping to launch a career in acting, she just landed the part of Emelia in the Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s summer 2012 production of The Comedy of Errors. Set in 1890 in a visually striking “steampunk” style, the play signals Jung’s professional theatrical debut. Shakespeare’s strong female characters resonated with Jung as she played Tamora in Titus Andronicus, the First Witch in Macbeth, and Olivia in Twelfth Night with the King William Players. “My dream roles would be Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth,” she says. “These women are so nuanced and possess such fierce power— it blows my mind that Shakespeare wrote them.” Jung’s admiration for such vital characters inspired her career path; she’s going for it with gusto. She credits her experience performing Shakespeare with the college’s King William Players. “I learned so much from working with my fellow Johnnies,” says Jung, having “great conversations about the dialogue and monologues, as well as the JEN BEHRENS processes,” he says. “If a director is willing to be part of a production, then my hope is he’s already eager about the work and what it can become. If the writing is strong and the director has a vision and can trust his own creative impulses, you might see something worth saving.” Falke was unable to be there when The Sun Is in the West opened in a town far from his home in Port Arthur, Texas. “It was a treat to see a production in Santa Fe,” he says. “I was nervous. I want a work to be enjoyed or appreciated. I hope people take something good away from seeing a show.” Writing can be a difficult craft. “You have to work hard to get it right, and sometimes you might not know when you do. The hard work and the not knowing are in part what makes the process rewarding,” says Falke. “They lead to what you might call a difficult pleasure.” Falke has long moved on from the girl who broke his heart. Having become a prolific writer, Falke has published poems and short stories in addition to his plays. Falke’s publications included a 10,000word piece in The Langdon Review, a poem in The Aurorean, and others. He also finished writing a couple plays that he hopes to see in production soon. In March 2012, a book containing a single poem, Notes on Paper, was published. But he isn’t about to rest on his laurels. “I’m still pleased when a piece is published or given a stage,” he says. “It means there’s someone who wants to listen to you and who believes others should listen also. You need to accept such an opportunity with humility; there is plenty of fine work that only a few souls will ever read.” various characters.” Club archon Tessa Nelson (A12) worked hard to make the King William Players “reflect well on the college. She’s taken theater at St. John’s to an amazing place.” During “Dead Week” on the Annapolis campus—the calm period each spring when tutorials are cancelled for sophomore and junior Don Rags—Jung sequestered herself in Greenfield Library’s basement, engrossed in the Bard. With scribbled notes strewn on open plays, she spent many hours memorizing monologues from Titus Andronicus and Twelfth Night to prepare for her callback with the Annapolis Shakespeare Company. Sounding like a seasoned actor, Jung explains that a callback is about “getting a sense of the chemistry between the actors” and “showing that you can really get into the character and have fun onstage.” Jung’s only previous acting credit was playing the role of Mrs. Gibbs in her high school’s production of Our Town. “I got into acting on a whim,” says Jung. “My friends [at Hunter College High School in New York City] were involved in the arts, so I thought I’d give acting a try.” She has also been inspired by a strong female lead, her mother, now retired, who is taking acting classes –“and getting lots of work!” Jung is curious to explore acting possibilities beyond the stage. Last year, she had a Hodson internship assisting with film shoots and editing at the Doc Tank, a Brooklyn-based international creative center for documentary directors. “With film, there are so many subtle, dramatic details that can’t be conveyed in plays—like zooming in on the expression on a person’s face,” she says. “I really like those possibilities.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 33 �St. John’s College was a haven from the segregation in Annapolis before Brown v. Board of Education. 34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �Rule of Reason In a Small College Seeking Enlightenment SIGNS, WIRES AND CONCRETE. PHOTOGRAPH BY A. AUBREY BODINE, COPYRIGHT © JENNIFER B. BODINE, COURTESY WWW.AAUBREYBODINE.COM by Susan Borden (A87) Remembering Martin A. Dyer (193o–2011) Martin Appell Dyer (Class of 1952), was a dignified, thoughtful, and gracious pioneer, the first African American student to attend St. John’s College. He was admitted in 1948 after the college community challenged the legitimacy of segregated education. Throughout his distinguished career as an attorney in public and community service, Mr. Dyer remained devoted to St. John’s. He recalled how he “was welcomed on campus, a bastion, and that welcome made all the difference in the world. . . St. John’s was just a beacon of freedom compared to anything in Annapolis.” It was to St. John’s that Mr. Dyer attributed his “lifelong love of books and language” and his “passion for music.” During his time at St. John’s, Mr. Dyer arranged for W.E.B. Du Bois to give a lecture—he brought to campus the only author read in the St. John’s Program to also visit and speak at the college. Mr. Dyer was born and raised in East Baltimore, the son of Martin A. Dyer, a steelworker, and Margaret Louise Dyer, a secretary to Lillie Mae Jackson, president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP. What can the voices of St. John’s veterans returning after World War II tell us about freedom, injustice, and segregation in a small college town? In the crowded Conversation Room at the 2011 Annapolis Homecoming, more than 60 alumni, tutors, and other members of the college community gathered for a first reading of “So Reason Can Rule: The Necessity of Racial Integration at St. John’s College.” The script, drawn from numerous oral histories and written by Charlotta Beavers (AGI11), tells the story of the conditions, circumstances, and people that led to the enrollment of Martin Dyer (Class of 1952), the first African Martin Dyer (Class of 1952) American student to attend St. John’s College. Dyer enrolled in the fall of 1948, six years before Brown v. Board of Education established the unconstitutionality of separate public schools for black and white students. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 35 �Remembering Martin A. Dyer “I learned about discrimination and segregation when I was sent to Fort Bragg. It had an impact for everybody. Whether you were a southerner or urban or rural—just being in the military and wondering why [the soldiers] were separated . . . made you think.” (continued) He graduated at the top of his class in 1948 at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School but family circumstances were such that he expected to attend a state teachers college. At that time, students and faculty from St. John’s actively sought African Americans to attend the college and Mr. Dyer was the first to enroll. Inspired by the college’s activist stance, he attended the college after “a core of students actively scouted Baltimore’s two black high schools to recruit students for a college virtually unknown in the black community. . . . To accept [blacks] is one thing,” he told a reporter from the Baltimore Sun, “but to deliberately and consciously seek someone is another.” Graduating from St. John’s in 1952, he enlisted in the Army and served in Europe until 1954. Mr. Dyer earned his law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1959. In 1962, Mr. Dyer married the former Jane Weeden and began his family. In the 1960s, Mr. Dyer worked as a congressional intern on Capitol Hill and principal legislative aide and speechwriter for Alaska Sen. Edward L. “Bob” Bartlett, architect of Alaskan statehood. Mr. Dyer then worked in public service in the Health Care Finance Administration until retiring in 1990. A champion for fair housing, after retiring from federal service he served as associate director of Baltimore Neighborhoods, Inc. In 1997 he was honored at Homecoming with the Alumni Association Award of Merit. He gave a moving talk to those —Jules Pagano (Class of 1948) When Beavers started working on “So Reason Can Rule,” its working title was “The Magnificent Seven,” a name affectionately bestowed on the first seven African American students to enroll at St. John’s by Everett Wilson (Class of 1956), the second African American student. Beavers came to see that her project was about far more than these seven alumni. It was about a world seeking enlightenment after the darkness of World War II. It was also about deeply entrenched prejudice in a small southern city, and the necessity of racial justice in an institution centered on liberty, open-mindedness, and the rule of reason. “So Reason Can Rule” originated as an oral history project; Beavers conducted 13 oral histories as a collective memory of a pivotal time at the college. As Beavers reviewed the recordings and transcripts of these oral histories, she noticed a theme that seemed essential to the college’s integration: the significant role played by veterans returning to the college from World War II. In his essay, “Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures: World War II in Asia,” author John W. Dower describes the U.S. soldiers’ need to remain blind to the “hypocrisy of fighting with a segregated army and navy under the banner of freedom, democracy, and justice.” To their credit, Beavers says, many St. John’s students returned from World War II with their eyes opened. “I learned about discrimination and segregation when I was sent to Fort Bragg,” says Jules Pagano (Class of 1948). “It had an impact for everybody. Whether you were a southerner or urban or rural—just being in the military and wondering why [the soldiers] were separated... made you think.” George Van Sant (Class of 1948), another veteran, returned to the college in 1947 as a junior, joining a student body of mostly veterans, including the dean, who had been “commander of a company of all black soldiers that had fought 36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 in Germany with distinction,” Van Sant recalls. “By the junior year, you begin to read some of the 18th-century political stuff. Most Johnnies develop, I hope, a very enlightened view of our Founding Fathers and their Constitution and what it all means.” Van Sant says that his senior year saw a lot of ferment and turmoil. “The race issue just came to a head and there was an open discussion of it and open encouragement for [integration on the campus].” A voluntary meeting in the Great Hall about the issue during the ’47 to ’48 academic year was well attended, he says, by a lot of students and veterans. Pagano recalls the sense of political possibility that informed the meeting: “Just the fact that we were reading the Great Books made us very concerned with the movements that were taking place: Will there be something like the Roman peace? Will there be an American peace? Will we run the world? Will we be the new empire? What will the United Nations be and how will it affect us? Will it change America and will we have a voice in the world?” Charged with the possibility of change and the hope for a better world, the undergraduate students gathered on March 16, 1948, to vote on a resolution: “The Student Polity hereby resolves that it would welcome the admission of students of any race or color to St. John’s College,” it read. “This resolution is not intended as a petition to or demand on the administration, but rather is the result of a student discussion and deliberation about whether an admissions policy which would enter Negro students would be acceptable to the student body.” Gene Thornton (Class of 1945), who served in the Navy with African American men, reflected on freedom and segregation: “You get to thinking about things, and you realize you want to do something about them.” He drew up the petition that circulated among the students before �“The race issue just came to a head and there was an open discussion of it and open encouragement for [integration on the campus]. A voluntary meeting in the Great Hall about the issue was ‘well attended.’” —George Van Sant (Class of 1948) Remembering Martin A. Dyer (continued) The Board was facing a number of pressures that seemed to endanger the college’s very existence, most significantly a recent attempt by the U.S. Naval Academy to take over the college. Given the high level of segregation in the city of Annapolis, they also feared that publicity surrounding a new policy of integration would turn the town against St. John’s. Following their discussion, the Board decided unanimously that no action be taken. Despite the Board’s reluctance to integrate the college, the students pressed on. With the support of New Program founder Scott Buchanan, Dean Harvey Poe, and tutor Winfree Smith, they visited guidance offices in black high schools in Baltimore to recruit an African American male to attend St. John’s. In his interview, Van Sant made it clear that special credit should be given to Peter Davis (Class of 1948), who spurred this recruitment movement. In 2004, St. John’s honored Mr. Dyer and six other pioneering African American students who followed him at St. John’s in the 1950s. He served as a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors and chaired an advisory committee in Annapolis to recruit, enroll, and retain students of color. He helped frame the college’s continuing conversation about diversity. He drew attention to the college’s ongoing need to ensure that its Program is available to all. He wanted St. John’s to keep the commitment it had made when he was recruited and enrolled. “Doctor Weaver founded a Negro national scholarship fund. . . . Their one sentence of St. John’s: ‘St. John’s College is an island of liberality in a sea of segregation.’ And the next sentence went on to explain that fortunately everything you needed was on campus, so you did not need to depend on offcampus for anything else, except if you went to church, [a dentist, or for a haircut].” Jerry Hynson (Class of 1959) came from a segregated community where his only connections to white people were as employers. Nevertheless, he found life at the nearly all-white St. John’s agreeable: “St. John’s was easy socially. . . I liked to talk and enjoyed the company of others.” SHERRI HOSFELD JOSEPH the meeting, which asked what students thought of St. John’s enrolling “colored” or “Negro” students. Robert Davis (Class of 1945) was the meeting’s moderator. He argued against the idea that the high tuition ($1,100 in 1948) and the study of the Classics were deterrents for African American students. Unlike others, who thought that African Americans would forego St. John’s for job preparation training, Davis believed that a St. John’s education was practical and that African American students would come if they were welcomed. Ralph Finkel (now known as Raphael BenYosef, Class of 1948), Michael Keane (Class of 1945), and Phillip Camponeschi (Class of 1946) assisted in organizing the meeting. Finkel told a reporter, “You can’t go to a place like St. John’s and learn all about the great ideas of the world without practicing them.” Keane felt strongly that the challenge to dismantle segregated education must originate with the students. Camponeschi, who led seminars on Greek and Shakespearean tragedies in the African American communities of Annapolis, was recorded as saying, “Western civilization has lagged intellectually while developing its material wealth.” The students concluded that if all men are free, then a system that denies the right of freedom to certain men is wrong. The resolution passed by an overwhelming vote: 162 in favor, 33 against, and two indifferent. Less than a month later, at a faculty meeting on April 10, a motion was made by tutor Winfree Smith that “the faculty go on record as favoring the admission of Negro students as a matter of college policy.” The motion passed unanimously. The Board of Visitors and Governors met on April 17. Richard F. Cleveland, the son of former President Grover Cleveland, presided as Chairman. President John Kieffer told the Board about the decisions made by the students and faculty. assembled. His great care and concern for each individual made all who knew him feel welcome. In his honor St. John’s initiated the Martin Dyer Book Fund in 1997, which helps students meet the expenses of Program books. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 37 �Remembering Martin A. Dyer (continued) Mr. Dyer included everyone in the discussion; he could lead a group around a difficult issue and never lose sight of the goal. He led with grace and a finely tuned ability to listen. A lover of art, classical music and opera and a gourmet chef, Mr. Dyer was a member of the Peabody Choir, a founding member of the board of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art Foundation at Morgan State University, and past president of the board of Young American Audiences of Maryland. A tribute by a friend and colleague might well serve to sum up his life: “He had no trepidation about doing what was right….he made the world not a little better but a lot better. He was a perfect gentleman. I have nothing but fond words and memories of Martin. He was a beautiful person.” —Mark Lindley (A67) “I had spoken to one or another tutor about my concern . . . . I was put in touch with somebody from Baltimore . . . . knowing that there were the Maryland scholarships that meant someone recruited in Baltimore could come to St. John’s without having tuition. I tried to urge that person, whoever they were, to come to St. John’s.” —Peter Davies (Class of 1948) The students were put in touch with Martin Dyer, a senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland, and an honors student with the second-highest grade-point average in his class. At the meeting of St. John’s Board on July 17, President Kieffer reported that “an application had been received from Martin Dyer, a Negro, a graduate of Dunbar High School of Baltimore City.” In his opinion, Kieffer said, Martin Dyer’s application should be accepted if he met all other qualifications; he should not be rejected because he was a Negro. Kieffer noted that Johns Hopkins University admitted Negroes in its undergraduate department, that the Archbishop had instructed all Catholic colleges in Maryland to admit Negroes, and that there was a Negro at the Naval Academy. To refuse to admit a Negro to St. John’s would be inconsistent with the DAN COOK “There was so little to do in Annapolis because of the segregation. I certainly didn’t go socializing off campus with my classmates unless we were all going to the Little Campus. I was Catholic. But I was not welcome at the Catholic church in Annapolis, St. Mary’s. I certainly didn’t blame it on St. John’s. St. John’s opens your eyes…gives you an opportunity to think about what is the best way to respond to this kind of travesty.” Charlotte King (Class of 1959) was one of the first African American women to attend St. John’s. She remembers an admissions officer showing her and her family a film of the college that was too good to resist: “I lived in urban New York and here was this beautiful movie with beautiful music in the background, students sitting around at classes that made it look like a wonderful way to learn.” 38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 liberal education offered by the college and would be bad for student and faculty morale. Yet the Board’s Executive Committee voted nine to three against admitting Dyer, who was sent a letter of rejection. What happened next, says Beavers, is unclear. She speculates that someone on the Board rallied support for the Executive Committee of the Board to reconsider. A letter dated August 26 shows that the majority of the Board supported such a move. When the Executive Committee met on September 17, each member was asked to express his views. Their vote was six to three—this time in favor of admitting Dyer, who attended his first class at St. John’s College on September 27, 1948. The story doesn’t end with Martin Dyer’s successful enrollment, says Beavers. Once her script is turned into an audio-visual presentation—to be narrated by tutor Jon Tuck—she will return to her research. Her next script will explore what life was like for the first seven African American students during their time at St. John’s and in their lives after graduation. The first presentation, using the script of “So Reason Can Rule,” the oral history tapes, and photographs from the college archives, is planned for screening during Homecoming 2012. Beavers is working on a “So Reason Can Rule” web page: www.stjohnscollege.edu/alumni/AN/so-reasoncan-rule.shtml. Send relevant reminiscences, photographs, and documents to Beavers, in care of Susan Borden, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. �bibliofile Andrew Krivak (A86): A Coming of Age MARZEUA POGORZALY Following up on his 2007 “I go back to Aristotle [as a teacher] for constructing a story’s beginning, middle, and end.” memoir, A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, Andrew Krivak (A86) takes on a new subject in his latest book, The Sojourn. This time, the subject is his grandfather—or rather, an amalgam of traits both real and imagined, distilled to create a version of his grandfather, the protagonist in Krivak’s first work of fiction. Having only heard tales about his grandfather, Krivak envisioned the book as a way to explore his personal family history. But an unexpected discovery happened midway through writing his novel. Krivak found that he became less concerned with documenting history and more focused on becoming a writer in a bigger sense. “A Long Retreat is a story about my personal coming of age,” says Krivak. “The Sojourn is my coming of age as a writer.” As he wrote, blending history and landscapes, Krivak—who hadn’t previously thought to cross genres—became excited about the craft of storytelling without being beholden to specific times, characters, and places. “I’m always thinking about plot. A good story moves. How will a character or place move a story?” Whether writing memoir or fiction, the writing process is essentially the same for Krivak, who says, “No matter what the subject, it’s about writing a story.” The story of his latest work centers on the protagonist Jozef Vinich, who in the wake of a family tragedy was uprooted from a 19thcentury Colorado mining town to return with his father to rural Austria-Hungary, where he lives an impoverished shepherd’s life. At the outbreak of World War I, Jozef joins his cousin and brother-in-arms as a sharpshooter on the southern front, where he must survive a perilous journey across the frozen Italian Alps and enemy capture. Krivak draws from the classics for inspiration. As a freshman at St. John’s, reading the Odyssey had a profound impact—he was taken with the formal and aural sensibilities of the language, which seemed to come alive. He also looks to the Greeks for getting to the root of good storytelling. “I go back to Aristotle [as a teacher] for constructing a story’s beginning, middle, and end.” Krivak’s storytelling has earned him serious recognition. The Sojourn was a 2011 National Book Award Finalist, as well as a Boston Globe bestseller and the Washington Post’s Notable Book of the Year. Not bad for a novel that was turned away by nearly every large publishing company. Thrilled by the favorable response his book has received, Krivak says that being nominated for a National Book Award is “psychologically, an experience that can’t be beat.” Most recently, in April 2012 the Chautauqua Institution, a not-for-profit educational and cultural center in southwestern New York state, selected The Sojourn as the first-ever winner of The Chautauqua Prize, a new national prize that celebrates a book of fiction or literary/narrative nonfiction that yields a richly rewarding reading experience and honors the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts. The Chautauqua Prize reviewers, who chose The Sojourn from a finalist shortlist that includes five other titles, describe the book as “a novel of uncommon lyricism and moral ambiguity.” Given the plentiful accolades, it is clear that Krivak has come of age as a writer. Still, he insists that his motivation is not influenced by reviews and awards. “Reviews teach me nothing. If it doesn’t get me back to the [writing] desk, I don’t care about it.” Future plans include a book that he describes as “sort of a follow-up to The Sojourn. It’s much bigger and taking more time to write.” As a husband and father of three based in Somerville, Massachusetts, finding time is a challenge. “I used to think, ‘What days can I write?’ Now I think, ‘What hours can I write?’ ” —Gregory Shook The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 39 �bibliofile Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd Edition Joshua Parens (A83) and Joseph C. Macfarland (A87) Cornell University Press, 2011 In light of recent events that pose a The Sourcebook’s readings provide the means to rediscover and contemplate the confrontation between reason and revelation, free from many modern presuppositions. secular West against a radicalized Islamic world, while the West alternates between safeguarding secularism and questioning it, medieval political philosophers provide a remote viewpoint from which to reconsider the relationships between science, religion, and politics. They consider how philosophy might inform the practice of politics and religion independently of the modern, western model—the liberal democratic separation of religion from politics that lowers the ends of politics for the sake of securing the conditions of material well-being. This second edition of Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, brings together in one volume works from the three monotheistic traditions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Despite their different traditions, these authors shared a greater uniformity of intention than may perhaps be found at any other time, for each studied classical political philosophy in the works of Plato and Aristotle and each sought to articulate the implications of classical teachings for contemporary life in his religious community. The Sourcebook’s readings provide the means to rediscover and contemplate the confrontation between reason and revelation, free from many modern presuppositions. Despite the authors’ similarity of intention, this confrontation between reason and revelation takes different forms, as Judaism and Islam are religions of law and Christianity is a religion of faith. Thus Alfarabi (ca. AD 870-950), along with several Muslim and Jewish authors after him, took their bearings from Plato’s Republic and Laws and identified the lawgiving prophet with the Platonic philosopher-king. By this understanding, the authoritative religious science, jurisprudence, is guided by political philosophy, which comprehends the characteristics of divine law in principle and the nature of the prophetic legislator. In Christianity, without a lawgiver as the central figure, the authoritative religious science was not jurisprudence, but theology. Many Christian authors, following Aristotle’s Politics, understood political philosophy as a branch of practical philosophy, safely segregated from the speculative sciences and implicitly subordinate to theology. In this context, any attitude that conversely subordinated theology 40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 to philosophy was reviled as “Averroism”; in a few Christian authors, however, one detects a similarity of purpose with Averroes and his predecessor, Alfarabi. Despite the relative subordination of political philosophy within Christianity and the relative independence of political philosophy from jurisprudence and theology in Islam and Judaism, it is puzzling that political philosophy in the medieval Islamic world ended with the death of Averroes in AD 1198, whereas one may trace in several doctrines a continuity in Christian political thought from medieval to early modern thinkers. The first edition of the Sourcebook, edited by Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi in collaboration with Ernest Fortin, appeared in 1963. The original editors passed the project on to their former graduate students, Joshua Parens (A83), a professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, and Joseph Macfarland (A87), a tutor in Annapolis, whose revised edition includes new readings. More vividly highlighting the debate between the philosophers and those defending the three religious traditions from philosophy, these readings include selections from Judah Halevi’s The Kuzari, Alghazali’s The Deliverer from Error, and Boethius of Dacia’s On the Supreme Good. Additions also highlight particular themes: for example, selections by Maimonides (Eight Chapters) and Thomas (Commentary on the Ethics) enable the reader to consider with greater precision different opinions regarding the connection between law and nature. This revision takes advantage of many new translations (e.g., Alfarabi’s The Book of Religion, William of Ockham’s Dialogue), and improves old translations on the basis of new critical editions (e.g., Thomas’s Commentaries, Dante’s Monarchia). The Sourcebook has been used frequently in undergraduate and graduate classrooms; now Parens and Macfarland make it more inviting to novice readers in political theory. Each section includes a new bibliography with additional primary and secondary sources, and new introductions highlight salient themes and questions articulated by the thinkers of that religious tradition. —Joseph C. Macfarland (A87) �bibliofile Photography and Archaeology By Fred Bohrer (A78) Reaktion Books (Exposers), 2011 Fred Bohrer’s (A78) Photography and Archaeology, the first book-length study of its topic, is the result of nearly a decade of research on some of history’s most famous and lesser-known archaeological excavations. Accompanied by a stunning array of images, many of which are published for the first time, Bohrer examines photographic representation of excavation sites from the Mediterranean, Edmond Halley’s Reconstruction of the Lost Book of Apollinius’s Conics By Michael N. Fried (A82) Springer (Sources on the History of Science) 2011 Apollonius’s Conics was one of the greatest works of advanced mathematics in antiquity. The work comprised eight books, of which four have come down to us in their original Greek and three in Arabic. By the time the Arabic translations appeared, the eight books had already been lost. In 1710 Edmond Halley, Intimate Microscopy By Jorge H. Aigla Farolito Press, 2010 In his review of Intimate Microscopy, a book of poems in English and Spanish by Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla, Charles Fasanaro, tutor emeritus, Santa Fe, writes, “I had the telling experience of saying, ‘Yes. That’s right. That’s it.’ It was an experience such as one has reading Montaigne, something akin to friendship on a very deep level. Aigla’s ensouled words take me to places I had forgotten about, or—ignoring the truth of our shared humanity—to places I thought only my memories inhabited.” In Aigla’s Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Americas; he explores how the development of photography has affected the way that people engage with the past. Spanning the histories of both fields from the early nineteenth century to the present, Photography and Archaeology surveys the thought of archaeologists, historians, photographers, artists, critics, and theorists, in describing how its images are situated between two opposite, and possibly contradictory, inclinations. Bohrer will give a presentation and book signing at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., on September 12. then Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, published an edition of the Greek text of the Conics of Books I-IV, and a reconstruction together with copious notes on the text. It also contains an introduction discussing aspects of Apollonius’s Conics and how Halley understood the nature of his venture into ancient mathematics. In particular, it asks how Halley understood his project of reconstructing a historic mathematical text: in what sense, in other words, was Halley a historian of mathematics? The book also includes appendices giving a brief account of Apollonius’s approach to conic sections and his mathematical techniques. poetry, Fasanaro discovers that “Aigla grapples with life and especially death, understanding that there are many deaths—which, handled intelligently, are gateways to a richer life and a brighter light. In reaching the very ground of human experience, Aigla shows us who we are and what being human ultimately means.” Aigla’s medical studies at the University of California lend insight to his observations as a poet; Fasanaro culls relevant poems, such as “The Need for Trees,” “Dog Surgery,” and “An Oasis,” to share with the readers of his review. To read Charles Fasanaro’s elegant review of Intimate Microscopy, visit: www.stjohnscollege. edu/news/main.html. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 41 �DOUG PLUMMER “The books have a kind of restraint. We have to give to them before they give to us. We might have to work hard to get to their riches, but they are capable of enormous generosity.”— Pamela Kraus, Annapolis Dean 42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 �alumni notes 1952 1949 Allan P. Hoffman (A) writes, “Yes, I still ski—even at age 83. I avoid the bumps. I teach my youngest grandchildren, the twins, how to ski. I am still active on the Board of Visitors and Governors—honorary member—and on the Alumni Board—emeritus. I look forward to seeing many old friends and classmates at Homecoming this fall, the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the New Program by Scott & Winkie. We knew them both. We know what it was like when they were there. I think we owe it to them to help the college recollect.” 1958 On the heels of the publication of her collection of essays on contemporary Chinese art, Mary Bittner Goldstein (A) was invited by the People’s Republic of China to be a guest speaker at the 30th Anniversary of the founding of the National Institute of Chinese Painting held in Beijing, China, at the end of October 2011. 1959 Marshall Lasky (A) and Mary left at the end of September for a three-week trip to Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand, and Cambodia. Before leaving, he wrote, “We couldn’t resist the opportunity to see Bhutan before it gets spoiled by tourism, and Mary has long wanted to see the entire Angkor temple complex, which includes a fast area in addition to Angkor Wat. While most people go to Nepal to go up, up, up into the Himalayas and maybe trek into Everest Base Camp—have any of you done that?—instead, (other than a few days in Kathmandu) we will be heading down nearly to sea level near the India border to a remote location called Tiger Tops, in the subtropical jungle of Royal Chitwan National Park, an area of grasslands and forests and wetlands. Staying in a tented safari camp and excursioning by elephant back, river boat, Land Rover, and jungle walks, we’ll be hoping to spot hundreds of bird species, sloth bear, and freshwater dolphin, as well as the Greater OneHorned Rhinoceros, leopards, and Bengal tigers (oh, my).” Barbara Tower (A) has eight charming grandchildren, the eldest 19 and at St. Mary’s College. Barbara has been doing a bit of traveling, is enrolled in Executive Seminars at the college, is studying the New Testament, and went to Jerusalem in February. She is still enjoying her interesting Annapolis real estate career, “teaming” with her daughter Alex and her husband Fred. Study Abroad Program Celebrated Walter Schatzberg’s study abroad program was celebrated at the Embassy of Luxembourg. The event commemorated the ClarkLuxembourg study abroad program that was started by Walter Schatzberg (Class of 1952) nearly 25 years ago. Clark University President David Angel spoke, recognizing Walter and Professors SunHee and Uwe Gertz, who took ownership of the program as Walter approached retirement. His Excellency, the Honorable JeanPaul Senninger, Ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to the United States, and his wife, Elizabeth, were hosts at the historic embassy near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. The embassy provided drinks and hors d’oeuvres for Clark graduates from 2011 and many decades before. The Clark University motto, “Fiat Lux,” was amended for the event to “Fiat Luxembourg.” Uwe Gertz, Sarah Zapolsky, and Walter Schatzberg (Class of 1952) at the Embassy of Luxembourg. 2012) in the Providence Journal, “France Must Heed the Cry of SOS Paris!” Next stop: Urging UNESCO to delist Paris as a World Heritage site if this vandalism goes forward. 1960 1962 Mary Campbell Gallagher’s (A) new study guide for the bar exam has garnered exceptional professional reviews and high praise on Amazon. Called Perform Your Best on the Bar Exam Performance Test (MPT): Train to Finish the MPT in 90 Minutes “Like a Sport™,” it will be recognized by Johnnies as lessons in grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Meanwhile, her campaign against plans to blight the horizon of Paris with skyscrapers is gaining traction. The organization to which she belongs, SOS Paris, and the international NGO called the Council for European Urbanism have worked together. The CEU has produced a white paper and now they are getting publicity, starting with David Brussat’s column (March 29, After serving as the CEO at Hampton National Historic Site in Towson, Maryland; Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio; and Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan; John Miller (A) retired and expects to move to Maryland when he sells his house in Grosse Pointe. He has been President of the Library of American Landscape History and wrote the “Afterword” to The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman by Judith B. Tankard. Currently he is exploring the idea that women have played a leadership role in the U.S. preservation movement since Ann Pamela Cunningham saved Mt. Vernon in the nineteenth century. St. Clair Wright did the same for Annapolis in his time at St. John’s. 1963 Marcia E. Herman-Giddens (A) writes “I am still trying to retire and getting close. For a change from scientific writing, I tried my hand at describing my love affair with my herbs and an easy way to make teas with common garden plants, both domestic and wild (obviously, must be edible!). The result is a small publishing company, Seed Pod Press, and my book, Sipping My Garden (www.seedpodpress.com and www. facebook.com/SippingMyGarden). It has been work, fun, and a lot of learning. Now I am looking forward to starting on the second book!” 1964 Cecily Sharp-Whitehill (A) writes, “contrary to most people’s images of Florida, life here is not equated with retirement! My companion [Dr.] Jürgen Ladendorf and I teach (by the Harvard case-based interactive discussion method) and consult with a number of clients in Australia, Europe, and Asia Pacific. It is a joy The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 43 �alumni notes 1972 From Words to Wood not only to travel to work with clients, but to learn in the process!” 1966 After a 10-year collaboration, Joseph Anderson and Judy Millspaugh Anderson, M.D. (A), announce the birth of . . . a book! Kissing the Underbelly, a novel published by Xlibris Press, is available via www. kissingtheunderbelly.com. The two do not pretend that it is great literature or a scholarly work, but they had great fun writing it and hope that others will enjoy reading it. 1968 Rick Wicks (SF) had radiation and chemo treatments for HPV-induced tongue-base cancer in the fall of 2010 and is now cancer-free. He and the family took a wonderful “resurrection” trip to Israel for a week around New Year 2012. In mid-April, he headed to an “alumni” retreat at Tassajara, a Zen Buddhist monastery in California, where he lived for a year in the mid-’70s. On May 30, 2012, Rick is scheduled to defend his PhD thesis concerning the place of conventional economics in a world with communities and social goods (i.e., in the real world!). His daughter Linnéa (21) is working hard and doing well in her second year of medical school, and he and his son Hendrik (17) are planning to spend the summer in Alaska again, like last year. He and Ellinor did lots of day-hikes on a wilderness trail near Anchorage last spring and fall—soon it will be warm enough to start them again. During the winter, they’ve been watching lots of movies on TV. below: Les Margulis (A70) pictured standing in front of the largest Buddhist Temple in the southern hemisphere. Juan Hovey (SF) spent 15 years in daily journalism, including stints as city editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican and assistant city editor of the Oakland Tribune. After that, he spent 10 years in the insurance industry, gaining an understanding of how insurers identify, manage, and price risks of all kinds. By happy coincidence, Hovey then found work as an editor for a Marin County publisher of high-value newsletters focusing on the insurance industry. He became that rare bird: the journalist who actually understands his subject matter—which put him in position some years later to write a weekly column on finance and insurance for the business page of the Los Angeles Times. Those were amazing years: he had a voice in a big-time paper, and he felt he was doing some good in the world. More recently, Hovey developed another specialty as a ghostwriter for a number of partner-level attorneys, accountants, and other professionals in Los Angeles. He and his wife of 33 years, Elise Cassel, have two daughters plus Maya, his first child. They are “more or less retired” and live in Santa Maria, California. Hovey has taken up woodworking in earnest, building furniture including tables and chairs, beds, cabinets, and other items. The work is an entirely new undertaking for him; he spent his life figuring out how to put language to good, practical use, and now is happiest when knee-deep in sawdust striving to make something beautiful with his hands. 1970 Les Margulis (A) writes, “I am still working, although I must say I am the oldest man in advertising anywhere in Australia. I am what’s called a ‘pitch consultant.’ If clients want to change advertising agencies, they hire the company that I work for (www.trinityp3.com) and we organize the whole thing. In my spare time, my wife and I explore the interesting, lesser-known areas in Australia and nearby countries.” Connie Shaw (A) is living in Boulder, Colorado, near her 26-year-old son, Forrest, and is publishing books at the company she started 11 years ago, Sentient Publications (www.sentientpublications.com). She publishes mostly nonfiction, with an emphasis on transformative spirituality, alternative education, and holistic health. 44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Anthony Vitto (A) has sold his solo private neurology practice in Morgan Hill, California, and has recently relocated to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, where he is now doing teleneurology out of his house. He is on call at more than 20 hospitals across the United States, and carries out video-tovideo HD teleconsultations to emergency rooms where he is asked to “see” neurology patients on an emergent basis. He writes, “This is very exciting and rewarding and allows patients to be examined and treated by a neurologist when and where none would normally be available. It is especially cool to be on the cutting edge of consultative medical technology while living in a house built in 1782, one year before the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolutionary War.” �alumni notes Barbara Rogan (SF) would like to let the St. John’s community know that her latest novel, the mystery Can You Hear Me Now?, has been acquired by Viking Penguin for publication in the spring of 2013. “In addition,” she says, “five of my earlier novels will be released by Simon & Schuster in new editions, including ebook editions, over the coming year. Although they are not great books, they are, I think, rather good books, and I’m very happy that they’re getting a new life. And to think I owe it all to the St. John’s tutor who, after reading one of my essays, suggested I consider fiction instead.” 1973 “What happens to blues fans when they die? They go to the Reincarnation Blues Club, a way station where they can listen to great blues and have interesting conversations on their way to their next life,” writes Richard Cohen (SF73), who published his second novel, The Reincarnation Blues Club, in 2011. You can reach him at cohen03@ bellsouth.net. Jane Spear (A) writes, “In January I had a nice but sad ride up to Michigan from my Ohio home to attend the memorial of my ‘cosmic twin,’ dear friend, and classmate, Jon Ferrier, who died of a heart attack in his sleep on January 6, 2012. He leaves behind his fabulous wife, Kayne, and their daughter, Valerie, an attorney with the transit authority in New York City. His death came just a week after the news that we had lost Jeff Sinks on Christmas Eve—and so soon, too, after the sad loss of Philo Dibble. I took the opportunity of being in Michigan to visit Bill (now ‘Harry’) PAUL KNIESL 1972 1977 Back on His Bike Paul Kniesl (A) writes, “Last year about this time, I sent you an e-mail saying I was riding my motorcycle to Alaska. I had to drive my car instead because my back went out. This year, barring an act of God, I’m riding the motorcycle.” Shown above: Rocky Mountain Forest Reserve, west of Calgary, Alberta. E-mail him, if you wish, at 233@excite.com. Kelley (A75), who lives in Mt. Pleasant. So wonderful to continue my long acquaintance with him, each of us popping up in all sorts of different places throughout the years, but managing to find each other. Ferrier’s death was a sad reminder that we never have as much time as we think we do—and that we must ‘make hay’ while the sun shines. Other than an abysmally mild winter here in northeastern Ohio, and missing my dear friends, life is good. I continue to write a daily history column for my local newspaper and other freelancing, and fill in at my neighborhood middle-school cafeteria to keep things real. My fondest greetings to all classmates and Johnnie friends out there with whom I don’t already correspond through the J List, Facebook, emails, and frequent phone calls.” 1975 1974 Paula Cohen (now Behnken, SFGI) sends greetings from Western Massachusetts, where she still writes for the local newspaper and several other publications. Contact her at phcohen@nasw.org. John H. Rees, MD (A) gave the Dean’s Lecture at St. John’s College in Santa Fe on September 9, 2011. Rees comments: “This lecture, ‘Normal and Abnormal Neuronal Migration; or, Why Your Brain Is Wrinkled,’ represents a convergence of ideas and thoughts that I began to consider as a Johnnie and continued to study and ponder after becoming a physician and a neuroradiologist.” From Vancouver, Washington, Dr. Dale Mortimer (A), chairman of the Clark County Medical Society Committee for Profit and Joy in Private Practice, reports that last year was his most profitable in the past 22 years. His son, Grant, is planning to apply to St. John’s in Annapolis for 2013 or 2014. Anne Ray (SF) is teaching in Islamabad, Pakistan, which, she says, is an interesting place these days. She will be in Santa Fe for part of the summer. “Newsies the Musical,” based on the film written by Bob Tzudiker (A) and Noni White, opened at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway on March 29, 2012. The show was The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 45 �alumni notes The Search for the Perfect Board By Chelsea Batten (A07) Geremy Coy (a06) was a perpetual sleeper hit during his time at St. John’s, always pulling a new skill out of his pocket. He swept the 2006 production of As You Like It with his emo portrayal of Jaques. He took the class prize with an essay on Middlemarch that, according to rumor, he crumpled up and rewrote two days before it was due. He could also dance, when he wanted, and played guitar with the epochal band Tandoori Jones. So I was fairly underwhelmed to learn that he now builds furniture—even traveling across state lines in search of the perfect board. My blasé stance changed when I saw his work. His pieces, each as balanced and light-bodied as a ballerina, hold a strange gravity. One can feel the air circulate around them, see the shapes, as if they were backlit by morning fog. It’s as if he’s coaching the wood into expressing itself. Which, it seems, he is. “I’m interested with going inside of a thing, creating something that reflects an inner life.” Coy’s values have this intuitive ring that contrasts with the Aristotelian approach I remember from school. In fact, it was this contrast that attracted him to woodworking. “Coming out of St. John’s, your head is sort of spinning [from] 46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 receiving so much. I needed to decompress—like an astronaut coming back to earth,” he says. On Ms. Locke’s recommendation, he attended a two-year course at Provence’s Marchutz School of Art. “In the same way that St. John’s opened me up to philosophical ideas, this program opened my eyes to aesthetic experiences.” Yet several months into it, he realized, “I didn’t feel like a painter.” (Coy describes, only half-facetiously, what being a painter means to him—“I think of someone who wears all black and is angsty, sphinx-like, and does things that are really opaque and obscure”—and I flash back to my junior/his senior year, when he played the melancholy Jaques. He’s describing almost exactly the way he looked in that role—all he left out is the Rubik’s cube he carried around onstage.) Searching for other crafts he could adopt, he was drawn toward wood as something immediately accessible. He found “weird old books” about woodworking. And an experience from his AmeriCorps days proved to be an augury. “One of the volunteers mentioned, ‘You know, people who make fine furniture, instead of marking with a pencil, they mark with a razor.’ And I thought that was the coolest thing.” By this time, the economy had slumped. The job closest to his goal was in carpentry, which he says “did not help me much toward furniture making. I had to work toward that in the evenings. I got a small portable workbench, set up in the kitchen of our one-bedroom apartment, and started planing away.” Upon moving to Washington, D.C., in 2010, Coy obtained an apprenticeship with William B. Schreitz (A67), who encouraged him: “You certainly have the skill, the patience, and the attention to detail to do this for a living.” Coy knows the pedigree of every tool he uses, including 100-year-old handsaws, and a series of specialized planes whose designs, he tells me, “even go back to Roman times, which is sort of terrifying.” And the outcome of an entire piece can be determined by the kind of knife he uses to mark his measurements. “Then I use chisels and a mallet to make mortises, then different sizes of handsaws to cut tenons or dovetails,” he explains. Among Coy’s favorite woods is Alaskan yellow cedar. “It has a beautiful smell. Like if you had a mountain chalet somewhere and you stepped outside on a wintry day.” He also likes cherry wood for its “mild figure,” the brush strokes in the grain. “If you can imagine figure running straight up and down on two boards, and you set those two next to each other, when they’re �“Work done by hand is incredibly meaningful, and leads to truth.” Geremy Coy (A06) parallel they’ll appear calm and peaceful; where they intersect, it might be more dramatic,” he says. “Much of bringing out the life of a thing is in knowing how to arrange that figure in a way that doesn’t conflict with the life, but enhances it.” It’s always a dilemma whether he should start from a concept and find the wood to match, or construct around the potential of a given board. “Where you have an idea and try to find material to fit, it’s almost like giving the universe a dare,” says Coy. “Somewhere in America, 150 years ago, a little tree had to start growing in just the right way to produce just the right grain. And that tree had to be selected and cut down, and then sawn in just the right way to create just the right figure. And then you have to show up at the right lumberyard at the right time to find this perfect board. The demand you put on nature is pretty great.” That demand was answered in what Coy considers his crowning achievement. Inspired by a Shaker sewing stand and a Japanese teapot, he conceived of a cabinet devoted to the traditional tea ceremony. He envisioned “something that was very calm and quiet, but would nevertheless powerfully occupy the space.” For the top, he wanted a single piece of wood that would make “a dramatic sweep, like a breath.” But he also wanted a significant surface flaw. “I didn’t want to put a pristine piece on top of a cabinet that was supposed to be built in the spirit of tea, which has something of . . . .” He pauses. “I don’t know how to say this. Has something of death in it. Something of the wholeness of being.” In this moment, philosophy’s hand is evident in Coy’s work. “Heidegger talks about [how] the flow of energy through a system affects what is revealed. Craft is one way of questioning: ‘What kind of work am I capable of? And how vividly can I bring into creation an idea that I have?’ It’s interesting to see what happens when you’ve worked in nothing but thought, and try to impose order on the world. You start to respect the way that things grow.” After searching across three states, Coy found the perfect board in Pennsylvania. “It was the crotch of a cherry tree; where the two branches come together, the grain interacts in a really ripply figure. This board had a wonderful, dark, gnarly crack right in the middle. I put it into the back of my blue Volkswagen beetle, which I’m sure was hilarious at the lumberyard.” But Coy is taking the opposite approach with the linden tree that recently blew down on St. John’s front campus in Annapolis. Whatever he makes with it will be inspired by the Program. “It’s the perfect tree from the perfect location,” he says. “In the ancient world, linden was a prized source of ‘liber’—this tough, stringy inner bark. Liber was used for making paper, and the word eventually came to mean ‘book’ in Latin. That same ‘liber’ is one of the roots that the college’s motto puns so well: ‘Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque.’” Geremy Coy’s work is featured at: www.geremycoy.com, and on DcbyDesign.com and the online edition of Washingtonian Magazine. nominated for eight Tony Awards, and won for Best Score and Best Choreography. Its limited run is now open-ended. The performance on March 31 was attended by classmates Patricia Joyce (A), Jon Church (A), Jim Jarvis (A), and Ann Peterson (and her children Andrea and Tyler). 1977 From Thomasina Brown (SFGI): “Taught for almost fifty years, then retired and then went back to teaching elementary school. Hoping to get back to campus sometime soon—my sons have brought their families by on visits recently, and we wish you the best of luck.” 1978 Victor Lee Austin (SF) is the author of Up with Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (T & T Clark, 2010). He comments, “I was stumped in trying to write a normal academic book, when I realized that what I really wanted to do was to write an essay, not be an expert. This book is, it seems to me, just the sort of thing a Johnnie would write.” He and his wife, Susan (née Gavahan, SF76), are now grandparents. Fred Bohrer (A) has a new book, Photography and Archaeology, the result of almost a decade of research. It was published by Reaktion Books in November 2011. “I’m quite excited about it,” Bohrer comments. “It’s already listed on Amazon. I’m thrilled at how beautifully it has turned out.” Fred will be doing a presentation and book signing at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., on September 12. Laura Maclay (SF) just received certificates in Music Production and Advanced Music Production from the University of New Mexico’s continuing education division. She is also studying African drumming and playing accompaniment for dance classes and performances. Robert Perry (A) writes, “My wonderful wife and companion for 30 years, Kathy Squillace, lost her battle with cancer in April. She loved our class reunions and I want to thank all of you for making her so welcome at St. John’s.” Lucy Tamlyn (A) writes, “I am still with the State Department, currently stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon where I am Deputy Chief of Mission. It has been a very interesting career, and I’m pleased to see that St. John’s continues to be decently represented at the State Department (relative to its size, of course!).” 1980 Tom G. Palmer (A) is the author of Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice (Cato Institute, 2009). His recent writings include “Classical Liberalism, Poverty, and Morality” in Poverty and Morality: Religious and Secular Perspectives, edited by William A. Galston and Peter Hoffenberg (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and The Morality of Capitalism (Jameson Books, 2011); he was its editor. After receiving his BA from St. John’s, he earned his MA from The Catholic University of America and his PhD from the University of Oxford. He is a board member of several think tanks, the advisor of Students for Liberty, and is involved with Mercy Corps and Mont Pelerin Society. 1981 Elizabeth Affsprung (A), known as “Buffy,” is currently pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Her son Joseph is The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 47 �alumni notes 1983 Liberal Arts Apps Peter McClard (SF) has released his 99-cent app called ‘pixound’ for iPhone and iPad. This app converts color into musical information and allows one to play pictures, which is more fun than it may sound. He recommends this app to any Johnnie who loves music and art; it shows how liberal arts can liberate new art forms. Find out more at www.pixound.com/ios. Inner Hebrides off Scotland’s Atlantic coast. His wife is a native of the island (population 150), which is called Gigha. She runs a dairy farm at the north end of the island, and Don makes flower essences (like the Bach Flower Remedies) with orchids that he grows in a greenhouse (see their website: www.healingorchids.com). In October 2011, their son was born there in the house. Don also has three wonderful children by his first marriage, now in their 20s. The youngest is studying at Stanford, near where he grew up. 1983 a sophomore at the College of Charleston, son Daniel is writing poetry and short stories, and husband Eric is a psychologist at Bloomsburg University. Buffy is taking lessons in relaxation from Petey the cat. John Schiavo (A) received his MA in the Management of Information Technology in 2010 from the University of Virginia. His and Monika Schiavo’s (A84) oldest daughter Hellena is a senior at St. John’s in Santa Fe, and their son, Anthony, is starting his second year in the Engineering School at Virginia Tech. 1982 Don Dennis (SF) lives on a wee island in the southern part of the Jack Armstrong (SF) writes, “Our son Michael finished college in December [studying film at the University of Southern California] and went straight to Central America to make a documentary on shamans. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with. Daughter Emily is in ninth grade, still obsessed with surfing. She has followed her brother and joined the rowing team. I look forward to joining St. John’s classmate Mike Henry at the river to watch our kids race. We [also] had a mini-reunion at Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre last month. A dozen Johnnies came for a party, and then we all watched Twelfth Night—really fun. We’ll be doing it again next year, so if you are in the area, please come.” 1984 Monika Schiavo (A) has just completed her course work and submitted her thesis for a master’s degree in the Smithsonian-Corcoran College History of Decorative Arts program. She has recently joined the board of the Decorative Arts Society, where she will be administering the website and helping with development and program efforts. 48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 1986 1988 Carl Buffalo (SF) has changed his name to better reflect his gratitude toward his Native American ancestors. Shirley Banks (SF88), of Atlanta writes: “In the fall of 2011, I began work on a Master of Theological Studies degree at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. I work at Emory as a Health Educator and AASECT-Certified Sexuality Counselor in the Office of Health Promotion at Student Health & Counseling Services. I’ll be working on the MTS parttime on a Courtesy Scholarship (a sweet deal for university staff) while continuing full-time employment. I’m planning to investigate how Jesus and the Buddha understood the human problem and how their pedagogies reflected that understanding. I am not planning to be ordained. I lead hiking trail maintenance trips for American Hiking Society as a volunteer. In June, Marty Llewallen (SF 87) and I volunteered together for a week at Yosemite National Park, working on a trail maintenance crew at Hetch Hetchy. After not seeing each other in 25 years, we had no difficulty picking up where we left off, and I’m hoping Marty and his family will come South to backpack next spring.” Douglas A. Gentile (A) was recently selected by The Princeton Review as one of the top 300 professors in the U.S. Then The Huffington Post put him in the number-one position. “Based on what,” he writes, “I haven’t a clue.” Elisabeth Long (A) writes, “Since January 2012, I have a new position as associate University Librarian for Digital Services (still at the University of Chicago), which means I am now responsible for shaping our support programs for our faculty’s increasing use of digital technologies in their research.... My St. John’s education has been invaluable in being able to work with such a wide variety of research.... I can always be found in the University of Chicago directory and would love to hear from anyone coming through town.” Mally C. Strong (née Mechau, SF) from Carbondale, Colorado, writes, “I continue to work on my publication, Mountain Medicine Directory, and am so glad to have this project to sink myself into now that Homer (Reed College 2010, mathematics) and Jemima (SF15) are flown. I’m pretty peaceful.... My goals are to get better organized, go back to Naxos with my sister, Clarissa, for a solid month in the off-season, and read all the Palliser novels. Good wishes to all. This spring, life seems very sweet as I sketch out the garden plan and relish sleeping in late. The really big challenges in my life have been safely dispatched. I have no idea what’s next.” David Blankenbaker (SF) shares his haiku: “Outside our back door / A solitary cricket / Calls to the new moon.” 1989 From William Hickman (SF) and Stacey Phillips (SF): “Hello to all our classmates. We have lived in Portland for 18 years. We have a daughter, Mirabel (age 12), and we would love to hear what the rest of you are doing.” �alumni notes Mark Shiffman (A) recently published a translation of De Anima with Focus Press, and was awarded tenure at Villanova University, where he is Associate Professor in the Humanities Department and also teaches courses for Classics and Political Science. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Cristina and sons Bruno (13) and Elio (7), and occasionally runs into Eliot Duhan at the pool in the summertime. 1992 Alec Berlin (SF) writes, “I’ve released a new record, Innocent Explanations, and am currently spending my time promoting it via radio and performance. Keep your eyes open for shows and such, especially on the East coast. Otherwise I’m still living in Brooklyn and still playing guitar for various theater projects. You can find my music on all the usual social media sites— check it out, and thanks!” 1994 William Kowalski (SF) wants to share the news that his first novel, Eddie’s Bastard, published in 1999, was referred to as an “overlooked American classic” in an October 2011 article in The Guardian. 1995 On September 23, 2011,—the Fall Equinox—Kira Zielinski (SF) and Nathan Blaesing were wed in a private ceremony in a stone circle in Clarkdale, Arizona. Jennifer Swaim (A) served as Zielinski’s Rhinemaiden of honor and fellow Valkyrie. Nathan and Kira plan to move to Cremona, Italy, in 2012, where they look forward to luthier school, period music ensembles, and many guests. Edward Scott Michael (AGI) and his wife, Anya Sammler, a 1998 Sewanee alum, are both Unitarian Universalist ministers. It has been a productive few years for Kersti Tyson (SF). She earned her PhD in Learning Science from the University of Washington in June 2011. She and her partner, Matthew Sexton, brought their son, Mateo Pond Sexton, into “this wild and wonderful world” in October 2011. In 2010, “the stars aligned” and she returned to her homeland, New Mexico. As an assistant professor in the department of Teacher Education at the University of New Mexico, she’s putting her education to work. She learns about learning so she can teach teachers (elementary mathematics) and does research on listening and learning. She urges classmates to stay in touch (kersti@unm.edu), especially if they are in New Mexico. Kira Zielinski (SF95) and Nathan Blaesing 1996 John T. Andrews (AGI) has taken a discussion to a local retirement community in Marin County, California, using texts from the Touchstones Discussion Project. Although the goal is primarily to engage group members in conversation and discussion about the text, the Touchstones technique of the small group helps them to get started and focus, and aids large-group discussion. The group’s size ranges from 12 to 20 participants on any given day; their average age is over 85 and they are sharp, witty, and engaged. After five years, John is “moving on” to pursue other volunteer opportunities. If any Johnnies in the Bay Area, especially Marin County, would be interested in continuing with this challenging and rewarding group starting in the fall of 2011, please contact John at stbch@att.net. 1997 Peter Eichstaedt (SFGI) is the author of four books: If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans (Red Crane, 1994); First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (Lawrence Hill Books, 2009); Pirate State: Inside Somalia’s Terrorism at Sea (Lawrence Hill Books, 2010); and Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World’s Deadliest Place (Lawrence Hill Books, 2011). Note the reviews of Pirate State and First Kill Your Family in the Fall 2011 issue of The College. Melanie Kirby (SF) and partner Mark Spitzig are excited to have expanded their hive. They welcomed Esai Mateo Aristaeus, who came as a belated birthday present for mama Melanie in late September. Esai has a big sister, Isis Rose Blossom, who is now 3½. This year also marks Melanie’s 15th anniversary as a professional apiculturist. She has been specializing in queen honeybee breeding. High altitude bees and babies keep buzzing! Email ziaqueenbees@hotmail.com. 1998 1999 Sarah Fridrich (SF) released her first full-length album of piano/ drum-based indie-rock, You Call That Brave, on June 4, 2011. Full recordings can be heard here: http://msfridrich.bandcamp.com. Any alum who wants a complimentary hard copy can email her directly at sarah@msfridrich.com, or purchase it from the website. Sarah makes a living as a private piano teacher—for more than 10 years now!—in the Washington, D.C. area. She credits her St. John’s education with making her a sought-after, versatile teacher. Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A) were happy to welcome their fifth child, Beatrice Marie, on February 25. Mike, Abby, Lucy (8), John (6), Cecilia (4), James (2), Beatrice, and McDuff the dog are still living in Los Angeles, taking advantage of the beach, the pool, and year-round soccer. Mike is an attorney, Abby homeschools the older kids, and the kids cheerfully spend all their free time memorizing passages from great books. Mike and Abby Soejoto (both A99) and family Juliana Laumakis (née Martonffy, A), and her husband, John, are very excited to announce the birth of their daughter, Thea Lucia Laumakis, in December 2011. Her big sisters are pretty smitten with her, too! The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 49 �alumni notes 2000 Mark Shiflett, (SF) left the Active Duty Navy as a Chief Petty Officer last month, and has transitioned to the U.S. Naval Reserve. “I will be staying here in Yokosuka, Japan, having taken on a federal civil service job at the U.S. Navy’s Japan Regional Maintenance Center. It was hard to leave active duty—saltwater streams in my veins—but a more ‘regular’ job (and one that doesn’t require being away on deployment for five to seven months at a time) works better for me, my wife, Yasuyo, son Ben (5), and daughter Mia (6 months).” 2001 After graduating from medical school in 2010, Adriana de Julio (SF) spent part of 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada, as a surgical intern. She decided against surgery residency and went for psychiatry. In March 2012, she was matched to a medical residency at the University of Illinois in Advocate Lutheran General Hospital. She will begin her training in psychiatry in June 2012 in the Windy City. Her main interests will be working with veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury and doing community psychiatry with Assertive Community Treatment Teams in the Northwest Chicago area. Training takes a minimum of four years, but she will be there no less than five years to complete a psych-neuro fellowship. Dan Weiland (A) is the manager of a pair of Bikram’s Hot Yoga Studios in Portland, Oregon. Visit anytime! 2002 Charles Green (AGI) writes, “I recently added Publishers Weekly to the list of publications for which I review books. I’m also very excited about buying my condo in Annapolis. Life is wonderful!” Maria (Goena) Leigh (SF) performs in The Odyssey on Angel Island State Park in California. This site-specific, interactive performance unfolds over the course of five hours. Once on the island, audience members receive a map, timecard, and survival “kit bag” to support them as they navigate the carefully crafted scenes, interactive installations, meals, and diverse pathways through the space. She urges Johnnies anywhere near the Bay Area to come experience The Odyssey as you’ve never seen it before. Visit www.weplayers.org for additional information. After earning a degree in Classics from New York University and a masters in philosophy, John Rogove (A) has been living in Paris for the last six years, finishing his doctorate in philosophy on the a priori in Husserl’s phenomenology at the Université Paris-Sorbonne, where he teaches philosophy. He also taught at Boston College. Lauren Shofer (A) and Baldwyn Bourgois share their birth announcement: Emile Bourgois, born on August 29, 2011, joins his sister, Amelie, and brother, Julian. They live in Aalst, Belgium. Michael and Rachel (née Roccia) Sullivan (both A) will be moving to Honolulu, Hawaii, in September 2012. Rachel will be pursuing a two-year child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship after finishing her adult psychiatry residency training at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Michael will be teaching and reading philosophy on the beach, under palm trees, and by waterfalls. Their two daughters, Clare (7) and Grace (5), are doing well and looking forward to seeing erupting volcanoes. 50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Christopher J. Warnagiris (A) is deployed to the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East aboard the USS Iwo Jima in support of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. 2003 Alana Chernila (SF) has a new book titled The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making. It’s available on Amazon.com. On March 9, 2012, Lawrence (Ler) Nelson (SFGI) successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on “Chan Sickness and the Master’s Role in Its Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention” at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Kate Redding (A) recently completed her MA in Music with an Emphasis in Piano Technology from Florida State University. She writes, “I look forward to resuming my career as a professional piano tuner and rebuilder with the information and skills that I learned in graduate school!” Cassie Sherman (A) and Martin Marks (A04) are surprised, grateful, and most of all ridiculously happy to announce that, after more than ten years of friendship, they seem to have fallen in love and gotten engaged. The wedding will take place in the spring of 2013. Given their mutual love of Spoonerisms, the joined and hyphenated last name that will result should provide amusement for decades to come. 2004 Kristi Durbin (A) returned to school full-time this fall, studying Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Kentucky. She dreams of owning land in the Bluegrass region and running a Community Supported Agriculture program in the future. Rhonda Ortiz (née Franklin, A) writes that her “husband Jared (AGI05) successfully defended his PhD dissertation on Augustine’s theology of creation in February at The Catholic University of America and will graduate in May. He has also accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Religion at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Holland is as-cute-as-a-button (our mothers will love it), located near the shore of Lake Michigan. We’ve already purchased snow boots. I am working on a novel. I haven’t written much fiction and I hardly know anything about the matter, but I’m learning as I go. Benedict, our oneyear-old, grows like a weed; he’s one hundred percent ‘snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.’ We look forward to seeing any Johnnie friends passing through Michigan. Email me at rhondaortiz@gmail.com.” Lucia Staiano-Daniels (SF) began her PhD program at UCLA last year, focusing on the history of philosophy and modern European intellectual and cultural history. Her first publication, “Illuminated Darkness: Hegel’s Brief and Unexpected Elevation of Indian Thought in ‘On the Episode of the Mahabharata known by the name Bhagavad-Gita,’ by Wilhelm von Humboldt,” is forthcoming from the Owl of Minerva, the magazine of the Hegel Society of America. “It’ll be out sometime after Christmas,” she writes. “I’m enjoying Los Angeles’s excellent climate and wide variety of interesting food, although the thought of my upcoming qualifying exams terrifies me. I am also pleased to announce my catechumenate in the Orthodox Church. I miss having Johnnies to talk to; you all are welcome to write me at luciasdan@gmail.com.” �alumni notes Finding Intellectual Courage by Gregory Shook and Deborah Spiegelman Jay Youngdahl (sfgi03) melds a lawyer’s activism with intellect Growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, during the height of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Jay Youngdahl (sfgi03) was keenly attuned to the social injustices and unrest experienced by African Americans living in the Deep South. Knowing that he wanted a life of service, he found inspiration in his family of advocates for social welfare and civil and political rights. His grandfather was the dean of the School of Social Work at Washington University in the 1940s—his department was the first to admit African American students. In 1957, nine African American students were denied entrance to Little Rock Central High School in defiance of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering integration of public schools. This landmark act of the civil rights movement focused the nation’s eyes on Youngdahl’s hometown. Deeply affected by these events in his own backyard, he became an attorney specializing in civil rights law, union law, and discrimination law on behalf of minorities and women. As a young attorney, “I had an activist’s courage,” says Youngdahl, “but I also wanted an intellectual courage.” That desire led him to St. John’s in 2001. “It was a way to try to light up those parts of my brain that I hadn’t used in those last 25 years [practicing law].” Youngdahl embraced the Program, which he describes as “showing the arc and commonality of issues and concerns expressed by our human species. [The fact that] our worries of today have been the focus of great minds throughout human history is extraordinarily helpful to consideration and comfort with such issues.” At the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, he was excited to explore new authors and approached familiar works with a fresh perspective— and “learned to read Shakespeare like never before.” In 2005, Youngdahl found himself at a crossroads. Believing he had accomplished all that he could in his chosen field, he was ready to make way for a new influx of young lawyers, eager to “carry the torch to do the right thing” for civil and workers’ rights. Although he continues to practice law today, he was ready to challenge himself in new ways. An eternal activist who believes in the power of ideas to foster change, Youngdahl began exploring ways to elevate discourse on important issues. Having practiced law throughout the South and Southwest, he had worked on cases regarding claims by injured Navajo rail workers, who for more than 100 years took on the arduous work of laying and anchoring tracks. Seeking “to understand the culture, the people, and to try to improve their lives and situations,” Youngdahl had done archival research and oral history on the Navajo Reservation. In his new book, Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty: Navajos, Hózhq, and Track Work, Youngdahl presents a cultural ´ history of how Navajo track workers have modified their traditions, particularly religious practices, to protect themselves against the perils of their livelihood. His experience at St. John’s is evident in his multi-disciplinary approach: the book touches on philosophy, religion, literature, economics, human rights, and conversation. Today Youngdahl raises awareness of important social and political issues through journalism. As the majority owner of the Oakland, California-based newspaper East Bay Express, he is committed to “producing hard-hitting journalism and fighting to keep quality journalism alive.” He also contributes a biweekly column, “Raising the Bar,” in which he addresses ethical and moral perspectives on current issues and events. In addition, Youngdahl is an in-demand speaker, traveling to colleges and universities around the country to talk about matters close to his heart. At Harvard Divinity School, where he graduated with a master’s degree in 2007, he recently gave a talk about the juxtaposition of compassion for others as the basis of moral action and an ethical life. Youngdahl continues to examine the world around him and generate dialogue to find ways to make it a better place. Concerned with how “the speed of human life today makes important considerations seem to just zip by the window of our moving societal train, leaving us without the ability to fruitfully examine and evaluate them,” he makes a point to carve out time for personal reflection. As Youngdahl writes in his book, for the Navajos, to “walk in beauty” requires harmony and order in the universe. It also takes courage. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 51 �alumni notes 2005 Samantha Buker (A) writes this note fresh from filing her most recent opera review for the City Paper. This year, she also began freelancing for The Washington Post. In even bigger news, she’s published her first book: Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar. She hopes every single dollar-earner in America will pick up a copy of this shocking, yet handy book of currency problems and solutions that she co-authored with Addison Wiggin (SFGI96). She soldiers on as managing editor at Agora Financial, which sends her to far-flung corners of the globe. After a stint on a 2,700-acre beachside ranch in Nicaragua, she had a brief rest before heading off to Mongolia, ever on the quest for a new investment opportunity. Feel free to reach her at sam.buker@gmail.com (or please leave a nice book review on Amazon). Best adventures to all! Note Buker’s article “Tracing the Phenomenon of the Perfect Concert” in The College Fall 2011. Jon Cotner (SFGI) writes, “I’m co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks, which was selected as a Best Book of 2010 by The Week, The Millions, Time Out Chicago, and Bookslut. My new collaboration is called Conversations over Stolen Food. I live in Brooklyn, NewYork, where I teach in Pratt Institute’s Creative Writing Program.” 2006 Norman Allen’s (AGI) play, On the Eve of Friday Morning, was produced by the Oregon Children’s Theatre in 2011. His other play, The House Halfway, will be part of the Source Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C., this summer. This May, he’ll be the guest of the Mladinsko Theatre in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he will lead a twoday playwriting workshop and also will see his play, Nijinsky’s Last Dance, performed. Shilo Brooks (A) and Siobhan Aitchison (A05) were engaged in January and plan to marry this summer. Shilo expects to complete his PhD in political theory at Boston College this winter, and Siobhan expects to complete her Masters in landscape architecture at Harvard next spring. Jonathan Freeman-Coppadge (A) and his husband, Darren, recently bought their first home in Odenton, ten miles north of Annapolis. Jonathan continues to teach English and French at Indian Creek School, and will finish his MA in English at Bread Loaf School of English next summer. Daniel Grimm (SF) has been accepted to Rutgers University School of Law for the fall term. Enrolled in the night program, he will continue working part-time at Hartman & Winnicki, P.C., a law firm in New Jersey. Daniel and his wife just had a baby girl, Parker Bay, last October. Their restaurant, Fishbar, now in its fourth season, continues to do well. The two are hoping their daughter can start seating tables soon! Erin Ingham (A) and Mark Ingham (SF05) joyfully welcomed the arrival of their first child, Gabriel Joseph Ingham, at 6:06 a.m. on March 29. Born at 8.5 pounds, 20.5 inches, Gabriel is doing great! Emily Terrell, formerly Nisch, (A) will attend Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, this fall. Hollis Thoms (AGI) will have an article, “Rolling His Jolly Tub: Composer Elliott Carter, St. John’s College Tutor, 1940-1942,” published in the upcoming St. John’s Review. Thoms did research at the St. John’s College Library Archives, the Maryland State Archives, and the Library of Congress on Elliott Carter, one of the great living 52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 on malaria eradication. 2009 Rowenna (Thorson) (A10) and Nate Oesch (A09) American composers, who recently celebrated his 103rd birthday. 2007 Chelsea Batten (A) is a writer and itinerant journalist. She profiled Geremy Coy (A06) for this issue of the magazine. You can read more of her work at www.chelseabatten.com. Jack Langworthy (SF) writes, “From 2009 to 2011, I served in the Peace Corps teaching math and physics in a village in Tanzania. St. John’s prepared me for that experience more than I expected. I felt right at home teaching in a physics laboratory with no modern technology, and learned Kiswahili with ease. Ancient Greek was way more difficult. I started helping farmers preserve and trade their maize when prices spiked. After Peace Corps, I was lucky enough to use those skills to get a job managing a micro venture capitalist firm called Cheetah Development here in Tanzania. Any Johnnies are more than welcome to a place to stay if they are passing through Iringa, Tanzania.” 2008 John Matthew Griffis (SF) will be attending Parsons The New School for Design this fall to pursue his MFA in Design and Technology. Jessica Seiler (A) is currently working for the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa. She finished her two years in the village and was given a job in the big city working Nate Oesch (A) and Rowenna Thorson Oesch (A10) were married in the Great Hall on July 23, 2011, with 16 Johnnies (including seven National Champion croquet players) and one tutor in attendance. Following the ceremony, Luke Russell (A), Sam Porter (A), and Robbie Shaver (A) provided excellent jazz music in Randall Hall. Rowenna completed her MEd at Loyola University in 2011 and is now teaching in a Montessori school in Bowie. Nate does research for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Arlington. 2010 Candice Benge (SFGI) and colleagues have recently started a theater co-op, Transient Theater, in San Francisco. They’re mounting their first production this summer and taking it on tour across the U.S. for six weeks. Visit their website at www.transienttheater.com or contact Candice for more information. Ethan Brooks (A) is a Marine Officer at The Basic School and recently was pleased to receive Ground Intelligence as his occupational specialty. He looks forward to graduating in October and attending Infantry Officer’s Course in January 2013. Megan Kennedy (A) is currently taking Russian classes in Washington, D.C., preparing for a PhD program in Russian literature in the fall of 2012. She is hoping to find a full-time, entry-level job in the metro area that would help support her while she pursues further education. �in memoriam Luke Harvey Poe Jr. Scott A. Abbott march 30, 2012 Tutor and assistant dean, Annapolis Class of 1943 august 28, 2011 The college community mourns the loss of Luke Harvey Poe Jr. and is deeply grateful for his service as a tutor and assistant dean. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1916, Poe received his BS in mathematics and a JD from the University of Virginia. As a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a PhD from Oxford University, Christ Church. After serving four years in World War II as a Lieutenant Commander with the North Atlantic, he joined the faculty of St. John’s in 1946. Poe’s rich legacy to the college includes his support of the efforts to open St. John’s to African American students, especially its first, Martin Dyer (Class of 1952). After Poe left St. John’s in 1960, he lectured for governmental and academic organizations, including the Foreign Service Institute, the International Labor Center, the Aspen Institute, and the U.S. Air Force War College. Dedicated to the Annapolis community, Poe worked to have the city declared a Historic District and served on local boards and associations. He was finishing his book, A Study of the Origins of the Political Philosophy of the American Republic, at the time of his death. He is survived by his wife, Josephine Jastor Poe (Class of 1957). A memorial service was held on May 19 in the Great Hall. Scott Alexander Abbott (1921-2011) lived his life in service to others. As a teacher known for his generous heart, Abbott’s favorite subjects were history, geography, and civics. He taught elementary through college students and continued tutoring until he was 83. Abbot never stopped extolling the merits of the seminar approach to learning. He is survived by his daughters Jane, Becky, and Debby Abbott, and Sue Schneider. Philip Camponeschi Class of 1946 january 4, 2012 Philip Camponeschi of Rattail Ridge, Conn., was born on May 30, 1923, in New York City. After serving in the Military Police during World War II, he attended St. John’s in Annapolis and married his first wife, Mary Jean Casey. He obtained his JD from the University of Maryland in 1957. Camponeschi was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a speechwriter for vice president Hubert Humphrey, a leader in the Peace Corps, and a professor of philosophy and literature at SUNY Old Westbury in Long Island, where he met his second wife, Nejla. He loved spending time with his family and friends. A memorial service was held at Friends School in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 14, 2012. Philip is survived by his wife, Nejla; five children, Scott Camponeschi, Lisa Mistovich, John Camponeschi, and Geannnan Camponeschi-Papanicolaou; and nine grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, his family asks that contributions be made to UNICEF. Classmates such as Jules Pagano (Class of 1948) remember him as someone who “listened with that intelligent and respectful care which earned him the right to be heard with comparable respect when he spoke.” Peter Davies (Class of 1948) saw him as “a wonderful role model—his wisdom and probing intellect were valuable examples for those of us who had not experienced war as he and older Johnnies had.” Allan Hoffman (Class of 1949) writes, “I remember Phil as being hilariously acerbic. Phil and Jules Pagano once saved me from being beaten up by some “townies” who crashed one of the cotillions.” In retirement, “he was happy with his garden of vegetables and herbs.” below: Philip Camponeschi (Class of 1946) and Bill Goldsmith (Class of 1946). Peter Weiss (Class of 1946) notes, “I always thought of him as a man of ‘the people,’ in the best sense of that word, who was as seriously concerned about the true, the beautiful, and the difference between prudence and wisdom as some of us ‘intellectuals.’” Philo L. Dibble (A76) october 1, 2011 Ten days before his death, Philo Louis Dibble (1951-2011), a Foreign Service officer, completed his most notorious assignment—helping to free two American hikers imprisoned in Iran. The Washington Post reports that Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal, and Sarah E. Shourd had been hiking in the mountains of Turkey when Iranian authorities apprehended them for allegedly crossing the Iranian border. Shourd was released; the two men were convicted of espionage by an Iranian court and sentenced to eight years in a Tehran prison. Dibble, who retired in 2006 as one of the State Department’s leading authorities on Iran, returned four years later as the Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Iran, coordinating efforts to secure the hikers’ release. Dibble never met the freed hikers. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, where his father also served in the Foreign Service, Dibble received his MA in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University in 1980, after attending St. John’s. He died from a heart attack at his home in McLean, Virginia. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Link Dibble; three daughters, Kate, Sarah, and Caroline; his mother, Cleopatra B. Dibble; and a brother. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 53 �in memoriam Captain Alton L. “Red” Waldron (HA07), september 2, 2011 Captain Alton L. “Red” Waldron, USN RET, died at his Annapolis home at 93. Waldron had great affection for the college, having participated in seminars for 50 years. In 1935, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy; his numerous tours of duty included Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal. Among his awards were the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit. Predeceased by his wife of 60 years, Katherine Joyce Waldron, he is survived by his daughter, McShane W. Glover. Loretta Wasserman (SFGI86) and Irving Wasserman (SFGI86) Loretta Wasserman (1924-August 7, 2011) and Irving Wasserman (1926-August 25, 2011) were honored at a memorial service at Homecoming 2011 in Annapolis. During a sabbatical year (1972-1973) at St. John’s in Annapolis, and a summer (1974) at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, Irving taught and Loretta took classes. Loretta received her MA in English from the University of Minnesota and was a professor of English at Grand Valley State University in Michigan from 1966 until her retirement in 1991, when she published her book, Willa Cather: A Study of the Short Fiction. Irving received his MA in philosophy from the University of Indiana. He worked as an editor and was a professor of philosophy at Grand Valley State University. They are survived by two children, Adam and Jessica, and four grandchildren. March 6, 2012 Patrick New, SFGI08, August 29, 2011 Also Deceased: Donna Gavora, A80, January 5, 2012 Louise Antinori, AGI88, April 8, 2012 George Graefe, Class of 1941, December 14, 2011 Richard Ballen, A67, July 17, 2011 Todd Grier, Class of 1938, April 26, 2012 Richard Batt, Jr., Class of 1951, February 3, 2012 Dexter Haven, Class of 1942, March 12, 2011 Teddy Betts, Class of 1949, September 18, 2011 Cecilia Holtman, SFGI71, February 5, 2012 Robert Bonham, Class of 1945, December 18, 2011 Daniella Hope, SF82, July 31, 2008 Jonathan Brooks, Class of 1949, October 31, 2011 Gilbert Hull, Class of 1942, February 5, 2008 Jeffrey Cynx, A73, December 24, 2011 Ralph Keeney, Class of 1945, May 15, 1999 Augusta DeGrazia, A77, October 20, 2011 David Kerr, A71, October 10, 2011 Donald Edwards, Class of 1959, August 15, 2011 Jane Evans, SFGI84, April 20, 2012 Carl Linden, April 2, 2012 Annapolis tutor from 1965 to 1970. College memorial to be announced. Ruth Farrell, A74, January 17, 2012 William Lundberg, Class of 1945, October 15, 2006 Sidney Rosenthal, Class of 1948, March 5, 2006 Jon Ferrier, A73, January 6, 2012 Joseph Morray, Class of 1949, November 27, 2011 Lawrence Saporta, A90, September 9, 2011 Charles Forbes, Class of 1940, July 11, 2009 Arthur Myers, Class of 1938, October 28, 2011 Dr. Donald Saunders, SFGI92, July 2, 2011 Edna Frye, SFGI71, Robert Neslund, SFGI80, October 9, 2011 Henry Shryock, Class of 1932, February 17, 2012 54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Jon Park O’Donnell, AGI80, June 13, 2011 John B. “Jack” Owens, Class of 1937, February 4, 2012 Marcia Peterson, A70, March 29, 2012 Phillip A. Pollard, AGI92, October 29, 2011 Richard Siegle, A65, September 8, 2011 Alexander Slafkosky, Class of 1943, July 15, 2011 Everett Smith, Class of 1937, August 6, 2005 Richard Stevens, A69, December 8, 2011 Gene Thornton, Class of 1945, January 10, 2012 Roger Tilton, Class of 1945, May 22, 2011 Lenke Vietorisz, Class of 1962, October 27, 2011 Robert Warren, SFGI93, December 29, 2011 Leroy Webster, Class of 1936, May 7, 1998 Richard Woodman, Class of 1935, June 15, 2011 Elizabeth Grant Yolton, A75, November 10, 2011 Jonathan Zorn, SF72, April 25, 2011 Dr. Martha Post, SF79, September 1, 2011 Neil Potash, Class of 1962, April 16, 2012 David Pugh, Class of 1932, October 6, 2000 Victor Purdy, Class of 1951, April 9, 2012 Siobhan Reynolds, SFGI94, December 24, 2011 Barbara Rigall, A84, January 17, 2012 Correction to a Fall 2011 obituary: The work of Sydney Wynne Porter—not Wayne—(Class of 1954) at Three Mile Island demonstrated that there was a release of fewer than 20 curies of iodine 131 into the environment. In press interviews, he stated that the U.S. was receiving many times that amount of fallout from Chinese nuclear tests. Porter was a professor of radiation physics at Drexel University and a benefactor of St. John’s. Apologies and thanks to Temple Porter (A62) for this clarification. �alumni news Notes from the chancellor johnson house By Leo Pickens (A78) “Why in heaven’s name would you ever want to leave your private little duchy in the Temple, where, for all intents and purposes, you’re paid to play with the students, to take on the thankless and nearly impossible job of trying to keep our perpetually restive alumni happy? Have you taken leave of your senses?” JEN BEHRENS “I like that idea,” she responded. “It seems to be a kind of excellence.” She referred me to Book IV, Chapter 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics. The last time I encountered this passage was my freshman year at St. John’s 37 years ago, and it had slipped from my memory, but upon reading, the words seemed fresh with insight: “It is not unclear that acting well and doing beautiful things go with giving . . . and This from a rather plain-speaking generous people are loved practically colleague of mine (who happens, by the the most of those who are recognized way, to be an alum) upon hearing that for virtue, since they confer benefit and I was interested in succeeding Jo Ann this consists in giving.” Mattson as director of Alumni Relations Then later in this examination Aristoin Annapolis. This co-worker’s amazed tle states—and this to my mind is the real puzzlement, I believe, mirrors that of gist: “But generosity is meant in relamany in our community, so allow me to tion to one’s means, for the generosity is share my reasons for making the move. not in the amount of what is given, but First, after nearly 23 years in the same in the active condition of the giver and role, I feel ready for something fresh. this depends on one’s means. So nothIt’s really that simple. I pride myself on ing prevents someone who gives less being, first and foremost, a fairly able from being the more generous if one is administrator—in the traditional sense giving out of a smaller supply.” of the word: a minister or servant—and Aristotle’s “active condition” of givam eager to serve the college in a new ing at a level appropriate to our means capacity. And for someone like me, who applies as well, I believe, to our most is constantly encouraging the students important supply of riches—our own to step out of their comfort zone and time and energy. have a go at something strange and difThis leads to the question I want to ficult, it’s high time that I practice what ask of all my fellow alumni: how can we, I preach. the permanent members of the college, In addition, I am grateful to have stay actively engaged with each other— been able to participate for so long in Leo Pickens (A78), director, Alumni Relations, Annapolis doing beautiful things—and help keep the work of the Program (if you believe, the wheel of the Program turning? as some old-time jocks like me do, that Let me conclude with this conversaathletics are an integral part of the ProThe importance of the alumni’s role in tion with the dean, Pamela Kraus. In gram), and now I feel led to do my part to the college was brought home to me recent- discussing my meditation on generosity, I try to help with the challenges of sustaining ly in a conversation I had with a longtime asked, “Is there an element of generosity in the Program at this critical period in the tutor and alumnus. “The long-term health the classroom?” history of the college. What better prepaof the college,” he said, “depends upon our “All good teaching,” she said, “involves ration could I have possibly had to take alumni.” a kind of open giving—a willingness to share on the work of alumni relations—in which This has led me to reflect quite a bit on with others freely.” participation is the sine qua non—than such generosity—for cultivating and practicing “Do you think,” I asked, “that the books long seasoning in a job for which one of generosity appears to be at the heart of a we read are generous in some way?” the main goals was that of getting out the vibrant alumni program. In a conversa“The books have a kind of restraint,” she players? Helping nurture the spirit of one tion with tutor and alumna Katie Heines, I said. “We have to give to them before they community was another of my major efforts expressed my thought that generosity must give to us. We might have to work hard to as athletic director. I look forward to taking be some kind of a habit. get to their riches, but they are capable of this same effort outward into our alumni “Maybe giving,” I said, “is something enormous generosity.” diaspora. that we can practice on a regular basis.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 55 �alumni news s av e t h e d a t e Homecoming 2012 Annapolis Friday, September 28– Sunday, September 30 Paintings and Proust in California Southern California alumni gathered from June through October at the homes of Los Angeles alumni chapter president Tom Melgun (SFGI08) and K.C. Victor (A75) to tackle Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. “It’s a literary and psychological work [that is] an act of genius,” says Victor. Approximately seven determined alumni met for five sessions and used a creative approach to exploring this first of seven works in Proust’s magnum opus. Deirdre Sloyan (A67) arrived at the initial session with a book that surveys the numerous Western paintings referenced in Swann’s Way, which Victor described as “an invaluable resource.” With lively discussions over French-inspired potluck fare and madeleines, the seminars were so successful that the Southern California alumni chapter scheduled additional seminars on the remaining texts in Proust’s monumental series, In Search of Lost Time. —Gregory Shook Dear Alumni, At Homecoming 2012 we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the New Program. There will be numerous activities throughout the weekend—including a panel discussion on Saturday afternoon among former and current deans, tutors, and alumni—that will recognize the history of the New Program and the college. Please join us and your classmates as we celebrate St. John’s College. Alumni Association President Lee Katherine Goldstein (SFGI90) For more information and to register: http://alumni. stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “Homecoming.” Annapolis Alumni Office 410-626-2531 alumni@sjca.edu Santa Fe Alumni Office 505-984-6103 alumni@sjcsf.edu 56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 KATIE MATLACK Presidents Christopher Nelson and Mike Peters Alumni Leadership Forum 2012 KATIE MATLACK Santa Fe Friday, September 14– Sunday, September 16 More than 100 alumni attended ALF 2012. Shown here, alumni re-live a Galileo-inspired junior lab experiment—one of several sessions that engaged alumni in leadership and the life of the college—at the Alumni Leadership Forum on June 8-10 in Annapolis. AFL 2013 will be held on June 7–9 in Santa Fe. “ This is a very exciting time to be involved in the leadership of the Alumni Association and to be working with the college. Together, we are creating more ways in which alumni can engage with and contribute to the well-being of the college, the students, and other alumni.” �alumni news Art and Conversation in Denver Nestled in the heart of the Mile High City’s cultural district, nearly a dozen Denver/Boulder alumni chapter members challenged their minds—and awakened their senses—in a rather unlikely setting for a seminar. Last September, the group gathered together in a coffee shop on the second floor of the Denver Art Museum for a conversation on the existential perspectives of Simone de Beauvoir; in particular, her 1947 work of nonfiction, The Ethics of Ambiguity. Encouraged by chapter leader Beth Kuper (SF69), alumna from the pioneer class at Santa Fe, Elizabeth Jenny (SF80) was inspired by the Washington, D.C., alumni chapter’s recent seminar on de Beauvoir. “I was looking to integrate the senses with the intellect,” says Jenny, a commercial artist who taught graphic design for several years at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. “And ALL ABOUT SHAKESPEARE IN PHILLY Last spring, in keeping with an annual tradition begun several years ago by Jack Armstrong (SF83), several Johnnies gathered at the theater for a party and mini-reunion, then watched a performance of Twelfth Night. From left: Steve Zartarian, Peggy Kozierachi, Helen Zartarian (AGI86), Sigmund Kozierachi, Adam Thimmig (A07), Matt Horst (A07), Cynthia Tobias (AGI05), Leslie (Laszlo) Ujj (A07), and Carmen Khan. the museum turned out to be a great community partner,” adds Jenny. “The institutional and the personal played together so nicely.” Seeking an innovative twist on the traditional seminar format, Jenny arranged a postseminar tour of the museum’s impressive collection of contemporary Western art, which combines the literary arts with the visual arts. The collection features work by artists Clyde Aspevig, Len Chmiel, Daniel Morper, Leon Loughridge, and T. Allen Lawson, including images depicting landscapes completely dominated by man, as well as more idyllic views of man and nature in harmony. Alumni from the Denver Chapter mingle over cocktails and conversation at Robin Riddel Lima’s (SF77) Native American Trading Company after a seminar and art tour at the Denver Art Museum. “The tour provided a powerful, thought-provoking juxtaposition to the de Beauvoir seminar reading,” says Jenny. After this full day of intellectual stimulation, the Colorado alumni chapter members and friends mingled over hors d’oeuvres and signature cocktails—the Apollonian (vodka and apple martini) and the Dionysian (martini with a sugar and Absinthe-dipped rim)—at the Native American Trading Company, across the street from the Denver Art Museum. The gallery’s founders and owners, Jack and Robin Riddel Lima (SF77), hosted the event. There, among the vibrant displays of antique weavings, pottery, baskets, jewelry, artifacts, and vintage photographs, alumni reawakened their senses and kept the relaxed conversation flowing well into the evening. The Colorado alumni credited the party-like atmosphere to the generous hospitality of the Limas, whose gallery is “a work of art itself,” says Jenny. “They brought us into their world, which was great for facilitating conversation.” —Gregory Shook Piraeus In Santa Fe, Piraeus 2012 kicked off on January 13-15 with seminars on selected stories from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, led by tutors Jay Smith (SF77) and Alan Zetilin. In June, alumni in Annapolis explored Misha Berlinski’s Fieldwork and Clifford Geertz’s Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, led by Eva Brann and David Carl, and Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and several of her short stories, led by Tom May and David Townsend. Attendee Gil Roth (AGI95) returned to campus after 17 years and was inspired to interview May and Townsend for his blog, “Virtual Memories.” (Podcast: http://chimeraobscura.com/vm/ podcast-here-at-the-western-world). Mark your calendar for Annapolis Piraeus 2013 May 30-June 2. Piraeus is offered several times each year on each campus. CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE Alumni online community: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu/ Agora career mentoring network: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu click on “Career Services” Alumni offices: alumni@sjca.edu alumni @sjcsf.edu Facebook: facebook.com/stjohnscollege The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 57 �johnnie traditions Rite of Spring by Gregory Shook Grey skies and chilly temperatures couldn’t dampen the Johnnies’ spirits as they gathered on April 28 in and around the Great Hall to celebrate the 30th annual St. John’s-U.S. Naval Academy Croquet Match—nor did the event’s new ground rules quash the convivial atmosphere. In fact, for many alumni, the highly cherished rite of spring signaled a return to form. The class of 1984 led the charge, providing quintessential Johnnie enthusiasm throughout the day. Per tradition, honored member(s) of the St. John’s community struck the opening shot. This year, Claiborne Booker (A84) and Adrian Trevisan (A84)—who received the new “Prime Mover” award—swung the mallet in unison. The Johnnies swept the Mids 5-0, racking up 25 victories out of 30 matches. Spectators donned outrageous, vintage-inspired attire, with a few new twists. Ornate, wide-brimmed hats like those seen topping the Duchess of Cambridge were en vogue. And young alumni donned fancy footwear and filled the air with the robust aroma of cigars. The St. John’s school song, “St. John’s Forever,” even got a makeover. However, the most conspicuous bend on tradition was the sighting of an Elvis impersonator—by all counts, a first. Unchanged was the fact that, for alumni, the annual match is as much about catching up with old friends and reconnecting to the college as it is about the competition. “Croquet has evolved into our annual spring reunion,” says Leo Pickens (A78), director of Alumni Relations on the Annapolis campus. This is certainly true for a devoted group of more than a dozen alumni from the class of 1984. “I’ve attended 27 of the last 30 58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 matches,” says John Ertle (A84), the pioneer croquet team’s Imperial Wicket. Sporting a neon Hawaiian-print hat and ubiquitous “Beat Navy” button, Ertle says that all year he looks forward to attending the event along with his wife, Kathy Ertle (A84), and their two sons. An admirer of tradition, Ertle points out, “This is the same hat that I wore during the first croquet match.” He adds, “Even today’s weather is just like it was then.” Huddled around the front steps of the Barr-Buchanan Center, spectators anticipated one of the match’s most revered traditions—the unveiling of the Johnnie team’s uniforms. And the Johnnies did not disappoint. Bursting through the doors to a cheering crowd, the players donned replica St. John’s Public Safety Officer’s uniforms, complete with functioning walkie-talkies, mirrored shades, and novelty mustaches. It was a playful spoof on the new ground rules, for which the Imperial Wicket and team showed tremendous support. “It’s important to keep it fun,” says Johnnie Fleming (A12), the team’s Imperial Wicket and the fifth in his family to graduate from St. John’s. Fleming refers to both the competition and the fact that the croquet match has grown from a purely St. John’s event to one that includes the wider community; hence the college’s new policies restricting outside alcohol and other changes. “We want croquet to be something that we can all enjoy and that reflects well on our community,” says Pickens. Fleming echoes this desire; he penned an editorial in The Gadfly weeks before the match to make his point. “We’ve opened our campus to the public and it certainly would be a bummer if the [wider community members] who come were to ruin it for the people already here.” After 30 years of croquet in Annapolis, the pageantry and spirit remain strong, if somewhat evolved. As Fleming notes, “[Johnnies] have built it, and people just keep coming, and it is excellent.” �Ornate, wide-brimmed hats like those seen topping the Duchess of Cambridge were en vogue. And young alumni donned fancy footwear and filled the air with the robust aroma of cigars. St. John’s Forever New lyrics by Charles Branan (A13) Arranged by John Bonn True love of wisdom is sheltered in her halls. Seekers of virtue will answer to her call. Books and a balance are all the tools we need. St. John’s forever! She will make us free. Clockwise (from top): Spectator Susanna Herrick shows off her wide-brimmed hat; Patrick E. McDowell (A01) and his wife, Citlali, in festive attire; Imperial Wickets Johnnie Fleming (A12) and John Ertle (A84, the original Imperial Wicket); Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70), Claiborne Booker (A84), Adrian Trevisan (A84); Longtime attendees Carolyn Smith, William Henley, and Jane Taylor. View video by Domenic D’Andrea (A15) and more photos at facebook.com/ stjohnscollege. Charles David Branan (A13) won the Trevisan-Booker Prize for penning new lyrics to the school song, “St. John’s Forever.” In a nod to the college’s origins as the King William’s School, founded in 1696, he was awarded a cash prize of $1,696. A music aficionado from Sandersville, Georgia, Branan is a member of the St. John’s Madrigal Choir, a group inspired by Renaissance polyphony. “Music is absolutely crucial to the Program,” says Branan. “It has influenced everything we study as well as the authors we read.” John Bonn, father of Tommy Bonn (A13) and winner for the song’s new four-part a cappella vocal arrangement, values music in a liberal arts education and says, “Music pushes the mind and encourages abstract thought.” Long-time friends Adrian Trevisan (A84) and Claiborne Booker (A84) created the contest to update the college’s original anthem, “St. John’s March.” The new song will be sung each year at croquet. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 | 59 �st. john’s forever Classic Cellar Nestled in the basement of Humphreys Hall, the College Bookstore, with its centuries-old brick walls, eight-foot ceilings, and walls of books, remains as much a haven for Annapolis Johnnies today as it was in this circa-1974 photo. But where have those couches gone? As part of the first building added to the college, the Bookstore has endured myriad changes, including from dormitory to military hospital and morgue for Union soldiers during the Civil War. Even the couches, ashtrays, and chess boards for 60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2012 Johnnies who play games changed; they found their way into the Coffee Shop in McDowell, to make way for expanded shelf space. When this photo was taken, the Bookstore housed approximately 12,000 titles. In 1998, Robin Dunn, manager for the past 15 years, ushered in one of the Bookstore’s most significant changes to date: a computerized system to track inventory, which has grown to include nearly 45,000 books and more than 21,000 different titles. �eidos DOUG PLUMMER Eidos is a section of the magazine that showcases alumni who are accomplished in the visual arts. Please send us a link to your portfolio and an artist’s statement for consideration in future issues of The College. �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 a d d r e ss se rvi ce r e qu e st ed Annapolis, md Permit N0. 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <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. 60 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Summer 2012 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Summer_2012 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 37, Issue 1 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Summer 2012. 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/e01bf5bd1684cd2826bd3633922a00ff.pdf 7bc0efbba66f77cd5c863ff3aa67334d PDF Text Text WINTER 2015 • S T. J O H N ’ S ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Miguel de Cervantes A Bold Vision �ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �from the editor The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. Editor Gregory Shook gregory.shook@sjc.edu Contributing Editor Gabe Gomez Contributors Laura Bartram (A15) Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Sus3an Borden (A87) Jacques Duvoisin (A80) Jaime Dunn Claudia Hauer Susan Kaplan Eunji Kim (A15) Jennifer Levin Paula Novash J. Walter Sterling (A93) Cem Turkoz (A16) Babak Zarin (A11) Design Skelton Design Contributing Designer Jennifer Behrens The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis: 410-626-2539 Santa Fe: 505-984-6104 LEFT: INSIGHT FOTO, SANTA FE, NM Shared Ideals “�When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes’ (1547–1616) novel Don Quixote is among the most enduring contributions to the literary world for good reason. The tale’s idealistic yet flawed hero embodies shades of the very human elements that each of us see within ourselves. Furthermore, the story reminds us of our instinctual yearning to strive for something bigger, and greater, than us. Most of all, Don Quixote is beloved as a celebration of bold vision, spirit of adventure, and pursuit of virtue. This issue of The College magazine is devoted to the recognition of a vision fulfilled – the founding of the Santa Fe campus – now marking its 50th anniversary. More than 1,600 miles from where Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan realized an earlier vision for St. John’s by establishing the New Program, then-president Richard Weigle and a band of hopeful Santa Feans set out to expand the reach of St. John’s. “This new founding has brought aspects of our shared enterprise to the fore that might not have been quite so visible before,” notes Santa Fe tutor and Annapolis alumnus Jacques Duvoisin (A80). Santa Fe tutor Claudia Hauer brings the founding of the Santa Fe campus to life through an oral history project that captures the various “perspectives and tales that make up our story.” With more than an entire day’s worth of recorded interviews with former officers, tutors from the earliest years, and many others from the college’s community, the project casts light on “a triumph of one man’s will, a fellowship of new learning, and the start of a quixotic journey of self-definition for an institution that was not new in conception, but new to the world,” observes Hauer. As the stories in this issue attest, the Johnnie ecosystem contains many voices and viewpoints, but at its core, shared ideals. Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952) contributes his own visionary tale—to pursue his passion for great wine. Voices of current Johnnies are also heard, from destinations far and near. Eunji Kim (A15), whose journey begins in Korea, ruminates on her nearly four years at St. John’s and how the experience has shaped her ability “to examine questions and issues from infinite perspectives…” Laura Bartram (A15) travels to the western coast of Ireland, joined by a group of architecture students led by Washington, D.C.-based architect Travis Price (A71), to “architecturally reinterpret the myth and history of a remote culture.” As we reflect on the Santa Fe campus’ seminal moments, we also look to the horizon where the conversation continues. In this issue, we meet Johnnies who are making history and shaping the future in the fields of education, health, and medicine. Aided by the college’s Ariel Internship Program, Rachel Reid (SF14) breaks new ground in cancer research at California’s City of Hope, where she learned that “the days of the lone genius in the lab are gone.” Susan Vorkoper (SF04), a global researcher and policy analyst, discovers that collaboration, “partnership, and coalition-building between people,” is the secret to progress. In the classroom, James Myers (SF09) shares his passion for classical languages and great books with the next generation of visionaries. And Greg Toppo (SF85), the national education reporter for USA Today, explores how gaming and digital technology can make students smarter. On a final note, I wish to express my gratitude to Patricia Dempsey, director of Communications in Annapolis and editor of The College magazine, who recently left the college to establish a consulting practice. The pages of this publication for the past decade, as well as in this issue, reflect her affection for and dedication to the college and all that it represents. —GS The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 1 �w i n t e r 2 015 volume 40, issue 1 Quixote’s transition from his naiveté to his selfreferential and self-conscious anxiety creates an analogy for the Santa Fe campus’s progress, from its ardent youth to the more mature institution of today. —Claudia Hauer, tutor F E AT U R E S page 16�� p a ge 2 0�� page 28 Two Campuses. Many Viewpoints. Authors of Our Own Story Shaping the Future With a country between them, the college’s two distinctive campuses share a profound sameness — and celebrate a major milestone in Santa Fe. Through a collection of recordings and written contributions, voices from early faculty members, college friends and officers, among others illustrate the journey of Johnnie expansion out West. Three alumni lend their talents to make positive societal change, from examining gaming technology in education to impacting health research and policy to exploring the great books with the next generation of leaders. on the cover: Cervantes illustration by Scott McKowen 2 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 �JAMES KEGLEY D E PA R T M E N T S From Our Readers �� Bibliofile Alumni 4 34 �Tutor Peter Pesic explores the 36 � U � nder the Kudzu From the Bell Towers 6 W � estward Vision: Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952) 8 � Ariel Intern: Rachel Reid (SF14) 9 On Liberal Education 10 New Directors of Admissions 11 Future Johnnies 12 � For Learning’s Sake: Eunji Kim (A15) 13 � Born to Write: Nathaniel Goldman (A14) 14 � Continuing the Conversation � 15 �The Prison Project: Andy Blanco (A15) intersection of science and art in Music and the Making of Modern Science. 35 �Désirée Zamorano (SF83) sheds light on the Latina experience in her novel The Amado Women. �Deborah Achtenberg (A73) pairs ancient and modern philosophy in Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other. Alumni Notes 39 �Profile: Gay Hall (AGI99) is a leader in military midwifery 43 � In Memoriam 46 � Philanthropy: Santa Fe 50th, Memorial Trees, Gift from the Elders, Gregory Riley (A93), and Hallie Leighton (SF92) 48 � Student Voices: Laura Bartram (A15) �Darrel Moellendorf (A83) brings a philosophical perspective to key global issues in The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Poverty, and Policy. reflects on the spirit of place. 50 � Almuni News: Homecoming 2015 Johnnie Traditions 52 � St. John’s Forever Eidos 53 Eleanor Peters above: Susan Vorkoper (SF04), global health researcher and policy analyst for the Fogarty International Center at NIH, Bethesda, Md. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 3 �from our readers Johnnie Women in Film In response to a notice in the summer 2014 issue of The College, these Johnnies share stories about their projects in the film industry. Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk Claudia (Probst) Stack (A88) is an educator and filmmaker whose previous film about historic African American schools, Under the Kudzu, won the 2012 Direc- tor’s Choice Award from the Cape Fear Independent Film Festival. Her newest film, Carrie Mae: An American Life, is the story of Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk, one of 15 children born into a sharecropping family in Duplin County, North Carolina, in 1923. After her father’s death when she was in high school, she thought her dream of becoming a teacher had died, too. However, with the help from her principal, she obtained a work scholarship to attend Kittrell College and went on to earn her degree from Elizabeth City State Teachers’ College. Stack has worked in freshmen programming and taught seminars for 17 years at the college level (Boston University and University of North Carolina, Wilmington). She is currently in her fourth year of teaching special education at D.C. Virgo Preparatory Academy, a Title 1 middle school in Wilmington, North Carolina. Jan Lisa Huttner (A73) is an internationally known film critic who has been working for more than a decade to help women filmmakers break through what she calls “the celluloid ceiling.” Jan Lisa Huttner (A73) 4 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 “Since I first started the WITASWA Project (Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now) in 2004, there have been over 1,200 International SWAN Day events all around the world,” notes Huttner. “And these are just the ones we know about. We find out about more all the time.” Huttner is the author of Penny’s Picks: 50 Movies by Women Filmmakers 2002-2011. �from our readers Letters A Time for Tolstoy In the fall of 1976, during my junior year, Mr. Robert Bart led a preceptorial on Anna Karenina. The question of what I would be when I grew up weighed heavily on me that fall. My mother also had died a few weeks before the preceptorial began. As we read and discussed the novel, I found myself identifying deeply with the character Levin. His struggles with questions of meaning, identity, vocation, and love helped me to wrestle with my own questions. The story gave me hope that I would find a sense of purpose and vocation for my own life. Anna Karenina was the book I needed to read that season, and that preceptorial was the class I needed to be in. —Michael Ciba (A78) Young Doctors in Scrubs During the summer before senior year I worked as a uniformed security guard at various locations. One assignment was a hospital entry where my job consisted of telling people they couldn’t park there. I did my St. John’s summer reading to fill the time. Young doctors in scrubs would rush past me. One called out, ‘what are you reading there, War and Peace?’ I held it up since, of course, it was. —Alan McVay (SF76) Kudos from the Pacific Northwest Greetings from the Pacific Northwest! Kudos on a wonderful edition of The College magazine [Summer 2014]. Perhaps it’s having recently spent a week on the Santa Fe campus for my sixth consecutive summer Piraeus and having been an active member of the greater SJC community for 25 years now, but I got a lot of pleasure out of reading the current issue of The College from cover to cover. —Greg Rhoades (SFGI89) “�Where is the St. John’s College story told now, in ways that grip the heart and soul of a generation, a people, and a public audience, and that reach both popular media and educated elite; most of all, in ways that get to the aspiring, ambitious, thoughtful young person?” life magazine, February 5, 1940. The St. John’s Story I first learned about St. John’s from a LIFE magazine story that was written in 1940. I discovered it while scrounging through the musty basement of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. It was a story with no age—and corny as it may sound, a story that rang as strong and true as a liberty bell. The story led me to apply (and just barely get accepted) to the Annapolis campus, where I managed to make it through four exhilarating years with a tight, tough graduating class of more than 40 students. Where is the St. John’s College story told now, in ways that grip the heart and soul of a generation, a people, and a public audience, and that reach both popular media and educated elite; most of all, in ways that get to the aspiring, ambitious, thoughtful young person? —John Dean (A70) Future Reading After St. John’s, I aimed to show that our liberal education could lead to the advancement of modern knowledge. I could see that hopes for an “American renaissance in higher education” were disappointed. Experience in the armed forces and travel abroad convinced me that the work that needed doing and that was within my power was to make an intellectual contribution to peace. I discovered the old-world federalist movement, which aimed to replace the international anarchy with the rule of world law. I determined to write a history of it. But first I had to meet the challenge of Aristotle’s dictum that poetry is more philosophical than history (Poetics, 9:1451b5-7). Now, only particulars actually exist; Joseph Baratta (A69) genera are abstract classes. Soon I discovered Common Cause, the old journal of the University of Chicago’s Committee to Frame a World Constitution, which was the perfect place for a Johnnie to begin. I delved deep into the drafting of the Charter of the United Nations, the representation of diverse humanity, the powers to establish universal justice. I picked a universal theme and aimed to write a great book that would still be readable in a hundred years, The Politics of World Federation. —Joseph Preston Baratta (A69) Homecoming 2014 set record attendance at both Annapolis and Santa Fe. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 5 �Westward Vision Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952) is the founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and known internationally for producing the Cabernet Sauvignon that bested the finest French wines at the historic “Judgment of Paris” wine-tasting in 1976. That win brought global attention to the Napa Valley and California wines. He went on to craft consistently high-quality wines throughout his long career as a vintner. In 1964 Winiarski was at the University of Chicago, teaching in the Basic Program of the University College and studying with the Committee on Social Thought, when he decided to move to California with his wife and young children to pursue his passion for wine. His close allegiance to St. John’s leads him to enjoy the synchronicity of his heading west the same year the college’s western campus opened. In a recent interview, Winiarski looked back at this bold move, his work as a vintner, and the role that vision has played in his life. What made you want to become a vintner and a wine grower? I’ve always been interested in growing plants. I was in charge of growing food during the Second World War in my family’s victory garden. Later I took summer jobs as a gardening assistant and became interested in growing things in a horticultural way. It’s not agriculture because ‘agri’ means field and field crops are treated differently than horticultural crops. ‘Hortus’ means garden. In a garden you treat plants as individuals. No one singles out a cornstalk for special attention. But you have to grow horticultural plants individually. There is also the fact that my name, Winiarski, is derived from the word for wine. It means a winemaker’s son. And my father did make wine. During Prohibition a head of a household could legally make up to 200 gallons of wine annually for family purposes. I remember hearing the fermentation in the barrels he used, hearing the bubbling of this wonderful mysterious thing. Later I spent time doing graduate studies in Italy, where wine was more than a ceremonial and a celebratory beverage. I was introduced to the practice of a glass of wine to accompany a meal, but that was forgotten when I returned to the Midwest and its sober ways. One day a friend brought a bottle of wine for lunch and it all came back with a rush — all the pleasure that wine could bring to a meal — it was an epiphany. Wine revealed itself as something very special and I began to read about it, talk to people about different kinds of wine and how they got to be the way they were. What enabled you, a new father with a family to support, to decide to pursue this career? It dawned on me that a way of life could be built around this interest and my family could be engaged in growing grapes and making wine. I found a place in a two-man winery in Napa, about the size that I hoped to have someday. I was the number two man, which gave me the opportunity to go through the winemaking cycle from grape growing to wine bottling. My wife Barbara (Class of 1955) also wanted a rural way of life. It had risk but 6 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 it appeared to offer a fulfilling life. It was going to take full dedication to make it work. At some point she said that she felt we were going over Niagara Falls in a barrel; there was no turning back. What was your vision for yourself as a vintner at the time you made this decision? In my mind I had a model from Philip Wagner, an editor of the Baltimore Sun. He had a small winery in the outskirts of Baltimore where he produced charming wines. He had written a book called American Wines and How to Make Them, which was a powerful influence on my thinking. He wrote about the inwardness of winemaking, the human element as much as technical things. His writing was part of a transformation in my own heart. At what point did you decide to work your own vineyard? While I was working as an apprentice I purchased a small piece of land where I put in about four acres of grapes. My grafting process was not successful, and it had to be done over because I wasn’t giving the root stock adequate water. But �I learned from that effort, and in 1970 I planted a second vineyard on land that had been used as a prune orchard for 40 years and it was very successful. In 1973 we had our first commercial crop. That was the wine that went to Paris in 1976 and was preferred over some of the greatest wines in Bordeaux in a blind tasting by French experts. A bottle of that wine is now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution and was chosen by the Smithsonian magazine as one of “101 objects that made America.” It fulfilled a prophecy made by Thomas Jefferson about 200 years before when he said that American wines would be different from those of Europe but “doubtless as good.” The moral of that story: never underestimate what you can do with a prune orchard when you have a vision. What role did your St. John’s education play in your work as a winemaker? I want to express my indebtedness and my gratitude to that education because it was through the St. John’s method of inviting learning by questioning and by the close following of the reasoning embedded in the works that we studied that I developed the skills I applied to learning grape growing and winemaking. I called it “Books and Balances in the vineyard and winery.” “�Grapes die but wine emerges; LEGACY OF having the skills to guide WINEMAKING it appropriately is critical. Like a great book, there is truth in That is all determined by a great wine. The fifth annual In Vino Veritas, held February 27-28 at the Annapwinemaker’s vision: will it olis campus, celebrates alumni vintners be an epic or a short story and a legacy of the finest American winemaking. The fundraiser features or a poem?” special guest Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952), founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Winiarski has influenced generations of winemakers, especially St. John’s alumni who learned their craft under his tutelage. The event also features renowned Napa winemakers Larry Turley (SF69), founder of Turley Wine Cellars; Abe Schoener (A82), founder of The Scholium Project; Zach Rasmuson (A95), chief operating officer of Duckhorn Wine Company; and Rory Williams (A07), founder of Calder Wine Company. For more information, visit invinoveritasannapolis.com. What is the role of vision in winemaking? Wine is made from grapes, but grapes are only the material. What wine becomes is guided by a vision of what it should be. How you plant, when you harvest, and what you do to the grapes — each step in the process of the wine’s coming to be is guided by the vision of what you want it to become. You must know at a high degree of detail what the natural process is, what the dangers are, where to intervene and where to stay out. Grapes die but wine emerges; having the skills to guide it appropriately is critical. That is all determined by a winemaker’s vision. — Sus3an Borden (A87) The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 7 �from the bell towers 2014-2015 NEW BOARD MEMBERS The Board of Visitors and Governors welcomes these new members: Bryan Dorland (A92), a former Marine, was an intern at the Naval Research Laboratory’s Space Science Division while attending St. John’s. He received his MSc and PhD in physics from the University of Maryland. In 2001, he joined the Astrometry Department at the U.S. Naval Observatory to work on astronomical satellites; he is now the head of the department. In 2012, he was awarded the Alumni Award of Merit to recognize his professional accomplishments and work in support of St. John’s and its students. Ariel Intern Makes History in Cancer Research Rachel Reid (SF14) spent last summer in a lab at the City of Hope Cancer Research Center in Duarte, California, researching the effects of PP2A activation on Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) cells. She received an Ariel Internship, a funded opportunity to explore a possible career choice. Stephen Forman (A70), the Francis and Kathleen McNamara Distinguished Chair in Hematology and Hematopoetic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope, facilitates biomedical internships for Johnnies and spent time with Reid describing his own transition from St. John’s to medical school. “I learned that the days of the lone genius in the lab are gone,” says Reid. “Modern science is largely a collaborative exercise, and St. John’s provides a great background in learning and inquiring with other people.” Under the direction of mentor Dr. Amy Cook, Reid began by reading research on the PP2A gene, which she likens to translating ancient Greek. At first, she says, it was “about as excruciatingly slow as translating the first few pages of the Meno. But the more I read, the faster I became. I looked up each unfamiliar word and built my scientific vocabulary slowly.” Rachel Reid (SF 14) Next she ran assays to test which cellular pathways a PP2A activator, FTY720, worked through. PP2A is the gene that controls cell growth and proliferation. Up to 70 percent of AML cases show evidence of PP2A hyper-phosphorylation, “a fancy way of saying that the gene is underexpressed in cancer cells,” says Reid. “This is bad, because the role of PP2A is to ensure that cell growth does not get out of hand, which would certainly be useful as a way to control or prevent cancer.” Dr. Cook, Reid’s mentor, had been having some success in treating cancer cells in vitro with FTY720. The task Reid took up was to further the understanding of exactly how FTY720 was able to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. The two main assays she conducted were Quantitative Real Time Polymerase Chain Reactions (rt qPCRZ) and Western Blots. “What this boils down to is that I did a lot of moving very small amounts of liquids into different tubes and then cooking them,” says Reid. “Toward the end of my internship I was able to prove that FTY720 can affect an oncogene cluster to the GSK36 pathway – and I was the first person in the history of the human race to know that.” —Jennifer Levin 8 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 John L. Gray (EC12) was named the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in May 2012. Previously, he was the founding president of the Autry National Center of the American West and created the Institute for the Study of the American West. During his prior career in commercial banking, he served as executive vice president of First Interstate Bank of California in Los Angeles (1987-1996). He is a member of the Presidents’ Council. Wilfred M. (Bill) McClay (A73) is the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty and director of the Center for the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. An award-winning author, he has taught at numerous universities and served on the National Council on the Humanities (2002-2008). He and his wife, Julie Holt McClay, are members of the Presidents’ Council and the parents of two alumni, Barbara (A12) and Mark (A09). Joshua Rogers (A98) founded Arete Wealth Management, LLC in 2007 and currently serves as the CEO, president, and wealth advisor. Previously, he spent eight years at American Express Financial Advisors/Ameriprise Financial, ultimately serving as field vice president in the Chicago market group. As an entrepreneur with Walker Digital, he was a co-inventor of a number of patents, including the “name your own price” e-commerce concept, which today is the backbone of Priceline.com. He serves on various literary, art, and business boards in Chicago. �from the bell towers Preserving Our Socratic Inheritance In honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus, St. John’s hosted a national conference on liberal education in October. More than two years in the making, emanating from concerns of the college’s faculty regarding questions central to today’s debates around higher education, the event on the Santa Fe campus was at once substantive and celebratory—and noteworthy to a wide audience. We hosted more than 200 participants, including over 70 paper presenters. Under the rubric “What is Liberal Education For?” the St. John’s way was often thematic: tutor David Levine (Class of 1967) and Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) addressed the purposes of the Program; tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Peter Pesic explored the “immediacy” and “wonder” that animate what we do; tutors Chester Burke (A74) and Cary Stickney (A75) chaired a roundtable discussion exemplifying our study of “scientific” texts by discussing a selection from Maxwell. What was most visible from the outside was the permanent (and presently acute) debate regarding whether the liberal arts stand as ends in themselves or whether they must serve the practical and political ends of career and citizenship—and whether this question has a different character now than it has before. There were speakers from Zaytuna College and Dharma Realm Buddhist University – the first Islamic liberal arts college in America and a Buddhist great books college, respectively – who have looked to St. John’s for inspiration and who renew the courageous spirit of “founders” so characteristic of what brought our Program into existence. Dean GAN Yang of Boya College (the flagship experiment Many participants commented on what we at St. John’s take for granted: the unafraid, unapologetic, and direct questions of our students—that great Socratic inheritance that our college has passed on to every generation of Johnnies. part of the antidote to the creeping invasion of attention-stealing marketing and proliferating screens. Many participants commented on what we at St. John’s take for granted: the unafraid, unapologetic, and direct questions of our students— that great Socratic inheritance that our college has passed on to every generation of Johnnies. Many academics reminded us that St. John’s is still looked to as a model of what they try to do in their home institutions. At the same time, many legitimate challenges were raised to the complacency, self-regard, or homeostasis of the liberal arts. In hindsight it seems to me that the tacit thesis of the conference was that liberal education is for the sake of our humanity. The common thread was a defense of humanism, in a broad and contested, but rigorous, sense. This connected the talks of all our featured speakers and many if not all of the panels. It is through liberal education, in all its dimensions, that we become and preserve what we are. The conference confirmed that, after 50 years in Santa Fe and 77 in Annapolis, the St. John’s Program remains one of the most important living examples of the uncompromising pursuit of the true ends of a liberal education. There could be no better reason to celebrate our past and our bright future. —J. Walter Sterling (A93), tutor in a western-style liberal arts education in China today, anchored in the reading of great books of the East and West) reminded us that we in the West must excel not just for ourselves but in order to support the future of liberal education in China. Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft, argued eloquently that philosophy’s present imperative to keep us close to a world of real things will be An archive of the conference schedule, video-recorded sessions, and articles on the conference can be found at www.sjc.edu/ programs-and-events/santa-fe/50th-anniversary-conference. The college is preparing an audio archive and digital archive of nearly all the papers delivered. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 9 �from the bell towers A Conversation with New Directors of Admissions St. John’s welcomes two new admissions directors: Thomas Weede, who is serving as interim director in Annapolis, and Yvette Sobky Shaffer in Santa Fe. Weede has served at several liberal arts schools, including Carroll College, Warren Wilson College, Iona College, and Butler University. Shaffer was dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. They share their thoughts on admissions marketing and how alumni can support their efforts. What skills and qualities does a college admissions director need? What is most on the minds of prospective students? YS: They are terrified of the college search process. Some of the top schools only accept 4 percent of applications, and students are urged to write their college essays earlier. For this high-pressure decision, they seek professional guidance from counselors. Students often ask how to make that transition from high school student to adult. We shouldn’t discount those very human, very necessary growth opportunities. How does the admissions staff reach prospective students? TW: We make sure that our website is current, with new [elements] that entice people to visit. Direct mail and advertising on the internet are other ways. And we visit schools. doctors, lawyers, scientists, and entrepreneurs St. John’s has produced. This is a very relevant education, and our alumni outcomes are amazing. We should share that with the world. How has the Summer Academy impacted enrollment? YS: It has been hugely influential. Our classroom methods are transformational for some of these students, who are especially surprised by the math and science components. Many students who weren’t considering St. John’s changed their minds after attending the Summer Academy. About 25 percent of its participants become St. John’s students, but the 75 percent who didn’t go to the Summer Academy also speak lovingly about their time here. TW: Be open to new ideas and to what data suggests, but not ignorant about what your gut tells you. The best schools compete for the best students, embracing marketing to build their brand. This new language for higher education is used at every level, from top colleges to community colleges. YS: In the last 10 to 15 years, schools have more marketing savvy. The internet has changed the “gate keeper” admissions model in which students apply to an administrator processing papers. You have to keep up with what is happening in the private sector, too, because the most successful schools are doing so. How is St. John’s addressing those changes? YS: The new website is a big step, optimizing search engines to help students find St. John’s College. That is really important. St. John’s should own that we are the great books school, and our website is a key component. Marketing is not about changing St. John’s. It’s about being authentic and finding the people who are interested in who we are and what we have to offer. TW: Admissions has always been about relationships, and we encourage our admissions teams to get to know the students and to be trusted advisors. Through discussion, we draw an accurate picture of the institution and the staff helps to end [possible] misperceptions. It’s a tried and true St. John’s way. YS: Word of mouth really helps. Our amazing alumni base speaks highly of their education. I’m delighted by the One Alum|One Referral program. That kind of personal attention from alumni is key to leading students to the college. How else can alumni support Admissions efforts? TW: The most important way is by helping the right students find out about St. John’s. Alumni can call or meet with students, usually after acceptance, to talk about their St. John’s experience and life after St. John’s. We are always looking for volunteers to help with college fairs. YS: Every time you give a lecture or talk to business contacts, mention your alma mater. People are shocked at how many 10 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Yvette Sobky Shaffer and Thomas Weede, directors of Admissions How would you describe the student who belongs at St. John’s? TW: Most importantly, someone decides that he or she belongs. Our students come from all over, with different backgrounds and beliefs. There is little to stereotype, so it’s difficult to target a specific kind of student. Our alumni play an important role in finding new students who have a passion for reading and asking questions. Alumni can tap them on the shoulder and say that there is a place where you can have these discussions, and you’re going to love every minute of it. —Interview by Gregory Shook �from the bell towers ALUMNI AMBASSADORS: RECRUITING FUTURE JOHNNIES Alumni in all career fields are encouraged to talk about St. John’s to college-bound students. Mentors are adults with whom “young people have an affinity or connection,” says James Mikkelson (SFGI86), an English teacher at the Shanghai American School in China, where he has worked for the last 10 years. Students “want to hear when someone thinks a school would be right for them.” One Alum|One Referral is a new program that helps alumni connect relatives, family friends, or anyone they think will thrive at St. John’s with the college’s admissions offices. James Mikkelson (SFGI86) “�When I see intelligent students who want to read outside the curriculum, I suggest they look into St. John’s. These students are sincere in their efforts to get the most out of their education, [and] willing to take risks orally and verbally to get that education.” Word of mouth is also a valuable resource for the college’s admissions efforts. “When I see intelligent students who want to read outside the curriculum, I suggest they look into St. John’s,” says Mikkelson. “These students are sincere in their efforts to get the most out of their education, [and] willing to take risks orally and verbally to get that education.” Mikkelson, who keeps a St. John’s poster on his classroom door, emphasizes how crucial the liberal arts are. One of his first students, Dohee Kang (SF14), was a member of the Socratic Club that Mikkelson founded at the Shanghai American School; they read and discussed Plato’s Republic. “People in my high school were really competitive, trying to get into prestigious universities,” says Kang. “Everything was geared toward résumés, and I wanted something different.” Kang had to convince her parents that St. John’s was right for her. “I got into the University of Chicago, where they wanted me to go,” she says. “Mr. Mikkelson helped give me the courage to make my own decision.” After graduating from St. John’s, Kang attended the college’s Summer Film Institute in Santa Fe and is now earning her master’s in Eastern Classics at the Graduate Institute. Cynthia Ma (SF16) attended the Shanghai American School but was not in Mikkelson’s class. Her guidance counselor suggested that she talk to Mikkelson about choosing a college. They wound up reading Crime and Punishment together. “I was really nervous about coming to St. John’s,” says Ma. “But Mr. Mikkelson made me feel comfortable with the learning style. Talking to St. John’s alumni, I got an accurate picture of what [my experience] would be like.” ONE ALUM | ONE REFERRAL www.sjc.edu/1alum1referral Do you know a student who belongs at St. John’s? Alumni referrals are one of the most effective sources for prospective applicants. The Alumni Association is calling upon all Johnnies to refer promising high school students to the admissions offices through the One Alum| One Referral campaign. It’s not too late to refer applicants for the 2015 admissions cycle. Participate today and help the college discover the next generation of Johnnies. For more information about the One Alum|One Referral program: www.sjc.edu/alumni/1alum1referral —Jennifer Levin The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 11 �from the bell towers Learning for Learning’s Sake During the past three years as a St. John’s student in Annapolis, I have visited most of the monuments in Washington, D.C. In the fall of my senior year, I finally had the opportunity to visit the Supreme Court during a field trip arranged by the Career Services Office, with more than a dozen Johnnies. Stepping into the U.S. Supreme Court’s Great Hall, I was surprised by the vast, empty space, wondering if the Supreme Court of Korea looked the same. I kept thinking back to Korea and my decision to withdraw from the university there to come to St. John’s. Leading us into a courtroom that was much smaller than I had imagined, our guide explained that people sometimes camp outside in order to claim a seat for important cases. I was shocked; I could not imagine people camping outside the Supreme Court of Korea. The guide said that justices have already read the case documents, so they ask the lawyers questions during the oral argument. Then the justices meet privately to discuss the case. This process reminds me of seminar at St. John’s; we each bring our own thoughts and opinions to the table and work together to get closer to the truth and gain a deeper understanding of important questions. The judicial process implies a certain trust that rightful decisions will be made, based on the facts of a case, the arguments of the lawyers, and the wisdom of the justices. We at St. John’s have the freedom to examine questions and issues from infinite perspectives, whereas justices must make decisions within a given time frame. Whether in court or in seminar, we trust human reason and our capacity to work together. When I studied U.S. and international law at my university in Korea, I learned about famous Supreme Court cases, but it was through my experience at St. John’s that I was able to think about the cases ANYI GUO (A14) By Eunji Kim (A15) Whether in court or in seminar, we trust human reason and our capacity to work together. beyond their summaries. I look forward to reading actual cases and opinions during my final semester; I can sense how much deeper understanding I will have. At my previous university, I memorized facts for exams—and then forgot most of them. I questioned what I was actually learning. In Korea, many students study for the sole purpose of doing well on tests, in order to get into a good college, where the focus shifts to boosting their résumés to land a good job. Consequently, education becomes less about learning and more about competition. At St. John’s, classes are a collaborative environment where we learn together. It’s not about efficiency; discussion is part of the learning process. We are willing to take “wrong turns” because sometimes that is how we get further along the path of considering the question at hand. 12 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 While watching tutors lead classes, I’ve learned to value patience and listen to every voice. Each of us brings something unique to the table. Our classes have shown me a way in which education can happen without being about rankings. Everyone contributes and everyone wins. As someone interested in working in the education field, I can recall my experience at St. John’s to figure out what education should be like. What I read and learn here becomes part of me, remaining with me in a way that memorized facts do not. I have gotten what I expected and more from my St. John’s experience. I have confronted texts that I would never have encountered on my own. The curriculum has a richness that you don’t get anywhere else. It can be subtle, but it has changed how I view myself and the world. Senior year speaks well to this transition. It has made me question what I know and be open to a larger world of possibilities. Looking at what I’m reading this year, I realize how different it would be if I had read it as a freshman. It makes me want to reread everything from freshman year. I have grown and learned so much at St. John’s and I am very thankful. �from the bell towers p a t h way s “�I plan to pursue a career as a professor of literature and WRITING FROM creative writing. This path THE START will allow me to write, to Nathaniel Goldman’s (A14) fascination with continue to question what writing fiction began around the time he learned to walk. “Reading and writing ficit means to write and why it tion was always a big part of my childhood,” says Goldman. By high school, he was ready matters, and to cultivate new to attend the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, voices and join with them in where he was exposed to a breadth of literary works and developed an affinity for studying great voices of the science fiction. He also wrote flash fiction, past and present.” penning a 50,000-word story in a month. ANYI GUO (A14) Now he realizes that he prefers writing short, complete works instead of novels. Nathaniel Goldman (A14) At St. John’s, Goldman was co-editor of The Gadfly and Energeia, edited the admissions blog “Johnnie Talk,” and assisted students with their essays. “It was interesting, as I had mostly written fiction before I came here,” says Goldman. “I hadn’t done a lot of journalistic, essay, or expository writing outside of class. The first thing I wrote [at St. John’s] was a profile of Ms. Kraus during her first year as dean.” In 2013, he received a Pathways Fellowship to attend the Yale Writers’ Conference in New Haven; the summer program’s workshops covered general fiction and short fiction. In 2014, Goldman developed his portfolio at the Tin House writers’ work- shop at Reed College. During his “Choosing St. John’s” speech for the Caritas Society, Goldman said, “I plan to pursue a career as a professor of literature and creative writing. This path will allow me to write, to continue to question what it means to write and why it matters, and to cultivate new voices and join with them in studying great voices of the past and present.” Currently based in Madison, Wisconsin, Goldman is a technical writer for Epic, an electronic medical record company, and continues to write fiction. —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Princeton in Africa On October 23, at its annual gala in New York City, Princeton in Africa presented The Princeton in Africa Medal to Paul Tierney, his wife, Susan, and their children, Michael, Trish, and Matt. Tierney is a former member of the St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors, who serves on the Presidents’ Council. The family received the award for their volunteer and philanthropic work encouraging innovative, sustainable solutions across Africa, their expansion of opportunities for African women, and their company’s efforts to bring investment funding and much-needed attention to companies and communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Princeton in Africa is an independent nonprofit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey, which develops young leaders committed to Africa’s advancement. Since its founding in 1999, Princeton in Africa has sent nearly 400 Fellows to 35 countries to support dozens of inspiring host organizations. “Each of the Tierneys spent a formative period of time in Africa or Latin America and demonstrates how a year of service as a young adult, such as the fellowships offered by Princeton in Africa, can be life-changing,” said Jim Robinson, president of the Princeton in Africa Board of Directors and father of a former Princeton in Africa Fellow. “We are honored to be able to recognize the Tierneys’ individual achievements and their remarkable commitment as a family to Africa.” The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 13 �from the bell towers Virtually Socratic Johnnies yearning to gather around the seminar table for good conversation may look no further than their computers, tablets, or smart phones. The Graduate Institute Leadership Series, an initiative launched in January 2013 by Associate Deans Jeff Black and David Carl, Santa Fe tutor Lise van Boxel, and former Marine Brian Wilson (AGI13), is one of the latest offerings for engaging online dialogue. St. John’s tutors and graduate students with active military experience host two-hour seminars online (and in person) on classic works of military history, as well as leadership and persuasion. Primarily aimed at active-duty military service members and alumni with a military background, seminar readings have included Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, the “Melian Dialogue” from Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War, and Sophocles’s Ajax, among others. Black and van Boxel have co-led several seminars, including Machiavelli’s The Prince and Book I of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. Wilson, who describes his previous academic background at the U.S. Naval SANTA FE WELCOMES MARGARET MERTZ (SF83) BACK TO CAMPUS The Santa Fe campus has welcomed Margaret Mertz (SF83) as its new director of Development. Before taking this position, Mertz served as the associate dean for Research, Technology, and Administrative Affairs in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Florida. She also held the positions of executive director of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute of the Arts, and dean of the Division of General Studies at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Earlier in her career, Mertz held many teaching and administrative posts at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, the United World College of the American West (UWC-USA), and New Mexico Highlands University. Mertz recently stepped down as chair of the Board of Directors for South Arts, the regional arts organization serving the nine southern states of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. She received her bachelor’s Academy as “an English major trapped in a mechanical engineer’s body,” says that having military and civilian alumni participants “helps shape the conversation. The seminars really speak to young leaders.” A group of entrepreneurial young alumni based in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. are also contributing to the online revolution. Adam Braus (SF08), along with Micah Davis (SF10) and Zhenya Ogorodova (SF08), share their love of great books and conversation through Conversera.com, their new online learning company. Braus describes it as “the next step in a tradition that goes back to Stringfellow Barr and Mortimer Adler.” The curriculum includes seminars on a variety of short stories, science, degree from St. John’s in Santa Fe, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in music from Harvard University. “I am thrilled to be ‘coming home’ to St. John’s College and Santa Fe. This opportunity to work on behalf of the college is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,” says Mertz. “I believe deeply in the St. John’s Program and the students and faculty who embody its extraordinary vision and relevance.” — Susan Kaplan ANNAPOLIS WELCOMES NEW DIRECTOR IN ADVANCEMENT Ellen Wise joins the Annapolis advancement staff as director of Major and Planned Gifts with more than 15 years of advancement experience. She previously served as director of Development for the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Delaware and as director of Individual Giving for Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. She earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth 14 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 and novellas. Many of the seminar facilitators are Johnnies – Elaine Bomford (SF79), Aric Doak (SF08), Steven Ellerd (AGI13), and Alexander Kast (A06) – who take joy in introducing other lifelong students to the St. John’s approach to understanding the classics. “We do not see ourselves as competition for St. John’s but rather a complementary service,” notes Braus. “We hope that people who can’t come to St. John’s can use Conversera to get a similar experience.” Alumni everywhere can also continue the conversation through the St. John’s All Alumni Virtual Chapter. Since October 2013, alumni and tutors have met online on the first Sunday of each month for 90-minute seminars on great works drawn from the college’s curriculum and beyond. Recent seminars have included the first two books of the Iliad, Plato’s Meno, and Aristophanes’s The Clouds, among others. To see upcoming Virtual Chapter seminar offerings, visit bit.ly/1ySc6fs. —Gregory Shook Read more about the St. John’s College Graduate Institute Leadership Series at www.facebook.com/SJCLeadershipSegment. University and an MA in English literature from Washington College. Wise describes herself as “the world’s oldest emerging poet,” due to her late start as a writer and the slow pace of her work. In 2002 five of her poems were set to music by American contemporary composer Adolphus Hailstork. The resulting song cycle has been performed in the United States and abroad; she was in attendance at a particularly memorable performance in Auvillar, France. Wise’s poems have been published in numerous small journals and online. She is the recipient of a Maryland Arts Council Individual Artist Award and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship, and she serves on the board of Perugia Press, a prize-winning publisher of emerging women poets. Wise and her husband Fred are avid sailors who live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Wise says she is looking forward to meeting with alumni and friends of St. John’s, but has a lot to learn before she begins visiting donors. “I’ll be spending the first six weeks with the college immersing myself in what I now know is ‘Johnnie culture,’ ” she says. “I’ve worked for many years in higher education, but the experience that St. John’s alumni share is completely different from anything I’ve seen before.” �from the bell towers A National Prison Project Internship Sheds Light on Law Andy Blanco (A15) finished reading a letter from a prisoner in Arizona about inmates who got into trouble because they did CPR on another inmate who was having a heart attack while the guards were just watching. This letter was one of hundreds waiting for him on his desk last summer when he interned for the National Prison Project in Washington, D.C. “It was a state-wide case, where we were assisting all the prisoners in Arizona to sue the Arizona prison system over conditions,” says Blanco. “One of my jobs was to read all the prisoner mail that came in from Andy Blanco (A15) “�In this job, you can actually change how the law works in this country. All the cases are huge cases. The Arizona case will affect every prisoner in Arizona, and everybody who goes to prison in Arizona forever.” Arizona.” With 30,000 people in Arizona prisons, “that’s obviously a lot of mail.” Having dealt with murder cases during his previous internship at a criminal law office, Blanco knew that his Hodson internship at the Prison Project would not be easy. But he was shocked by the brutality of some aspects of prison life. He had to learn to respond to these letters and to pick prisoners who might be good witnesses. “At least the office environment was very positive and stress free,” he says. “It helped me deal with all the difficult subject matter, and reminded me that the work was meaningful.” Until Blanco heard about the Prison Project, working with prisons had never crossed his mind. He was planning to apply to law school. When he read an article in the Gadfly about Margaret Winter (Class of 1966), the associate director of the Prison Project, he realized that he wanted “to do something related to criminal defense or civil rights. I don’t want to be a prosecutor. I want to be the kind of lawyer that helps people.” Blanco finds it exciting that in this job, “you can actually change how the law works in this country. All the cases are huge cases. The Arizona case will affect every prisoner in Arizona, and everybody who goes to prison in Arizona forever. You can’t be a zealot and do that kind of work because it will crush you. But you have to care a lot. The people here are pushing the needle; a lot of the stuff they are advocating for is probably a few decades from happening. But it might become the norm one day. So they do a huge service to society.” Blanco is the first in his nuclear family to attend college; although both his grandfathers went to college, his parents chose not to go. He spent a few years as a manager at Papa John’s Pizza before he chose St. John’s. “I was making a lot of money and I was pretty successful, but I knew it was a short-term thing.” He had taken AP courses in high school and some community college classes, which he found “dissatisfying.” When he heard about St. John’s through a friend, he knew it was exactly what he wanted—the “most superior education that I could find.” He feels that St. John’s has “opened a lot of doors for me.” Before coming to St. John’s, law was one of several careers that interested Blanco. He settled on law during his sophomore year; the internships that followed have confirmed his choice. St. John’s also led him to appreciate more aspects of life. “When I was in high school, I just loathed math and science. I’ve come to enjoy and appreciate [them] here at St. John’s, so that’s been a huge gift.” In addition, “St. John’s has opened up the whole world of literature and music for me to investigate on my own.” Although Blanco has kept his original plan to go to law school, he says that his internship has “opened my eyes to impact litigation, and the possibility of a career as a lawyer who’s not only defending people in court for a particular crime.” As part of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Prison Project is “a big organization. I could see myself going back there one day.” —Eunji Kim (A15) Summer Academy 2015 at St. John’s College AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE for High School Students Students from around the world immersed themselves in Summer Academy 2014 in Santa Fe and Annapolis. Learn more: www.sjc.edu The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 15 �tutor view Two Campuses 16 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Two campuses, one in Santa Fe and one in Annapolis, 1,628 miles apart horizontally and a little over 7,000 feet vertically, have the same Program. It is a bit of a conundrum when you think about it. �Of course, the metaphysicians among us might supply the reassuring information that for any two things to be the same, they must be different. As puzzling as this may seem at first glance, it probably points the way to understanding the profound sameness that constitutes St. John’s College. Many Viewpoints By Jacques Duvoisin (A80) The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 17 �tutor view “�In relation to the program of study, all of us strive for the same ideal, to guide students to the discovery of their own insights, holding our opinions at bay, working to provoke them to fine-tune whatever articulations of their thought they happen to be working on.” What’s the same? The program of study is the same in spirit and implementation. Naturally, as you might expect, there are differences—a few small variations in the selection and sequence of the readings on the seminar list, as well as more substantial variations in the design of some tutorials. But the core practice of the college does not differ. On each campus, students sit around a table and discuss great books together. They go to the board in math classes and demonstrate difficult propositions from memory while classmates look on, ask questions, offer assistance, and so on. They struggle to teach themselves ancient Greek so that they can discuss the meaning of a Sappho poem, or a passage in Sophocles, or a dialectical argument in Plato’s Meno, again around a big table in the language class. In the labs, they work toward a meaningful encounter with the natural world, at first gropingly, and then with ever greater sophistication. The faculty, too, is the same, as much as it is possible for two groups of individuals, selected seemingly by chance, to be the same. In relation to the program of study, all of us strive for the same ideal, to guide students to the discovery of their own insights, holding our opinions at bay, working to provoke them to fine-tune whatever articulations of their thought they happen to be working on. We share our meager wisdom with them, but we do not substitute it for their own examination of life. The Santa Fe campus was founded 50 years ago, in a climate and culture that could not be 18 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 more different from Annapolis. This new founding has brought aspects of our shared enterprise to the fore that might not have been quite so visible before. In the shadow of a different state house, the challenge to study the great books of human civilization is influenced by the culture of New Mexico, among a local populace that speaks English with a Spanish lilt, with all the marks of Pueblo culture lovingly preserved in the city’s architecture. The expanse of the sky is vast, blue, and inviting, and nearby mountains allow one to approach it in solitude. In such a setting, away from the bustle of ambitions that inevitably gather around the capital of a great nation, it is only natural that the pace would be slower, and students would find a use for more leisurely reflection. Classes are longer, and discussions often follow a less direct path in the pursuit of insight. Although students at both campuses have organized many clubs, the outdoor settings have played a role in the development of intramural sports programs and activities. The glorious, lush lawns of Annapolis are ideal for soccer, handball, Ultimate Frisbee, and croquet. In the sprawling mountains of Santa Fe, students and faculty enjoy access to unparalleled hiking trails and several world-class ski resorts within easy driving distance. One notable difference between the campuses can be found in the Graduate Institute. In addition to the traditional program that finds a parallel in Annapolis, the Santa Fe campus also offers a program in Eastern Classics, which has proved a boon to many alumni, who apply their curiosity and formidable conversation skills to a broader canvas of human thought. It also provides an opportunity for the faculty to find intellectual renewal in the Eastern Classics program, at those moments when their experience in the undergraduate program begins to feel constricting, as can happen after a decade or two of work. It is probably a coincidence, since both campuses have experienced a new influx of interna- PREVIOUS PAGE: INSIGHT FOTO, SANTA FE, NM �FRANK OOMS tutor view With the influx of international students, “freshman seminars have to find even more fundamental shared experiences from which to start.” tional students, including many from Southeast Asia, but one cannot help wondering if our experience with the Eastern Classics program has not helped us make Santa Fe a more welcoming destination for some of these students. For the many students who come to us from the mountains of Nepal, it is hard not to suspect that living among the Sangre de Cristo mountains makes them feel a little bit more at home. Speaking of international students, one other trait both campuses share is the wonderful expansion of class discussion they bring “to the table.” Before these students arrived, seminars could count on a stratum of shared experiences as a starting point. But now, with students from former Eastern Bloc nations like Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, from Kenya, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, or from India, Nepal, China, Vietnam, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Singapore, fresh- man seminars have to find even more fundamental shared experiences from which to start. In other words, much more of our shared humanity can be brought into view in our conversations. Moreover, it certainly does not hurt to have students in a language tutorial who have already had to learn to speak English, or who perhaps already know how to read Sanskrit, to bring a new sense of courage and adventure to the task of learning ancient Greek. In the face of widespread fears of a decline of liberal arts education in this country, we find that their relevance and importance has only been enlivened by sharing these arts with our international students. Any provincial notion of the liberal arts as being somehow “western” is hardly credible after working with students from the other side of the world, and the depth of our own commitment is enhanced by the experience. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 19 �20 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 �1964 — 2014 Santa Fe at 50 A Triumph of Will. A Fellowship of Learning. A Quixotic Journey. OPPOSITE: Don Quixote ABOVE: Early construction and Sancho Panza, 1935, by Ferdinand Desnos. included Peterson Student Center, Evans Science Lab, Santa Fe Hall, and the upper dormitories. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 21 �1964 — 2014 Authors of Our Own Story The Santa Fe Oral History Project by Claudia Hauer In Part II of Cervantes’ delightful novel, the characters Don Quixote and Sancho discuss the choices made by the author of their story in Part I. The Santa Fe campus’s oral history project has likewise gone forward without the conventional boundary between author and character, for the story continues, and the main characters continue to reflect on how best to tell it. At St. John’s, we treasure each voice, and each adds something to the story. A seminar conversation and the people who participate in it are one. When I began the oral history interviews in the spring of 2013, my goal was to create a venue for our community to listen to the voices of those who remembered the founding and seminal moments of the Santa Fe campus, and to build appreciation for the different perspectives and tales that make up our story. My contribution to the project consists of more than 25 hours of recorded interviews with all living former officers of the Santa Fe campus, many tutors from the earliest years, illustrious friends of the college, board members, and current officers. Santa Fe Library Director Jennifer Sprague (SFGI04, EC09) has taken up the project now; she is conducting alumni interviews and working with the librarians and Melissa Stevens, art director/ senior graphic designer, to build an archive for the history displays. In addition to the voices on tape, Brian Connolly (SFGI10, EC11) assistant director, Advancement Services, is preparing transcripts of the interviews. Sarah Palacios, director of the Alumni Office, has created a venue for alumni to submit written contributions. What have we learned? The opening of the Santa Fe campus of St. John’s College in September 1964 was simultaneously a triumph of one man’s will, a 12 St. John’s Moves West In a bold step in 1961, the Board of Visitors and Governors of the College voted to establish a second campus in the western half of the United States. The new campus was to be a duplicate of that in Annapolis in facilities, curriculum, and enrollment: by this unique plan of colonization St. John’s answered the need for expansion while retaining the fundamental educational precepts to which it was committed. The College thus embarked on a plan of growth never before attempted in this country. “�Dick Weigle always wanted the Annapolis faculty to add to the reading list Eastern classics. He was just passionately interested in that.” — Tom Slakey, retired tutor Original Tutors $2,750 Cost of Tuition, Room, and Board 260 Acres 42 Santa Fe, New Mexico, was chosen from 40 possible sites as the location for the new campus. In reaching this decision, the Board and the Faculty were impressed by the need for a good liberal arts college in the Southwest, independent of the government or the church. They were encouraged by a group of Santa Feans who were deeply interested in establishing such a college in their city. The cultural orientation of Santa Fe, with its museums, its nationally famous summer opera, and its colony of artists and writers, was a strong attraction. Proximity to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, with its superb library and 22 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 wealth of scientific talent, promised helpful cooperation from both Laboratory officials and individual scientists. The 7,000 foot elevation of the city of Santa Fe offered a fine year-round climate. The campus, donated by residents of Santa Fe, consists of 260 acres of rolling land in the southeast corner of the city…A comprehensive master plan has been designed for a complete campus for 300-350 students. On April 22, 1963, ground was broken for the first buildings. Since only a freshman class will enter when the campus opens in September 1964, Readings from Great Books for Incoming Freshmen – SF Founding Program Readings 81 Students in the First Freshman Class “�I was interested in the cultural approach that St. John’s offered … I thought it was good for the community because it was a prestigious college … ” — Bud Kelly �santa fe at 50 fellowship of new learning, and the start of a quixotic journey of self-definition for an institution that was not new in conception, but new to the world. The one man was Richard (“Dick”) Weigle. Founding tutor Tom Slakey recalls Weigle’s role in bringing the new campus into being: “[Dick Weigle] originated it and he was its principal promoter from the very beginning. He was passionate about liberal education in the St. John’s way, and he just thought it should be offered to more people. And when we [in Annapolis] couldn’t accommodate as many students as wanted to come, he wanted to come out and start this new college. In fact, his ambition extended further. His idea was actually to have a string of six of these small colleges.” The setting in the foothills on the east side of Santa Fe was chosen as the site for the second campus due in part to Robert McKinney, owner of the Santa Fe New Mexican. He diverted the initial search party, composed of Weigle, board member Charles (“Chuck”) Nelson (Class of 1945), and others, from their visit to view land in California, and introduced the group to John Gaw Meem, a notable Santa Fe architect and landowner. Meem and other local entrepreneurs were eager to bring a college to Santa Fe, having unsuccessfully attempted to get a small Presbyterian college to open a campus there. Meem drove the group in his jeep to a ridge along the foothills. “Dr. Weigle,” he asked, “if you had a college here, about how much land would you need?” Weigle did a quick calculation. He thought Annapolis had 35 acres. “So I doubled it,” he told tutor emeritus Elliott Skinner later. “Seventy acres,” he told Meem. “�The transfer of the soul of the college was very successful, partly because there were good tutors who were quite willing to move to Santa Fe and to take on responsibility for training new people who would need to get inducted into the spirit and the academic aspects of the college that are most important.” —Charles Nelson, Class of 1945, visitor emeritus construction has been planned in several phases to keep pace with the growing student body. The first phase provides the classroom and laboratory buildings, the student center, and dormitories for 106 students. Basically the facilities in Santa Fe will parallel those on the Annapolis campus, but will have the advantage of being designed as an integrated, functional whole. The two campuses will be an interesting study in similarities and contrasts. Whereas the older buildings in Annapolis are reminders of the English colonial heritage of Maryland’s capital city, those of the western St. John’s will reflect the Spanish-Indian origins of the New Mexican capital. The new buildings have been designed in a modified “Territorial,” a regional style easily adapted for contemporary use. Their flat-roofed masses will recall their aboriginal American origin; the balconies, portales and patios hearken back to Spain; and the stuccoed walls and brick cornices recall the period when New Mexico was a territory rather than a state. below: The first commencement on June 2, 1968 had to be moved indoors due to rain. —Bulletin of St. John’s College, June 1963 – May 1964 The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 23 �1964 — 2014 “You see that tree over there?” Meem asked, and pointed up to the north. Weigle was looking around down at his feet, and Meem said, “No, over there, over on that ridge. If you’d be interested in coming out here, I’d be interested in giving you this little piece of land here.” It turned out to be about 200 acres. Meem and his fellow townies who supported the new college took a crash course in the great books concept. “We all got indoctrinated into the concept of the great books,” recalls Daniel T. (“Bud”) Kelly, reminiscing on the orientation seminars. “I was frustrated by the seminar,” he says. “I was in the army, where you study the problem and come up with a solution. At St. John’s, you never get a solution.” Chuck Nelson recalls an early crisis precipitated by Weigle’s borrowing from the Annapolis endow- ment to fund the building project. This loan temporarily severed the college’s relationship with benefactor Paul Mellon and his Old Dominion Foundation. In his book, Reflections in a Silver Spoon (William Morrow, 1992), Paul Mellon wrote: “In 1963, Dick, finding the Santa Fe campus desperately short of money, ‘lent it’ $2 million from the Annapolis endowment, contrary to his understanding with the [Old Dominion] foundation. As a result, the foundation temporarily suspended matching gifts for endowment to Annapolis.... I had a very high regard for Dick, and for all that he had done, so I personally made a gift to the Santa Fe undertaking in 1970.” The coming-into-being of the new campus presented new adventures, not just of mind, but of body as well. George Bingham (SF68) recalls visiting his parents (Clarence Cramer, the first dean, 45 The Campus Expands Asserting a modern interpretation of the Territorial style popularized by John Gaw Meem, one of New Mexico’s most influential architects, Levan Hall suggests a kinship with the architectural features of the college’s other building and dormitories and offers a fresh outlook for the campus… Just as the graduate programs in Santa Fe span the classics of Western and Eastern civilizations, Levan Hall synthesizes Western or perhaps more accurately, Southwestern and “� ow with the addition N of a central library to our campus, we have a fitting and appropriate place to house the books that are at the heart of the St. John’s educational mission.” — John Agresto, former President Students housed in Winiarski Student Center 700 lbs. Weight of the bell in Weigle Hall 25,780 Square footage of Meem Library left: The construction of Weigle Hall. Eastern perspectives. The tall, stuccoed building is nearly two and three-fourths floors bottom to top, yet it is impressive without being imposing. Inside, plastered walls soar to meet wood-slat ceilings that simultaneously suggest traditional vigas and the simplicity of Japanese styling. An open and inviting quality—evident with the benches, sofas, and chairs on landings, in the graduate commons room, and in offices—welcomes students and faculty alike.” Completed in 2008, the Winiarski Student Center was principally funded through a gift from alumni 24 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Warren and Barabara Winiarski. The Winiarskis said their gift was prompted by an enduring love for the St. John’s Program, a desire to support the community of learning and a special interest in enhancing the campus their two daughters (Kasia, SF83, and Julia, SF92) attended. The 26,000 square-foot Student Activities Center is home to an array of personal fitness equipment and athletic facilities including a fullsize gymnasium, weight room, two racquetball/squash courts, as well as shower and locker rooms. In addition, three tennis courts, a soccer above: The installation of the finial on top of Weigle Hall. �santa fe at 50 and his wife) over Labor Day weekend, 1964: “I was, frankly, skeptical about the prospect of opening for classes two weeks later. You could pretty much predict a three o’clock rain in the month of August and there was a lot of plywood . . . . Moving around on the campus required a certain agility at that time.” Although the new campus initially imported its program of instruction from Annapolis, faculty and officers began to make changes consistent with their own spirit and the unique character of the new institution. Tutor emeritus Roger Peterson recalled the passionate devotion that the new faculty had “to inquiry as opposed to knowledge. The important thing is to ask questions and delve strongly into them—it’s the delving that counts.” Peterson led a group of faculty who changed the sophomore year of laboratory to “a completely new evolutionoriented sequence.” Tutors Ray Davis, Don Cook, and Elliott Skinner all recalled the faculty’s delight in this new laboratory. As music grew from an add-on into a full-time course, the laboratory was eventually edged out; its curriculum was divided between the freshman and senior years. Tom Slakey recalls that the mathematics tutorial also changed, as an early group of tutors “didn’t like that we were using an ordinary textbook for calculus. They wanted to do calculus from original texts.” Much like the early settlers of the Southwest, the new campus acquired its own character from the challenges it faced, and the open landscape that housed it. John Agresto (President 1989-1999) recalls a line from John Adams’s letters: “Once a great idea is started, nobody, not even the smartest person, knows where that idea will lead.” The Graduate Institute was founded as a summer program for inner city schoolteachers in Santa “�It [Winiarski Student Center] qualifies as a LEED Silver building — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a national standard. The complex currently uses energy gathered from photovoltaics on the roof of a neighboring dorm, and has new and efficient boilers and passive solar windows, which means it will receive a lot of natural light.” field, a 1/8th-mile track, and a ninehole disc golf course are located next to the Student Activities Center. The library, which opened in November 1990, is named after Faith and John Meem, generous benefactors to the Santa Fe campus. About 250 volunteers moved more than 50,000 books into Meem Library in six hours using book bags, carts, and trucks. — Mary-Charlotte Domandi (SFGI91) above: The Faith and John Gaw Meem Library left: Library groundbreaking The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 25 �1964 — 2014 Fe in 1967 (and followed in Annapolis in 1977). Dean and tutor Jim Carey added the Eastern Classics program, which officially joined the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe in 1994. Agresto began the now widely popular Summer Classics program in 1991 as a single seminar on Thucydides, led by him and tutor David Bolotin. Agresto recalls some of the vision and force of will that went into bringing about these new programs. “We were being interviewed for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jim Carey and I, and the woman who was interviewing us said, ‘You have all these people who think what you’re doing is wrong, who are opposed to what you’re doing,’” meaning here at the college, in terms of the Eastern Classics program. ‘Have you ever learned anything from your enemies?’ Jim Carey looked at her and said, “Nope, not one d—n thing.” She said, “Can I write that down?” He said, “It’s true.” At the opening of Part II of Cervantes’ visionary novel, Don Quixote anxiously awaits news about how he himself had been put into a book. The oral history project has a similar aspect—with so many memories and tales collected, there are many ways to tell our story. As we go forward, we can take a lesson from Cervantes’ creativity in breaking down the boundaries between author and character. Quixote’s transition from his naiveté to his selfreferential and self-conscious anxiety creates an analogy for the Santa Fe campus’s progress, from its ardent youth to the more mature institution of today, which must reflect not just on its own modern 3 Faculty— Stewards of the Program In addition to acquiring competence across the program, tutors are responsible for deepening their understanding of its various parts; they are responsible for increasing their understanding of the fundamental questions raised by the books; they are responsible for leading classes not from a position of expertise, but from a position of active inquiry through spontaneous collaboration centered on the books and on where the class is with respect to the books. For all of these responsibilities, there is, to be sure, a private component. All of us must spend a good deal of time learning new and difficult things in the privacy of our offices or studies. But all of our learning and preparation culminates in shared activities: classes with our colleagues, study groups, and lectures followed promptly by a question period. Classes taught by full-time faculty 7 years of full-time teaching required to earn tenure 53 Tenured faculty 3 years “�I used to drive my professors in graduate school nuts because I’d go take these courses in mathematics and whatever interested me, and my research would be kind of secondary. I didn’t fit in too well in graduate school, but I fit in very well at St. John’s.” — Don Cook, founding tutor at the Santa Fe campus 26 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Faculty study groups have been a part of sustaining the intellectual life of St. Johns tutors since the New Program was established in 1937. Groups of 4-12 tutors meet under a variety of circumstances, reading and working through a variety of texts, both Program and non-Program. This kind of study is important to tutors: it enables them to think in-depth about a certain subject or book, when their normal teaching schedule calls them to cover material more quickly; it helps them consider proposed changes to the Program; and it helps them prepare to teach in areas of curriculum where they may not have much experience. of service for the Assistant Dean, who is chosen from among the tenured faculty 1:8 Faculty to student ratio 5 years of service for each Dean, who is chosen from among the tenured faculty �santa fe at 50 identity relative to its past, but about a broader context of decline in liberal arts enrollment across the United States. As Santa Fe President Mike Peters said with respect to the 50th anniversary: “It’s really important that we recognize the pioneers that brought the college here, and we celebrate what the college has accomplished. But it’s also important to commit ourselves to its being around for another fifty years, and do everything we can—as individuals and as a group—to makes sure that it not only survives but that it thrives in the future.” In this spirit, we hope you enjoy the oral history project, for it is simultaneously a rich and wonderful story, and also an opportunity to reflect and dedicate ourselves anew as the characters who will usher St. John’s College Santa Fe into its second 50 years. Michael Peters, president, Santa Fe Claudia Hauer is a tutor in Santa Fe. “�In my first freshman seminar, my co-tutor was Sam Brown. He was a musician who’d gone to Black Mountain College. In seminar he’d be really low-key; the discussion would be going on, and [after a while] he would ask [students to repeat what they’d said earlier], and then it was like all of a sudden everything would come together with a great sense of excitement. Eventually I realized he was like a conductor. But it was so subtle that nobody, I think, realized it was going on. We thought we were just doing it ourselves. That was a great lesson in teaching. — Elliot Skinner, founding tutor at the Santa Fe campus David Levine, tutor “�We, the tutors, are not content with imparting bare skills and empty generalizations, not sastified with conveying the results of our own or others’ thinking without requiring that you develop your own capacities for such thoughtfulness.” — David Levine, tutor “�The kinds of things our students study provide them the opportunity not only to be well educated and make a life for themselves, but also to be great citizens because they’ve grappled with the challenges that have faced mankind since the beginning of recorded time, and they’ve been exposed to the ideas and documents that underpin the American democratic republic.” — Michael Peters, president, Santa Fe below: SuSu Knight, the first tenured female tutor. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 27 �28 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 �three johnnies today S H A P I N G T H E FUTURE Greek philosopher Heraclitus is often quoted as saying, “Change is the only constant in life.” These three Johnnies are proponents of change – impacting contemporary society as well as the next generation of learners – by illuminating the evolution of gaming technology in education, exploring the great books and their timeless questions of human existence, and helping federal agencies to link health research and policy to practice. Gaming in the Classroom Greg Toppo (sf 85) Engages Students through Technology I PHOTO: LISA MELONI RAGUSA by Paula Novash n the introduction to Greg Toppo’s (SF85), forthcoming book, The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter, there is a line that might cause the reader to think about what has been considered “new technology” through the ages (especially if you’re a Johnnie). Toppo, the national education reporter for USA Today, writes: “Asking if schools can accommodate games, according to University of Wisconsin scholar Kurt Squire, is like asking 500 years ago if universities could accommodate books.” Toppo’s fascinating account of the evolution of gaming in education and the visionaries who develop these new technologies will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in April. His research reveals that games make school more rigorous and interesting by giving kids engaging systems for learning new material. Gaming technology has come a long way since elementary students in the ’80s played “The Oregon Trail” on bulky PCs. The Game Believes in You features innovators who are creating a video game version of “Walden Pond,” an app called “Stride and Prejudice” that features a pixilated Elizabeth Bennet jumping over the entire 121,873 words of unabridged Austen text, and an original opera staged entirely in the online game “Minecraft,” among many other futuristic products. “The idea is, let’s make school harder and more fun,” Toppo explains. Toppo grew up in Port Chester, New York. “I had a preoccupation with books and reading, though I wouldn’t say I was well-read,” he says. He applied to The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 29 �three johnnies today St. John’s after seeing a flyer in his English class that referred to Plato and similar luminaries as returning professors. “It also inspired a lot of my contemporaries to attend,” he says. Because he had never been west of Philadelphia, Toppo decided to study in Santa Fe after his freshman year. “I spent a lot of time reading in the French pastry shop off the Plaza,” he recalls. He also met Julie Neidorf (SF85), his wife and fellow Johnnie, the daughter of Robert Neidorf (H83), longtime dean of the Santa Fe campus. The two began dating four years after graduation, having become friends during a teaching internship. Toppo taught for eight years in both public and private schools before pursu- “�Ten years ago, teachers who were using games were outliers. Now teachers who don’t use games are the outliers.” ing a writing career. He began freelancing for the Santa Fe daily, The New Mexican, and was hired in 1995. His story about a “resplendent day” at the paper highlights the differences between news reporting then and now. “We had an ongoing rivalry with the other paper in Santa Fe, the Albuquerque Journal North,” he recalls. “There was a new injunction forbidding skateboarding on the Plaza, near where our offices were located, and one day some police officers arrested a kid on a skateboard. The crowd got a little rowdy and an almost-riot on the Plaza broke out. Our newsroom emptied out to cover it! The other paper never heard a thing about it so it was a big scoop—our front-page story the next day.” “Now,” he continues, “Kids and onlookers would be tweeting and texting, and so would the paper.” As an early adopter of Twitter – he has almost 19,000 followers – Toppo sees mostly positives in using social media. “I think it’s great to have many platforms to put more news out there,” he says. “Twitter has been really helpful for finding sources who are willing to talk to me, especially kids. I’ve done entire interviews with kids via text messaging.” It was in Santa Fe that Toppo began doing more reporting on educational topics. “When our official education reporter was busy, people would say, ‘Hey, didn’t Greg teach?’” Toppo recalls. Toppo and his family, which includes two daughters, moved back east in 1998 when he took a job with The Associated Press, working in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. bureaus before joining USA Today in 2002. Toppo began researching The Game Believes in You during a 2010 Spencer Fellowship at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The title refers to experts’ findings that for many students, games provide a reassuring environment with opportunities to learn at their own pace, take risks, and try again. “A game is a designed system,” Toppo explains. “School is a designed system too, just not as well designed as it once was.” Just as some people used to be suspicious of the corrupting effects of books, today there is a lively debate about the role of technology in education. Toppo can appreciate opposing views, but from his research, he says, games in the classroom are here to stay. “Ten years ago, teachers who were using games were outliers,” he points out. “Now teachers who don’t use games are the outliers.” “For many kids, especially those who don’t fit the profile of that student in a perfect middle, school may be just awful—boring and disheartening,” Toppo continues. “So shouldn’t we be looking at what kids are paying attention to and what’s working for them, and go down that path?” 30 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Naturally Gifted James Myers (sf 09) Gets Paid to Learn Latin by Gregory Shook J ames Myers (SF09) calls several places “home.” A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Myers attended Woodberry Forest School, a private boarding school in Madison County, Virginia. After two years at St. John’s in Annapolis, he packed up his road-worn 1999 Ford Expedition and drove west to Santa Fe, where he graduated in 2009. Five years later, Myers has a new home at Chandler Preparatory Academy in Chandler, Arizona, a member of the Great Hearts Academy network of schools in the Phoenix metropolitan area. At Chandler Prep, where Myers is considered a “master teacher of classical languages,” he instructs middle and high school Greek and Latin, as well as Humane Letters—seminars on great works of Western civilization, similar to the St. John’s Program. “I really want to teach 10th grade Humane Letters next year,” he says. “Then I’ll be able to say that I have taught all the seminars on the school’s curriculum before I’m thirty.” Myers has a natural aptitude for teaching, though he admits that he fell into his profession largely by chance. “I had no idea what I wanted to do,” he �three johnnies today says. “I got really lucky.” On the precipice of graduation, he met a recruiter from Great Hearts; he flew to Phoenix for a round of interviews and soon fielded offers from two different schools. Self-confidence plays an important role in Myers’ accomplishments as a teacher. “I learned Latin in order to pretend that I could teach it,” explains Myers, who says that his first day at the head of the classroom “felt like something that I was destined to do.” As a student, Myers did not enjoy reading until he came to St. John’s, where discussing books and ideas in seminar brought the pages to life. “I still don’t read much unless I’m going to talk about a book,” says Myers, who has led seminars this year on Augustine’s Confessions, Dante’s Inferno, and Aquinas’ Treatise on Law, among others. In seminar, Myers says he is playfully serious with his own inquiry into the text. In his language classes, his secret to success is simple: keep the pace moving. “You cannot just sit silently in a class waiting for a student to figure out an answer to a question,” he says. “If they don’t know it, you move on quickly.” Above all, though, Myers wants his students to be fearless of making mistakes for the sake of learning. Myers was first bitten by the Latin bug after his sophomore Greek language tutorial at St. John’s. During the summer before his junior year, when most of his classmates took a reprieve from the rigors of academic life, Myers enrolled in an intensive Latin course at the University of South Carolina. The experience both deepened his love of classical languages and set the stage for his future. “My first year [at Chandler Prep], I taught intro to Latin to sixth graders,” says Myers. “I was successful with teaching as well as classroom management, so the school asked me to teach Latin 3 the next year to freshmen.” Once again, Myers dedicated his summer to honing his Latin language skills, which he continues to enhance on “�I had no idea what I wanted to do. I got really lucky.” the job. “At the end of my second year I could read Virgil pretty well,” he says. “I feel like I have literally gotten paid to learn Latin.” Having planted roots more than 2,000 miles from his hometown, Myers has created a good life, blanketed by big sky and bold sunsets—his favorite attributes of the Southwest. An avid hiker and Ultimate Frisbee player, Myers takes full advantage of his rugged environs, which have slowly but steadily transformed him. “I have opened up a little bit [as a person],” he says. “But that could just be me growing up and being comfortable with myself.” James Myers (SF09), right, and his fellow teachers celebrate his student’s senior thesis defense. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 31 �three johnnies today Breaking Down Silos Susan Vorkoper (sf 04) Helps Research Become Policy A By Jennifer Levin s a global health researcher and policy analyst for the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Susan Vorkoper (SF04) attempts to speed up the time between when something is proven with research and when it becomes public policy—when the people on the ground can incorporate it into programs. Lead poisoning, for example, has devastating neurological effects that can lead to comas, convulsions, and even death, especially among children. Starting as early as 1904, researchers and physicians identified the link between lead-based paints and lead poisoning in children. However, despite continued research and mounting evidence, it was not until 1978 that the EPA banned the manufacture and use of lead-based paint. “The average time it takes for research to enter day-to-day practice and even become policy is 17 years,” says Vorkoper. “Sometimes, like with lead poisoning, this is due to industry resistance, and sometimes, it’s a matter of establishing effective communication between relevant parties.” In 2012, while earning master’s degrees in public policy and social work from Washington University in St. Louis, Vorkoper traveled to Haiti with the nonprofit organization Meds & Food for Kids and wrote a $1 million grant for funding from the usda to develop a new Ready-toUse Supplemental Food for school children, similar to nutrient-fortified peanut butter. Today, one of her biggest projects is with the President’s Emergency Plan for aids Relief (pepfar). Working with federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as researchers in the field, July 2014. Before graduate school, she spent two years in the Peace Corps with her husband, Stephen Vorkoper (SF04), stationed in Cameroon, which was where she developed an interest in nutrition and public health. Before that, she worked with AmeriCorps Vista, running a youth literacy program in Salt Lake City, Utah. She plans to stay at the Fogarty International Center for some time, but predicts that in the future she will continue to link research and policy to practice. In addition, she plans to increase the rigor of program assessments so that the aid they offer provides maximum benefit. Vorkoper assesses how best to leverage I pepfar’s hiv/aids platforms to diagnose, “� t’s important to know treat, and care for non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes, and cervical cancer. “A lot of what I do is partnership- and coalition-building between people who are working in the same area but may not be talking to each other,” she says. “Everything I do is about breaking down silos, so I do almost nothing alone.” At particularly difficult meetings, she wonders if it would be appropriate to hand out Stringfellow Barr’s “Notes on Dialogue.” “I use what we learned [in seminar] every day,” she says. “It’s important to know how to lead and guide a discussion, to make sure everyone is on the same track and headed in the same direction.” Vorkoper secured her current position thanks to a Presidential Management Fellowship, a two-year program open to people who have recently earned advanced degrees and are interested in government work. She spent six months at the Fogarty International Center during the fellowship and has been on staff since 32 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 how to lead and guide a discussion, to make sure everyone is on the same track and headed in the same direction.” “We talked a lot about what it means to be a good citizen at St. John’s, and I really took that to heart,” she says. “It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I kept asking myself where the intersection was of something I’m good at, something I’m passionate about, and something that’s needed. It goes back to the Agora. How are you a participant? How are you involved in the dialogue? I realized that this is how I wanted to be a citizen.” Right: Susan Vorkoper (SF04) at NIH �JAMES KEGLEY three johnnies today The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 33 �bibliofile Peter Pesic: Seeing and Touching Sound “Music is the hinge between what is felt and what is thought; it connects both worlds.” For many, music is a pleasant diversion, an ornament to living. For scientists, whose work does not depend on feelings, music can be an important emotional outlet, though often considered inherently derivative because it seems disconnected from scientific discovery. Peter Pesic, tutor emeritus and musicianin-residence at the Santa Fe campus, resisted this train of thought for many years. Though playing the piano was an essential part of his life even as he completed his doctorate in physics, he gradually realized that sometimes music has preceded and influenced discovery in science and mathematics. He began to notice evidence supporting this view about 15 years ago through his teaching at St. John’s. He came to think that what he had found might change our understanding of the connections between music, the natural sciences, and math. He compiled his examples, researched to fill in gaps in his knowledge. His fourth book, Music and the Making of Modern Science (MIT Press, 2014), is a challenging scholarly work with multimedia components that Pesic hopes will find an audience curious about the place where science and art meet. According to Pesic, music, entwined at its essence with numbers, is that place. Max Planck, the theoretical physicist known for discovering quantum theory, was a committed musician who worked with a new harmonium that could divide the octave into 104 steps. Interested in this harmonium’s tuning possibilities and its relation to how people sang, he began making experiments with choruses. “These experiments have a very interesting connection to what he went on to do in quantum theory, which one might describe as a new way of tuning the world,” says Pesic. His book features other scientists and mathematicians with musical research interests, including Kepler, Newton, Euler, Young, Helmholtz, and Riemann. 34 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 In his book, Pesic explains that 18th-century experiments with electricity and magnetism were influenced by experiments with sound and pitch. “When you take a metal plate, sprinkle sand on it, and stroke it with a violin bow, you see amazing patterns,” he says. “Oersted, Wheatstone, and Faraday began studying how those sound patterns might be connected to similar patterns generated by electricity or magnetism. These developments in the idea that you could see sound helped people understand how electricity and magnetism interact with each other.” Pesic’s book may also be downloaded as an iBook with sound examples at http://mitpress. mit.edu/books/music-and-making-modernscience. Activated by touching the iPad screen, the sound examples span the fundamental elements of musical sound, Kepler’s music of the spheres, and what Pythagoras may have heard in a blacksmith’s shop. Pesic plays and sings many of the examples; more than 50 recordings and animations also include Gregorian chants, choral music, and recreations of Planck’s experiments with choruses. The book has “different levels of depth,” says Pesic. Readers who “just want to know the argument can read for that. Or they can go into the musical examples. There are many paths of access.” Thanks to support from the Guggenheim Foundation, he hopes this book will begin a new phase in his work, including more books about music. “Science tends to be dispassionate,” says Pesic, who has played numerous piano recitals in Santa Fe and elsewhere in the United States and Europe. “I can’t decide to make a scientific discovery just because I feel a certain way, in the way you can paint and express a feeling. But music is the hinge between what is felt and what is thought; it connects both worlds. A sound is both a physical sensation and something that has a mental identity. Music combines feeling and order, joined mentally but also with a physical thrill.” —Jennifer Levin �bibliofile The Amado Women By Désirée Zamorano (SF83) Cinco Punto Press, 2014 In her latest novel, The Amado Women—set primarily in Los Angeles—Désirée Zamorano (SF83) aims to debunk popular stereotypes of Latinas and the Latina experience. She eschews cardboard constructs such as fiery temptresses and victimized immigrants to tell the story of a middle-class mother and her three wildly divergent daughters: a teacher, a financial advisor, and an artist. The women are bound together by family, but grapple with personal struggles, Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other By Deborah Achtenberg (A73) Northwestern University Press, 2014 What meaning does the presence of the other hold for us? Is the presence of the self fundamentally in relation to the other? Deborah Achtenberg (A73), a philosophy professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, explores these questions in her new book, Essential Vulnerabilities (Northwestern University Press, 2014). Modern philosopher Emmanuel Levinas confronted these questions. Achtenberg argues that Plato, like Levinas, is a philosopher of the other, but the two philosophers conceive The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Poverty, and Policy By Darrel Moellendorf (A83) Cambridge University Press, 2014 “Our world is beset with several pressing problems, including war, intolerance, poverty, and climate change,” writes Darrel Moellendorf (A83) in the introduction of his new book, The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2014). With a growing concern that Frankenstorms such as Hurricane Sandy and typhoon Haiyan may be the new normal, he illuminates the importance of our initiatives to exit the fossil-fuel triumphs, and secrets as they strive for upward mobility and a piece of the American Dream. Zamorano, director of Occidental College’s Community Learning Center in Los Angeles, California, is committed to raising awareness of Latinas in the fictional worlds found in mainstream books, films, and television. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning short story author whose previous novels, Modern Cons (Lucky Bat Books, 2013) and Human Cargo (Lucky Bat Books, 2011), as well as her numerous short stories, explore contemporary issues of injustice, inequity, and the invisibility of Latinas. human vulnerability and responsiveness differently. In her book, she carefully delineates these and other similarities and differences between Plato’s and Levinas’s philosophies, aiming to “resituate Levinas’s work, in order to grasp what is most unique about Levinas.” By pairing Plato and Levinas, the book sheds light on how we consider questions such as “What is knowledge?” “What is virtue?” “What is goodness?” Through extended textual analysis of the works of both Plato and Levinas, enriched by the author’s own translations of Plato’s works, Achtenberg provides an alternate way of interpreting Levinasian epistemology and its true origins in the Western philosophical tradition. —Cem Turkoz (A15) regime; he advances the literature on climate change by bringing a unique philosophical perspective to the issue. Moellendorf, professor at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, is an internationally known political philosopher with an interest in questions of global justice. He argues that climate change policy is a public problem to which normative philosophy can offer a solution. In his book, he combines discussions of poverty and justice with exploration of the importance of biodiversity preservation and the aesthetics of nature. For Moellendorf, the debate about international climate negotiations is not only about climate change but also a just framework for energy consumption, the key, he says, to wiping out poverty. —Cem Turkoz (A15) The College | st. john’s college | winter 2013 | The College | st. john’s college | spring 2015 35 �alumni notes 1948 Raphael Ben-Yosef (A) writes from Israel, “In 1951, I was working on making a seawall into the Red Sea in Eilat. This involved directing a crane where to put large granite rocks we had blasted out of the mountains (using an instrument I made from a wooden board and nails according to a recipe from Euclid). In the midst of waving my hands to the crane operator, I heard a shout and looked around. Emerging from the back of a Jeep pick-up (there was such a vehicle then) was Winkie Barr. In those days, to get to Eilat from Tel Aviv was a 12-hour ride each way, over rock roadbed for part of the way. There was this Jeep which took tourists every two weeks or so. We talked and then he was gone, perhaps to the Dead Sea. As you know, Winkie was a man with much fire under his red hair.” 1960 Katherine Hsu Haas (A) writes, “Many of you heard that my beloved Ray (Class of 1958) died two years ago. I thought I would not find one moment of happiness without him, not after 54 years of marriage. But life is full of surprises; I became reacquainted with Bob Feldmann, who taught English with Ray, and Walter (Class of 1961) and Cynthia Voigt, at the Key School 30 years ago. Long story short, Bob and I married this August. Mary Gallagher (A) came from N.Y. to join many relatives and friends for this happy occasion. Last year, I visited Rosalie Levine Boosin (A) and her Joel in NYC. We spent a most wonderful afternoon in the Metropolitan Museum dining room together. I will remember that day forever; I miss Rosalie, who had the most positive outlook on life.” 1960 Supporting the Opposition Mary Campbell Gallagher’s (A) new organization, Americans for the Preservation of Paris (APP), is sponsoring a petition opposing plans for skyscrapers in Paris. She invites other St. John’s alumni to sign it and send it to their friends. The letter that accompanies the petition explains the issues: http://bit.ly/NoParisSkyscrapers. She has written and spoken widely on this subject, most recently, on ‘The Destruction of Paris’ on October 8 at the School of Architecture of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Her other company, BarWrite®, won the 2014 Global Legal Skills Award for its recognition of the special bar exam preparation needs of lawyers and law students from other countries. 1964 Cecily Sharp-Whitehill (A) writes, “Greetings from Osprey, Fla. In November 2013 I returned to school— again; this time to a yearlong course on the ‘hows’ of being a life coach. For decades I’ve been informally encouraging, supporting family, friends, and near-strangers as they aim to shed confining roles, their grim predictions for the future based on grim pasts, and opening people to their choices of how they view everything—how not to be victims of their ‘lot in life.’ Now, with a pack of tools, unceasing curiosity combined with learning and an increasing clientele roster, Alliance4DiscoveryCoaching is joyfully moving forward.” 36 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Judith Wood (A) writes, “I chose St. John’s because it was the perfect college to get my first degree before I went to get my master’s in library science. However, for various reasons I left the college after two years. I married my husband in 1963, and we ended up in California, where I went to a junior college and became an accountant. I worked for several companies into my ’50s, and then decided to see if I could get accepted at a library school in California. Of course, I still needed to get my bachelor’s degree, so I went to California State University, San Bernardino, and graduated after three years. There, I worked in the library, graduated Phi Kappa Phi, and was the top student in my business classes. I later received my master’s in library science from San Jose State University in 1998 and started working as a reference librarian at the main library of Tulare County Library, where I worked for 12 years. In fall 2010, a biopsy came back positive for cancer. I went to see a special surgeon at UCLA, and he arranged for a surgery of my mouth. I retired at age 69, just had my 70th birthday, and have been cancer-free for almost two years.” 1969 Having retired from the practice of law, Deborah Moll (A) is concentrating on her longtime pursuit of photography. In 2013, she was chosen as the featured artist at the 2013 New Mexico Bar Association Annual Convention. For the past three years, she has served as a panelist for the review and selection of applicants for grants awarded by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, Arts Division, to organizations supporting the arts. In 2013/14 she has shown photographs in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Los Alamos, N.M., as well as in the Santa Fe New Mexican. She can be reached at deborahmollphoto@aol.com. 1970 E.M. Macierowski (A) writes, “I have just received word that my essay, ‘Geopolitics and the Persian Gulf: Some Philosophical Reflections,’ should be appearing in mid-March in the Festschrift for Henryk Kiere, professor at the Catholic University of Lublin. And I have been selected a fellow of the Adler-Aquinas Institute.” John Dean (A) writes, “Time rolls on and I am now a professor at Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu Wydział Anglistyki Collegium Novum (Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna, Poland). In some ways, it’s a long way from Paris and the University of Versailles, �alumni notes 1980 Head of the Rock Jamie Whalen (A) finished second in the Men’s Masters 48+ Single at the Head of the Rock Regatta on October 12 in Rockford, Ill. He writes, “The fellow on the left is Paul Harrington from the Quad Cities. I started just ahead of him and stayed there during the first half of the race. We rowed side-by-side for much of the second half. He got ahead of me, and then I put on a sprint at the end. Unfortunately I didn’t choose my line well and had to stop rowing when I came up on his stern. He still would have won on time, but I would have at least passed him back. I felt good afterwards and had more in the tank that I should have used earlier in the race.” and, in some ways, not. This place is in the shadow and aftermath of a whole different history. But I’m still professing cultural history, as ever, though with text in context of a whole different kind. Where I’m at is on a road that the great books helped make possible. So far, at Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna, I’ve found the students wonderful—intellectually mature, lively and engaging, enthusiastic and involved, polite, and ambitious.” 1971 Vicky Manchester Garrison (SF) is in Taos for the winter on a personal writing retreat to complete publication of The Crying Boy, a utopian young adult novel. Anne Farrell (A69) is illustrating. 1979 Meg Rosenberg Wilde (A) writes, “I am working in the Bronx as a family physician with the Montefiore Residency Program in Social Medicine, training family docs and seeing patients. Love the work and the Bronx, where I have lived for the past 25 years. My daughter, Emma, is a sophomore at Green Mountain College in Vermont, close enough to visit and far enough to build independence. My son, Nathaniel, is a junior at Bronx Science and concocting various plans to take over the world. We are all thankful to be well and engaged with our work and family.” Peter Grubb (A) is president of ROW Adventures (www. rowadventures.com), a travel company that leads vacation tours in more than 25 countries around the world, including African safaris, sea kayaking destinations, and more. He and his wife of 30 years, Betsy Bowen, have two children ages 21 and 23. 1982 Gail Donohue Storey’s (SFGI) third book, I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail, was published in 2013 by Mountaineers Books. A second printing—with a Readers Guide, including an interview between her and the editor, and Questions and Topics for Group Discussion—was published in 2014. The memoir, which won the National Outdoor Book Award, Foreword IndieFab Book of the Year, Colorado Book Award, Nautilus Silver Award, and Barbara Savage Award, is her hilariously harrowing story of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with her husband, Porter, a hospice physician, in a career crisis. Her first book, the novel The Lord’s Motel, was praised by the New York Times Book Review as “a tale of unwise judgments and wise humor.” Her second novel, God’s Country Club, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. For more information: www.gailstorey.com. 1985 The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel, L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright’s (A) second book in her young adult fantasy series, was published by Dark Quest in 2014. The book features a magic school that is loosely based on St. John’s. It briefly made it to #1 on an Amazon bestseller list. 1984 Head of the Charles 1980 Dory Eisenbeis Culver (SF) is retiring after the mid-term elections as the managing editor of KCBS Radio, her job for the past 30 years. She will continue to live in San Francisco with her husband, Walter Nirenberg. She plans to do some recruitment work for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and hopes to do some writing. Her email is dory.culver@gmail.com. Damon Ellingston (A84) participated in a race on the Charles River. He writes, “What a fun race that was! I accomplished all my goals: broke 21 minutes, finished in the top half of the field (sort of) and made the 15% cut for qualification next year.” The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 37 �alumni notes 1986 Kristen Caven (SF) writes, “Recently, I had tea with the wife of Chav Doherty (SF), I edited a story for Kilian Melloy (SF), and had mac and cheese for lunch with Jennifer Flynn Israel (A). Meanwhile my son, Donald, is shopping for colleges (St. John’s has the best mascot: the Book) and trying to balance between the tasks of life and the tasks of the imagination. Follow the creative struggle at www.kristencaven.com.” 1987 Michael R. Brown (A) (formerly under step-dad’s surname Vitakis) writes: “Greetings! I’m living in Austin, Texas. I was just filmed by Montana PBS for a documentary on Mary MacLane (1881-1929), a sui generis writer from Butte, which I’ve been working to document and publicize since my SJC days. I just published a 600-page anthology of her writing, Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader, and in 2015 I will publish a 1,200-page collection of primary sources in two volumes: Mary in The Press: Miss MacLane and Her Fame. I continue to break piano strings just like I used to!” 1988 David Blankenbaker (SF) finally read The Wind in the Willows. He is indebted and grateful to David Johnston (SF97) for his guidance and contributions. Rena Ferguson (née Kuntavanish) (A) is working in private practice as a psychiatrist, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) provider, and adjunct professor at SUNY, Stony Brook. She started out using TMS as a non-invasive, pain and medication-free treatment for de- pression, but has expanded its uses to other psychiatric disorders. She can be contacted at www.tmshopecenteroflongisland.com. Barbara Hahn (A) writes, “I’m an associate professor of history at Texas Tech University and the associate editor of the journal Technology and Culture. For the next two years, I’m on leave and serving as a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow to the EU. I’m working at the University of Leeds in the north of England, where I’m writing a new history-of-technology treatment of the Industrial Revolution for the classroom and with industrial heritage museums. I’d love to hear from old friends at b.hahn@alumni.unc.edu.” Kim Paffenroth (A) became interim director of the Iona College Honors Program. He is a full professor in the college’s Religious Studies Department. 1989 Nathaniel Herz (A) writes, “We moved to Peoria, Ill. from Brooklyn, N.Y. in 2013. It wasn’t for work or any obvious reason. Basically, we moved on a whim; so far, a very pleasant one. We look forward to seeing Johnnies passing through or living in Central Illinois.” 1990 Kevin Graham (A) has been appointed to serve as the inaugural Timms Magis Core Curriculum Professor at Creighton University, the Jesuit and Catholic university of Omaha, Neb. In this role, he is responsible for directing the Magis Core Curriculum that provides general education to undergraduate students in four colleges of the university. He continues to teach philosophy at Creighton University, as he has done for 18 years. Graham Harman (A) has been named the #68 most powerful force in the international art world, along with his three colleagues in the Speculative Realism philosophy movement, by the London-based ArtReview magazine’s 2014 Power 100. The group first appeared on the list last year, ranked #81. The entire list can be found at http:// artreview.com/power_100. 1991 1992 On Broadway Alec Berlin (SF) writes, “I’ve just completed a two-month sojourn in San Diego as guitarist for the Old Globe’s production of Bright Star, the new musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. It was a fantastic experience, filled with authentically joyous music. My non-working hours were spent marveling at the landscape in the deserts of Joshua Tree and Anza-Borrego. Now I’m back to NYC to pick up back at my other job, as guitarist for the Broadway musical If/Then. Plans for 2015 include original music as a follow-up to my 2012 CD, Innocent Explanations.” 38 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Andrew M. Schwartz (A) is still happily married to Marie with three beautiful daughters, Amelia (10), Sarah (9), and Emily (5), and living in the suburbs in the far northeast of Philadelphia. He was recently appointed a department chair at his large law firm, Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman and Goggin, heading up the financial services litigation group. Ramona Denk Webb (A) writes, “I married Thomas Webb (a fair dinkum Australian bloke) in 2012, and we are living in Colorado Springs. His two children live in the U.K. I have a home birth midwifery practice that is going well. I spent five years in Sudan (four in Darfur) doing safe motherhood projects from 2007-2012.” �alumni profile Military Midwifery by Gregory Shook Gay Hall (AGI99) is an independant practitioner rest of the semester at home in Pennsylvania. While in recovery, she was dissuaded from returning to St. John’s. “My family said to me that I was never going to make a living with that degree,” she says. “So I thought I’d try something else; nursing seemed like something I could do anywhere.” She enrolled in Columbia University’s A sudden shift in acanursing program, where she graduated in 1961, but never abandemic plans ultimately doned her love of the great books or St. John’s College. led to a life of dedicated After earning a master’s degree in nurse-midwifery from the service—and the births of Catholic University of America, Hall joined the Air Force as a public health nurse in 1975. “The military was actually looking for me more than 1,000 healthy because they needed more midwives,” says Hall, who by then had a babies during a 20-year child of her own. Over the years, she saw a change in midwifery phicareer. From 1975 to losophy. “When I started in the military, things were really rigid,” says Hall, a proponent of alternative birthing environments. “I had 1995, as a public health nurse and a staff midwife to deliver babies in the delivery room, and that sterile environment wasn’t comfortable,” she says. “By the time I finished, we stopped in the United States Air that nonsense of dragging everyone into the delivery room.” MidForce, Gay Hall (AGI99) wifery, she says, is about creating a soothing, comfortable environment for both mother and child, which is “wonderful because the cared for female Airmen mother says what she wants and you work with that.” and spouses of male Airmen during pregnancy, Throughout her career, Hall was fortunate to receive several labor, delivery, and the postpartum period. She also plum assignments, includtaught midwifery to new recruits. While many births ing England, Las Vegas, “You have to make and the Florida Panhantook place within the safe confines of hospital madle. She rose to the rank of ternity wards, Hall sometimes had to assist mothers, your own diagnoses... colonel before her retirequite literally, on the fly. “I was in several situations because you’ll be judged ment in 1995. During her where I had to take laboring women by helicopter by your own actions.” last military assignment in Washington, D.C., Hall to a larger Air Force hospital because either the served as director of the mother or the baby was in trouble,” says Hall, whose U.S. Air Force School of academic and military training prepared her for the Nurse-Midwifery, which works in collaboration with the Georgefield’s inevitable emergency situations. town University Nurse-Midwifery Program. In this capacity, she trained her midwives to go above the call of duty, if needed, to do “Being a midwife is being an independent practitioner,” she surgical first assisting and navigate adverse situations. “If placed says, “meaning that you have to make your own diagnoses and out in the battlefield, midwives need to know how to deliver a baby know what you’re doing because you’ll be judged by your own in the field as well as in a clean hospital.” actions and not anyone else’s.” At the 2014 Homecoming in AnWhile teaching midwifery in D.C. in the ’90s, the lure of great napolis, Hall received the Alumni Association’s Award of Merit in books and engaging conversation pulled Hall back to the St. recognition of her achievements. Before coming to St. John’s the first time in 1955, Hall fell in love John’s Annapolis campus, where she completed two segments at the Graduate Institute. After retiring in 1995, she finished the last with the college during a visit to Annapolis, where her father was a two sections of the program, earning her Master of Arts in Liberal Class of 1919 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. A conversation Arts degree in 1999. Currently working part-time as a commuwith James Tolbert, director of Admissions, sealed her decision, nity health nurse and full-time founding an Orthodox Mission in and she enrolled in the college’s fourth class of women. “I was an intense student,” says Hall. “And I found [the Program] the small town of Big Pine, a couple miles from her home in the Florida Keys, Hall continues to take on new challenges. “You just incredible—the amazing books that we read and [discussed] in such say, ‘I can do anything. Just tell me what the parameters are and let a short period of time.” In 1958, during the second semester of her me work on them.’ This is what St. John’s represents.” junior year, Hall was stricken with influenza and had to spend the The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 39 The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 39 The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 39 �alumni notes Lake James H. Perriguey (SF) recently led the legal effort that brought marriage equality to Oregon and saved the citizens of the state $12,000,000 in a proposed ballot initiative on the civil rights of a minority. On May 19, 2014, gay and lesbian Oregonians were equal under the law for the first time in State history. While at St. John’s, he founded the first recognized GLBTQ student group on campus in Annapolis and advocated that the board of governors adopt a school non-discrimination statement that included gay and lesbian students. 1993 Laura Anne Haave (formerly Stuart) (A) writes, “In August, I accepted the position of director of the Gender and Sexuality Center at Carleton College and moved to Northfield, Minn., a small town about 45 minutes south of the Twin Cities. My partner and I bought a tiny 1961 Usonian house designed by an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, known to most people in Northfield as “that weird little modern house.” After the death of our beloved Himalayan cat, Mudpie, we adopted a Kurilian bobtail, Agent Natasha Meowmanoff. I also took this opportunity to change my last name to Haave. This was my greatgrandparents’ last name when they emigrated from Norway to Chicago. My mom and I went to Norway last summer and visited Stavanger, our family’s former hometown. I already have my great-grandmother’s first name and have wanted to change my last name since high school, and our trip finally inspired me to do it. We hope to go back to Norway again next year.” 1995 Janet Sunderland (SFGI) writes, “My husband, Cliff Kroski, and I went to visit St. John’s Annapolis while visiting Baltimore in early October. Our first stop was in the Alumni Office where we met Leo Pickens, director of Alumni Relations, Annapolis. He was gracious enough to lead us on a wonderful tour of the grounds, over to the river, back through buildings, and into classrooms. It made me homesick. One of the upstairs rooms was furnished with soft easy chairs and a fireplace. I know where I would have spent winter afternoons! And walking across the old wooden floor of the ballroom brought back wonderful memories of waltz parties during my time in Santa Fe. There was a nice sense of belonging, even as a GI graduate, to traditions and a quest for excellence that transcends us all.” 1996 Douglis Beck (AGI) is now the graphics coordinator at Jaffe Book Solutions, a bindery and print-ondemand publisher in St. Louis, Mo. He continues to maintain a micropractice called Documodern : : Design Writing Research, focused on architecture and design. He was also recently invited by Poetry Scores to be the visual curator of the Tractatus project, a new, openended, international translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) into other media, starting immediately with music and later including visual art and performance components. U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell has named Brian McGuire (A), longtime chief speechwriter and senior advisor in his Capitol Leadership Office, as the next chief of staff in 40 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 1998 Great Books for Kids Juliana (Martonffy) Laumakis (A) writes, “Anyone out there looking to indoctrinate the next generation should check out the Junior Great Books program that’s run through the Great Books Foundation. The Foundation was started in 1947 by some of the bigwigs (Adler, Hutchins, etc.) to promote seminarstyle discussions among adults, and in 1962 the concept was extended to kids. Examples of readings include The Buffalo Storm by Katherine Applegate and Luba and the Wren, a Ukrainian folktale as told by Patricia Polacco. We’ve been doing the JGB program at our eldest daughter’s school with 2nd-5th graders during lunchtime with parent volunteers. The kids come having twice read a short story from the JGB anthology—really rich, intentionally unknown selections from around the world—and then parents lead the seminars as the kids eat. If anyone wants more information about the JGB program, check out www.greatbooks.org or feel free to contact me at jlaumakis@gmail.com. It’s really amazing how much the kids have gotten out of it!” his personal office. In the new role, McGuire will assume the duties of a traditional chief of staff responsible for home-state priorities while retaining some of his current responsibilities advising on strategic communications and policy. some writing while I’m home. I just submitted my first piece and am looking into self-publishing a novella. I’m starting to post some short fiction and writing samples on my classics reading blog: http://hjhreader.blogspot.com.” 1997 1998 Heidi Jacot Hewett (A) writes, “We had our second child this summer, a little girl named Cordelia. My eldest, Ariadne, is three and loves being read to, so we’re off to a great start! I’m working on Sara Barker (A) celebrated her daughter Fiona’s first birthday in June. The family flew to Stuttgart, Germany, in July with Matthew Corcoran (A97) to attend Whit Peterson’s (A) wedding. �alumni notes Can Atacik (A00) also attended. When not working in communications for a government contractor, she continues to tread the boards in D.C. Her acting schedule is available on her website: www. sarabarker.com/acting. David O’Hara (SFGI) teaches classics and environmental philosophy at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D. His third book, Downstream: Reflections on Brook Trout, FlyFishing, and the Waters of Appalachia, was published in 2014. The citizens of Alaska’s Fairbanks Northstar Borough elected Michael O’Brien (SFGI) to a three-year term on the borough’s school board. He continues to work as an associate general counsel for the University of Alaska, primarily handling Title IX compliance, NCAA issues, and labor and employment law. He and his wife, Jill, have an eight-year-old son. 2001 2000 In July, Tim Carney (A) and his wife, Katie, welcomed their fifth child, Sean. They live in Silver Spring, Md., and are parishioners at St. Andrew Apostle Catholic Church. Tim is the senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Blythe Davenport’s (SF) book of poetry, Second Oldest: A Poetic History of Philadelphia, was published by PS Books in 2013. Sylvaine (Rameckers) Hughson (A) is an Executive Health & Lifestyle Coach™ and has recently launched a new website www.sylvainehughson.com. She is the founder and director of SNH —The Art & Science of Optimized Living™ and works with high-level executives helping them realize the fundamental role that health, wellness, and lifestyle play in achieving their personal and professional goals. Her focus is Peak Performance, Personal Excellence, and Optimized Living™.  She was recently awarded “Woman of the Year” by the National Association of Professional Women.  finally come home, but now I am, of course, finding myself missing the people and a few aspects of the culture. I’ve landed a job with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Ventura, Calif., permitting work in waters of the U.S. under the Clean Water Act. I am still getting used to SoCal and would be glad to catch up with any Johnnies in the area.” 2004 Michael Looft’s (AGI) book, Inspired Finance: The Role of Faith in Microfinance and International Economic Development, was published in 2014. 2005 Jacob Thomas (A) is married to his wife of five years, Phoebe, and continues to work in the Special Education Department of the Berkeley Unified School District. In his free time, he runs two small record labels out of his living room. So far this year he has released seven albums, all on cassette. He 2007 Aiding Afghanistan 2002 John Rogove (A) is teaching and finishing his Ph.D. in philosophy at the Sorbonne, on Husserl’s phenomenology, and also teaching at NYU’s Liberal Studies Program. 2003 Sean McLain (A) and his wife, Suryatapa Bhattacharya, welcomed their son, Amartya Christopher McLain, on August 26. He still lives in New Delhi, India, where he and his wife work for the Wall Street Journal. Erin Hanlon (SF) writes, “I’m back from my two years in Moscow, where I taught English at a parochial school. It was quite the adventure. I was very glad to Felicitas Steinhoff (SF) writes, “I am currently working in rural Afghanistan for a humanitarian aid organization (Help - INGO from Germany) as the senior project advisor for vocational training and institutional capacity building. My husband and I live in the high-altitude mountain valley called Bamiyan, site of the world heritage Buddha Statues that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. With the withdrawal of the international forces and the new government, the coming year will be very important for development in the country, and as you can read pretty much daily now, the security situation in some regions already points to a difficult year ahead. What I have experienced beyond that, however, is a country full of complex history, intriguing social codes, a wealth of contradictions, and, above all, people who are amazing storytellers, optimists, hosts, and colleagues. Therefore, in the spirit of the independent inquiry that we learned at St. John’s, I want to encourage alumni, current students, and faculty to look beyond the headlines and news coverage, when thinking about Afghanistan.” The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 41 �alumni notes also participates in a number of local music projects (most of which release music exclusively on archaic technology), which include leading a black metal band that features frequent contributions from Aidan O’Flynn (A). The Atlantic favorably described them as “lo-fi shoegazebeing-eaten-by-demons.” Tom Jacobs (A) and Brianne Jacobs (nee Bell) (A06) had their first son, David Jacobs, on January 23, 2014. Scott Dunbar (SF) graduated from the University of Colorado Law School in 2011 and landed his dream job as an assistant attorney general at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. He represents the staff of the Public Utilities Commission on cases involving electric and natural gas rate cases, electric resource plans, and energy efficiency and renewable energy matters. “Ray Gifford (A89), a former chairman of the PUC, was an informal mentor to me during law school and a great help in guiding me along this path,” says Dunbar. In August 2014, he married his best friend, Meghan, in Breckenridge, Colo. John Gorczynski (SF04) was a groomsman. “We live in Boulder with our dog and spend our free time hiking, snowboarding, biking, and brewing beer,” says Dunbar. “I feel fortunate to have a small but good contingent of Johnnies in the area.” 2006 Aran Donovan (SF) was erroneously identified as male in the summer 2014 issue of The College. We regret the error. 2007 Chelsea Ihnacik (A) writes, “I ran the Zooma Annapolis Half Marathon (my first). It was fun and challenging! I chose to run a race in Annapolis because it has been my surrogate hometown since I graduated from St. John’s College. I worked as a retail manager until my husband and I took an ‘extended vacation’ in the U.S. Virgin Islands for two years. When we returned to the mainland, I took up my current job of full-time mom, which I love. I am the author of the blog, Whole Food Vegan (www.wholefoodvegan.com), and a contributor to the vegan lifestyle blog, Peaceful Dumpling (www.peacefuldumpling.com). My passion is plants: I’m an advocate for a whole foods plant-based diet, and I lead workshops for adults in southern Maryland who want to follow mom’s advice and ‘eat your fruits and veggies!’ My current pursuit is to get as much of our food at low cost and from local organic sources as possible, which I achieve by working for trade as a food photographer in the community.” Adam Braus (SF) writes, “For the past few months, Micah Davis (SF10), Zhenya Ogorodova (SF), and I have started Conversera. com, an online great conversation school. Based in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., we have a small curriculum of singleton seminars on a variety of short stories, science, and novellas. We have more than 350 students and 12 facilitators and 15 classes in the works, with participants from across the United States, Guatemala, and China. We plan to double every month, so by Christmas we should have more than 1,000 students. Early next year, we are planning to do an equity crowdfunding raise of $250k. You can learn more and/ or contact us at hello@conversera. com or Facebook.com/conversera.” Will Hollingsworth’s (SF) new bar, the Spotted Owl Bar, opened in Cleveland, Ohio, in October 2014. The bar is located in a circa-1850s building that once housed a Bible factory. 2013 In October 2014, Amy Stewart (A) was inducted into a 10-month term of service in the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), an AmeriCorps program. As a corps member, she will be responsible for completing a series of six- to eightweek-long service projects as part of a small team. Kurt Strom (A) and Audra Zook (A) were married on October 11, 2014, in Glendale, Ariz. Zachary Wells (A) and Margaret Reitz (A14) were married in summer 2014. Mr. Reitz-Wells is now reading in Eastern Classics in Santa Fe, where Mrs. Reitz-Wells is employed by the college. 2014 Micaela MacDougall (A) is currently fundraising for her graduate studies at St. Andrews, Scotland. To learn more, please visit www.youcaring.com/SendMKtoStAndrews. Read the June 10, 2014 article in the Capital: http://bit.ly/1uRVGnh 2008 Brian Becker (AGI) and his wife, Melanie, welcomed their second child, Finn William Becker, in October. He is currently the assistant headmaster at Washington Jesuit Academy in D.C. 42 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Micaela MaDougall (A14) and her mother, Lynn, at Homecoming 2014 in Annapolis. �in memoriam Chaninah Maschler (H98) August 7, 2014 Tutor, Annapolis Chaninah Maschler (1931-2014), formerly Chaninah Marienthal-Lowenthal, was born in Berlin, and then moved to Amsterdam. She was hidden from the Nazis during World War II, saved by a Christian family named the Mooks in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her mother and brother were active with the Dutch underground resistance and were captured by the Nazis and sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where her brother died. After the war, Maschler was reunited with her mother, who had survived Bergen-Belsen, and they immigrated to the United States. Maschler graduated from City College of New York in 1953. She won a full scholarship for graduate study at Yale University. She taught philosophy, religion, and other subjects at Bryn Mawr, Penn State, and Queens College. Maschler joined the St. John’s faculty as a tutor in 1976, first at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe and then at the Annapolis campus, until 1998. She is remembered for her many contributions to the intellectual life of the college and remained an enthusiastic member of the college community after her retirement. Dozens of former students have remained her devoted friends over the years. The community gathered for a memorial held on September 14, 2014, in the Great Hall. Colleagues remember Maschler for her abiding curiosity and interest in wide-ranging subjects, authors, and people. Among her many interests were the works of Darwin, Simon Stevin, Charles Sanders Pearce, and Spinoza, as well as mathematics, the Hebrew Bible, African American poetry, child development, gardening, and anything to do with the Netherlands. She was a founding member of Kol Ami synagogue (now Kol Shalom) in Annapolis, Maryland. István Fehérváry (H89) October 30, 2014 István Fehérváry (1925-2014) was a beloved member of the St. John’s community. An accomplished athlete and scholar, he was a bold figure in his native Hungary, fighting in the resistance movement against the Soviets and eventually spending eight years in the gulag. He came to St. John’s, Santa Fe in 1969, establishing the Student Activities Office and serving as its director for 20 years. He was instrumental in founding the St. John’s Fencing Club, Maschler’s husband, Henry Maschler, preceded her in death in 2004. She is survived by her daughters, Rina Maschler of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Toni Maschler of Alexandria, Virginia; and her granddaughter, Josie Silver. the Search and Rescue team, and countless other activities that benefited generations of Johnnies. When he became an honorary member of the Alumni Association in 1989, his certificate read, in part: “with gratitude for the exuberance and devotion with which he has dealt with students of the Santa Fe campus over the years as Director of Student Activities; and with respect for the talent and discipline he has shown in his endeavors.” Fehérváry is remembered fondly for his warmth, courage, generosity, and love for learn- ing; he wrote several books. In the words of the plaque that hangs in the lobby of Santa Fe’s Student Activities Center, he was “a courageous and extraordinary man whose sacrifice, passion, and wisdom turned our thoughtfulness into activity.” He is survived by his son, István Andras Fehérváry, director of Government and Public Affairs for Novartis, and his daughter, Krisztina Fehérváry (SFGI89), a member of the anthropology faculty at the University of Michigan and associate director of its Center for Russian and East European Studies. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 43 �in memorium George Anastaplo (H90) February 14, 2014 Norman Levan (SFGI74) May 25, 2014 Norman Levan (1916-2014) was quick to say that the St. John’s College Graduate Institute changed his life. In the middle of his thriving medical career, he found a learning community in Santa Fe united by a common love of books and ideas, one that welcomed students of all ages. “It was a turning point in my life: being able to read the original texts, being part of a community, experiencing a faculty so different [from medical school].” Levan generously demonstrated his appreciation when he made a $5 million gift to the college to build Levan Hall, home of the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, which was dedicated in 2010. Levan was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio. After receiving his bachelor’s degree with a major in literature from the University of Southern California (USC), he earned his medical degree there in 1939. He served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II for nearly five years, three and a half of which were in the Central Pacific, where he experienced the full fury of the battle of Okinawa. Levan then embarked upon a long and distinguished career in medicine, beginning with a private practice in dermatology. He was also a faculty member of the USC School of Medicine, serving as chair of the Department of Dermatology from 1961 to 1981 at its Keck School of Medicine. In 1962, he established the Hansen’s Disease Clinic for lep- Known as the “Socrates of Chicago,” George Anastaplo, Sr. (1925-2014) was widely considered a living institution and one of the pillars of the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults. He was nominated 13 times for the Nobel Peace Prize, according to Loyola University. After serving in the Air Force during World War II, Anastaplo studied law at the University of Chicago, where he rose to be a top student in his class. His bright legal future ended abruptly in 1950, when he refused to answer questions from the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Character and Fitness on whether he was a member of the Communist Party. This act of principled defiance led to the committee’s refusal to admit him to the bar. Anastaplo challenged the ban, ultimately arguing his case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He lost by a vote of 5-4, but not before Justice Hugo Black issued a famed, ringing dissent that said, “We must not be afraid to be free.” In his academic life, Anastaplo threaded law with the work of Greek scholars, Dante, Shakespeare, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. He enjoyed engaging with his students at Rosary College (now Dominican University), the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults. He is survived by his wife, Sara Prince Anastaplo; son, George Anastaplo, Jr. (A75); daughters, Sara Anastaplo (A78) (now Miriam Redleaf), Theodora Anastaplo, and Helen Newlin; and eight grandchildren. rosy at the Los Angeles County/ USC Medical Center. During this period, he married Betty; the couple spent their early years in Los Angeles before moving to Bakersfield. Betty died in 2005. Levan also will be remembered as an extraordinary philanthropist. He made significant gifts to Bakersfield College, USC, and a hospital in Jerusalem. With a combination of gifts and pledges totaling $17 million, Levan became the 44 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 single greatest benefactor in the history of St. John’s College in Santa Fe. His munificence supports the Graduate Institute, student financial aid, and the Levan Faculty Chair. “He has given so generously to ensure financial considerations would not preclude any student from obtaining the education he felt was so important,” said Victoria Mora, vice president for Advancement in Santa Fe. “Norm Levan was a great believer in the value of education and especially of liberal education, and he exemplified that in his life,” remarked President Mike Peters. “St. John’s was honored to have him as an alumnus.” Charles W. (Chuck) Robinson (H93) May 20, 2014 Charles W. Robinson (19192014) led an extraordinary life. He earned a cum laude degree in international relations from the University of California at Berkeley. He served as a naval engineer in World War II on the USS Tuscaloosa and saw action at the D-Day landing in France and at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After the war, he earned a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University. Robinson’s wide-ranging, audacious business career began in a dairy. He became a consultant. Then a construction company sent him to Panama to develop a timber operation. In 1950, he founded the Marcona Mining Company, shipping iron ore from Peru around the world. Shipbuilding was next, increasingly emphasizing large vessels that handled both ore and oil. During this time, Robinson met Mara, an opera singer who had founded the Opera-West Company in San Francisco. Two months later, they married. Their full lives were enriched with daughters Lisa, Wendy, and Heather. �in memorium In 1961, Robinson built the first Panamax, the largest vessel to traverse the Panama Canal. His involvement with port development in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Australia, India, and Chile helped him establish a network of governmental agencies and officials. They proved valuable when he was appointed undersecretary of state for Economic Affairs during the Ford administration, and U.S. deputy secretary of state under Henry Kissinger. Throughout his accomplished business career that followed, Robinson also developed marine design projects including the M-Ship concept—a boat crafted to reduce bow waves and ameliorate erosion in the canals of Venice, Italy, where he and Mara lived for many years. Well into his eighties, he pursued his passion for tennis, hiking, and running. The Robinsons relocated to Santa Fe in 1978, where Mara received her master’s degree from St. John’s in 1983. She served on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors from 1984 to 1990. Chuck and Mara generously gave their resources and energy to many worthy organizations, including The Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico School for the Arts, and St. John’s College. In 2009, the state House of Representatives recognized the Robinsons as New Mexico Living Treasures. Robinson is survived by his beloved wife, Mara, three daughters, two sons-in-law, and six grandchildren. Margaret Robson Olivia Delgado de Torres Also Deceased: August 24, 2014 April 18, 2014 Tutor, Santa Fe Roland J. Bailey, Class of 1935 Margaret Robson (1932-2014) was the widow of John E. Robson, an honorary alumnus and St. John’s College Board member who served three separate terms between 1973 and 2002. Born and raised in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Robson received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. She left a pioneering career in Chicago as one of the first female officers at Continental Bank of Illinois to work for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign. After she married John in Chicago, his career in government, business, and academia took them to Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; San Francisco; and Santa Fe. They spent 41 years together; John passed away in 2002. Robson devoted herself to public service as a member of many boards and commissions, from Northwestern Memorial Hospital Foundation in Chicago to the Santa Fe Art Institute, the President’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Defense Advisory Commission on Women in the Military, the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities, and more. She is survived by her son, Douglas Robson of San Francisco; a sister and brother; and several nieces and nephews. Robson will be remembered for her devotion to family, kindness to friends, and service to her community. April 22, 2014 Olivia Balfour Maldonado Delgado de Torres (1944–2014), a tutor at the Santa Fe campus from 1992 to 1996, died at age 70. Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, she attended Vassar College and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. She married Juan Delgado de Torres, an economist, in 1963. She became a reporter for LIFE magazine’s Spanish-language edition. After earning her doctorate from the New School for Social Research, she taught philosophy at Baruch College of the City University of New York and at Long Island University in Brooklyn. After St. John’s, she continued teaching at Adelphi University and the College of Santa Fe. With her Caribbean roots, she felt out of place in Santa Fe’s high desert, but loved working in her garden. She told people she was a tropical flower. Preceded in death by her husband, Juan, and her sister, Millicent Maldonado de Jesus, she is survived by her daughter, Lena; her grandson, Lucas; and her companion of almost 28 years, Kenny Pin. Mary L. Batteen, A73 September 17, 2014 George Brunn, Class of 1945 June 30, 2014 Paul G. Cree, Class of 1952 April 8, 2014 Terrance N. Dilley, SFGI74 April 25, 2014 Suzanne Fielding, SFGI77 May 14, 2014 Egle T. Germanas, SFGI83 April 11, 2014 Paul Heineman, Class of 1953 July 28, 2014 Jeffrey A. Hockersmith, SF69 August 1, 2014 Joel D. Lehman, Class of 1961 June 24, 2014 Jacob D. Martinez, SFGI70 June 9, 2014 John M. Mason, A75 April 10, 2014 E. Leslie Medford, Class of 1939 June 21, 2014 Zoe M. Pantelides, A81 September 1, 2014 Thomas Phelan, AGI93 June 13, 2014 Jerome C. Smith, SFGI74 September 22, 2014 Joseph J. Wase, Class of 1956 September 30, 2014 The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 45 �philanthropy Alumni Support Santa Fe 50th Anniversary by Susan Kaplan Because of the generosity of alumni, friends, board members, and foundations, the Santa Fe campus has already exceeded its 50th anniversary campaign goal of $20 million. With five months still left of the celebration, $23.5 million in cash and pledges has been raised and a new $30 million goal set. “The vision of the 50th anniversary campaign is to strengthen the college by strengthening Santa Fe,” says Victoria Mora, vice president for Advancement in Santa Fe. “I mean, if you’re not looking forward on the occasion of a milestone anniversary, in addition to celebrating and reflecting on the past, you’re missing out on a watershed moment! Concretely this means raising money to increase the Santa Fe portion of the college endowment as well as supporting our three-year investment plan and current operations. The $23.5 million raised to date encompasses a 53% increase in the Santa Fe endowment, which promises to strengthen the whole college as we look forward to the future.” The success of these efforts is due in large measure to the generosity of alumni, friends, foundations, and Board members who have recognized that a gift in honor of this 50-year milestone makes Santa Fe a stronger partner in the one-college, twocampus structure. Alumni, in particular, have really stepped up to support this effort. For the first time in the college’s history, a Santa Fe undergraduate alumnus has made a seven-figure gift. Dan Raizen (SF79) presented this gift in memory of his wife, Teresa (SF78), who died two years ago. Dan and Teresa met when they were students at St. John’s. Two of their three children, Nathaniel and Benjamin, are also alums. “The impulse of philanthropy ran deep in Teresa. I wanted to do something in her memory that would have a big impact now,” says Raizen. “Since four members of our family went to St. John’s College, it made sense to give to an organization that I was familiar with. More importantly, St. John’s is a place that I strongly believe in.” These fundraising activities also have brought into focus a number of ongoing endeavors by groups of alumni, efforts that have been folded into the 50th celebration. One of these is the brainchild of the Santa Fe Class of 2004, which has been working to purchase and install an operational armillary sphere on the Santa Fe campus. Inspired by the designs of the great 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe, the sphere will be designed and assembled by noted artist David Harber. He was selected for his aesthetic vision and his experience creating scientifically precise armillary spheres. The Class of 2004 has more than doubled the funds originally raised in support of this project and is approaching the initial goal of $100,000. Since the class contained about 100 students, many of whom are in the nascent stages of their careers, this accomplishment is impressive and shows the power of participation. This operational work of art serves a number of purposes. It will enable hands- 46 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 on lab work by freshman and sophomore students as they study the works of Ptolemy, Kepler, and other astronomers. It will symbolize the unity of the humanities with the sciences and enhance the beauty of the campus environment. As an icon for both the campus and the college, it will raise the campus’s visibility and underscore the enduring value of a St. John’s education. The same features that make an armillary sphere useful for our study of astronomy also make it a valuable aid in introducing primary and secondary school students to the most general appearances of the heavens. Once the armillary sphere is installed, the college plans to engage the services of one of its own work-study students to elicit participation from local schools to bring their students to campus. “What better image for the work of the college than the armillary sphere?” adds Vice President Mora. “An object of beauty and utility that represents the audacity to imagine that we might actually understand the universe we inhabit, and our place within it.” �Two Trees Two trees were planted at St. John’s College this year: a dawn redwood by College Creek in Annapolis and a golden honey locust in front of and between Terpsichore and Polyhymnia in Santa Fe. Both were gifts of love and regard, reminding us of the value of life even as we experience tragic loss. The tree in Santa Fe was planted in honor of Martha Post (SF79) by her friends and classmates. Post, a dermatologist, was married to Robert Truitt and was the mother of Erin, Caitlin, and Kathryn Truitt. She was killed September 1, 2011, in Lexington, Kentucky. Classmate Suzanne Gill remem- bers Post as “quietly cheerful, thoughtful, levelheaded, and gracious.” Laird Durley (SF79) chose a verse from Philippians for the plaque that accompanies the tree. By all accounts, this verse speaks to Post’s spirit: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” The tree in Annapolis is a memorial to Helen Higuera, daughter of tutors Marilyn and Henry Higuera, who died May 26 at the age of A Gift from the Geezers They started out as the Geezers: a group of Graduate Institute classmates a few decades older than the typical student, who gathered to share a meal from time to time. Jeff Black, associate dean for Graduate Programs in Annapolis, renamed them the Elders; they appear to like both names. Black says that the Elders made important contributions to the Graduate Institute. “Folks who are mid-career or late-career who come to the Graduate Institute make a very important contribution to the intellectual life of the program. When the younger students are in class with people at their point in life, it sheds the light of experience on the books we read.” Don Leopold, a charter member of the Elders, recalls that as graduation was approaching, the group started thinking about what they might do to express their appreciation for the Graduate Institute in general and for their tutors in particular. “Being older, we appreciated a lot of what goes into being a tutor, all the good they do and all the sacrifices they make. We understand the value of the dedication they bring to creating this remarkable learning community.” Leopold challenged his colleagues to raise money for a graduation gift to the Institute and pledged to match each dollar they gave. After consulting with Black, the Elders decided to start an endow- 24. The class of 1984 arranged for the memorial. In a letter to the Higueras, the class explained that the tree was planted to represent the deep regard in which we, their students and friends, hold Marilyn and Henry, and symbolizes our profound sorrow at their loss. Higuera held a BA in history from Stanford University and an MBA from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. At the time of her death, she was a student at Georgetown University Law School and taught ESL classes in Annapolis. She was known and loved for her intelligence, kindness, beauty, creativity, and sense of adventure. —Sus3an Borden (A87) ment fund for faculty study that would support the Graduate Institute and its curriculum and also have benefits for the undergraduate program. They chose to call it the Nestor Fund—after Agamemnon’s venerable advisor—although an alternative name was floated. Referring to the foolish counselor to King Claudius in Hamlet, Leopold says, “We did joke about calling it the Polonius Fund.” —Sus3an Borden (A87) Hallie Leighton Memorial Fund Update In 2013, the Hallie Leighton Memorial Fund for Health and Wellness was established to raise $50,000 to name the student health office on the Santa Fe campus in Leighton’s memory. The fund currently stands at $20,000 with 68 donors to the fund. Proceeds from this endowment fund will support the development of education, outreach, advocacy, and delivery of services directed towards women’s wellness, breast care for women, wellness exams, stress reduction, substance abuse prevention, and safety in relationships. Specific activities, programs, and services will be developed each year in response to students’ particular needs and issues. Class of 1993 Honors Gregory Riley with Scholarship Fund The Annapolis Class of 1993 lost a lot when it lost Greg Riley, who died on August 1, 2004. The class lost the leader of a study group on the German language, a striker for the Greenwaves, the coordinator of the “Miss Randall Hall” beauty contest and, as Chris Denny (A93) says, “one of the most wellmannered and forthright people to come through St. John’s.” Many in the class also lost a close friend. Matt Wright (A93) met Riley the day before they entered St. John’s as freshmen and remained close to him until his death. “He was an extremely charismatic person, extremely generous, and interested in other people being successful in what they were doing,” recalls Wright. “He was also very curious about off-program ideas; for him, being at St. John’s was an expression of his general interest in everything.” As a tribute to Riley, the class recently established the Gregory Riley Class of 1993 Memorial Scholarship Fund. “We received the support of alumni and mentors on our journey at the College,” Denny explains. “Now we have a chance to continue that tradition of philanthropy on behalf of current Johnnies in Greg’s memory.” To make a gift to the Hallie Leighton Fund for Health and Wellness, send a check to the college, or visit www.sjc.edu/giving. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 47 �student voices The Structure of Spirit MICHAEL McLAUGHLIN by Laura Bartram (A15) What is the spirit of place? I started thinking about this as a freshman at St. John’s College. The spirit of the freshman year is unmistakably Greek, yet when I looked up from my volume of Aristophanes while sitting on a bench near the quad, I did not see a circular theater, or glistening marble. I saw McDowell and Mellon halls— the former, a charmingly brickish and big Georgian mansion-to-be, and the latter, a modernist palace filled with glass and trees and a glorious pendulum. In the distance, I see the skyline of Annapolis, precise and toy-like, reflecting a maritime and Colonial past to which neither I nor these books are directly linked (although surely the influence of the books helped build this city). I have been immersed in this world for three years, and it starts to make sense to me as a unified place. The peculiar sense of St. John’s in this particular city, Annapolis, will forever be wound up in my mind with the task of liberal education. The spirit of place at St. John’s—bifurcated between colonial and modernist in architecture, ancient and modern in books—inspired me to think about architecture as a career after St. John’s. Luckily for me, our own Greenfield Library was designed by a Johnnie, Travis Price (SF71). I got in touch with him about a possible internship at his practice in Washington, D.C., but also was invited to work on his incredible project, Spirit of Place/Spirit of Design at Catholic University. Each year, Price and a group of architecture students research and architecturally reinterpret the myth and history of a remote culture. Before I knew it, during the summer after my sopho- 48 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 more year, I was helping to define and reinterpret spirit of place on an expedition to Inishturk Island in County Mayo, Ireland. A look at a satellite image of Inishturk Island exposes its birth as a single geological moment, a violent springing forth from the sea. Located off the western coast of Ireland, Inishturk is green and fierce, with cliffs as sharp and craggy as the meanest thing someone ever said to you. The bedrock of the island mostly runs in a single direction. It is a treacherous and magnificent landscape. Only about 40 brave souls live on the island. They are proud, stalwart, and above all, mischievous and loving. The monument was inspired by a story told by the Inishturkers, the tale of the tongs. When someone left the island for a long time on a treacherous coffin boat, �TRAVIS PRICE (SF71) Laura Bartram (A15), right, ponders spirit of place. Other than the one pub, it is the natural place to gather. The center structure is a rectangular building made of steel, glass, and local limestone, which protects the firepit within. The glass walls allow for protection from the biting wind without compromising the look of the hillside, but the engineered steel roof allows the smoke from the fire to exit the room. The steel columns that support the building curve like a pair of tongs. Surrounding the building are a number of stone and glass walls, which appear to be drawn toward the center structure. These TRAVIS PRICE (SF71) uncertain of any future return, he would leave his tongs with a bit of burning peat from his abandoned hearth at the fireplace of a family member who remained on the island. If the person ever returned, he would go to the family’s hearth and grab a coal with the tongs to take back to his fire. In this way, their fires never stopped burning; their spirits never left the island. Our building—designed by Price and his students—made the invisible parts of this story visible. First of all, the monument sits above The Common, a particularly sacred place on the island that has been variously inhabited since 5000 BCE. The monument on Inishturk Island, Ireland was built in nine days. walls represent the clans of the island and their yearning to return. The glass walls are engraved with the names of the families—Heanue, O’Toole, Faherty, and more. All the walls fall along the natural bedrock striation of the site and are made from local stone; to the eye from a distance, they blend in with the natural color palette, yet create a definite contrast between the craggy bedrock and their squareness. The built world and the natural landscape weave in and out of each other in this creation. We built the monument in nine blustery, wet, sometimes muggy days. Much of the material was prefabricated, such as the steel, glass, and wall supports. But to build the stone walls, expert Inishturkbred stonemasons came to the tutelage of us inexperienced masons: the other student architects-in-training and I, a Johnnie, trying to mentally consult the Archimedean center of weight to build my best wall. We all paled before their skill, their way of pulling metamorphic shrapnel from a hillside mine and forming with their hammers something akin to the perfect brick. This interaction with brilliant craftsmen was half of our living education in the spirit of place. Our oldest and most precious stories need the support of a place. When I struggle, for instance, in reading and understanding the papers of Maxwell that we study in junior laboratory, in imagining a field, I look around. The hatched grain of a wood floor in McDowell aids my mind in imagining the lines of force curling through space. The bare steel beams in the fishbowl in Mellon contain a space. I might superimpose a wood grain through the emptiness of the ceiling and be able to imagine a field filling space. I have spent time in new buildings thinking old thoughts. And I have spent time thinking new thoughts in buildings older than the United States. I have found that each supports the other. At St. John’s, I have felt lucky to be habituated to a way of seeing and thinking that does not preclude seeing an old idea in a new place. Our two beautiful examples of old and new architecture have helped me to become a more versatile thinker and careful looker. As buildings begin to look more and more the same around the world, however, some old ideas get swallowed up. As building materials and practices become more homogenized worldwide, the past’s appearance risks dissolution. Do our stories fit in modern design? In monuments like Price’s, or here at St. John’s, we see the spirit of our stories, our past, and our landscape embodied without excess. The elegance of the form and the elegance of the story mutually strengthen each other, creating architecture with no age. The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 49 �alumni news s av e t h e d a t e Homecoming 2015 Santa Fe September 18-20 Annapolis September 25-27 Johnnie Women in Science On a crisp November afternoon, 23 Annapolis students —freshmen through seniors—gathered together in the private dining room in Randall Hall for a panel discussion with four St. John’s alumni who work in science. Sponsored by the Career Services Office, the “Women in Science” panel featured these scientists: Homecoming is a time to reunite and reconnect with friends, classmates, and the college community. Both campuses will offer a wide variety of activities, including seminars, dancing, career networking events, and the Alumni Association Awards Banquet that will make your return to St. John’s fun and memorable. And remember: Homecoming is family friendly with fun activities offered for all of our future Johnnies, too. So bring the whole family. Please join us and your classmates as we celebrate St. John’s College. Sarah Palacios and Leo Pickens, directors of Alumni Relations For more information: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “Homecoming” Annapolis Alumni Office 410-626-2531 Annapolis.Alumni@sjc.edu Santa Fe Alumni Office 505-984-6103 SantaFe.Alumni@sjc.edu 50 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Meredith Bohannon (A03), who recently completed her PhD in the marine, estuarine, and environmental sciences graduate program at the University of Maryland. Rachel Dudik (A02), an astrophysicist at the United States Naval Observatory who earned her master’s in applied and engineering physics and her PhD in astrophysics at George Mason University. Cara Gormally (A02), an assistant professor in biology at Gallaudet University who earned her doctorate in plant biology from the University of Georgia. Elisabeth McClure (A08), a PhD candidate in Georgetown University’s Department of Psychology, where her current research examines the emotional engagement of very young children during screenmediated social interactions. The Career Services Office hosts alumni panels throughout the year, but this was the first time the group was exclusively comprised of women. “You always hear that Johnnies can do anything after St. John’s, but it’s different to actually see it,” says Jenna Alton (A16). “It was inspiring to meet so many Johnnie women in science, who exhibit such passion about what they do.” In addition to sharing knowledge about their respective fields, the alumnae discussed the process of applying to graduate school and the value of internships. Three of the panelists have sponsored Hodson Interns; they know what a great resource Johnnies can be in their labs. “I continue to be impressed with the opportunities that are available for Johnnies, especially the Hodson Internship,” says Gormally. “Taking the time to do an internship is critical, and the Hodson really lets students follow their interests.” —Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services, Annapolis �alumni news Alumni Association Board President Phelosha Collaros (SF00) “�During my time as the Alumni Association president, I’ve met many alumni who are passionate about their education at St. John’s and want to make sure it continues to survive and thrive—but they don’t always know how to help make this happen. The Alumni Leadership Forum is a great place to plug into a community that is moving the college forward and a great event for alumni to network with each other. Over the first five years, I’ve seen ALF start to come into its own. If you’ve been before, it’s time to come back and see how it’s matured. If you’ve never been, we’d love you to join us.” Sharing the “St. John’s Approach” Unlike many graduates who wait for years to get involved in their colleges, Johnnies can become engaged in alumni concerns within a month of graduating, at the Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF). Offering two days filled with seminars and sessions for alumni of all years, ALF has become a signature event of the St. John’s College Alumni Association. It’s a welcome way for alumni to stay connected with the college at a time when many question the value of the liberal arts and the method of learning at St. John’s. “As a professor teaching at another university, I found that the work done in one class seemed an isolated endeavor, and the lessons learned by students were often quickly forgotten,” says Brenna Strauss (SF04), a post-doctoral fellow at Boston College’s Department of Political Science who is one of two co-chairs for the ALF Working Group. “The education at St. John’s, in contrast, is a whole; the questions raised in one class are addressed and reframed in many others. By helping organize ALF, I hope to remind us of the unique worth of the St. John’s approach and to help alumni use their talents and resources to ensure its longevity and health.” Beyond the workshops and seminars, ALF participants have plenty of opportunities to catch up with each other and meet alumni from other classes. A highlight of the event is the Alumni Awards Banquet, held on the second evening, when the Association presents the ALFie—or Volunteer Service Award—in recognition of leadership in the alumni community. The 2014 ALFie recipients made innovative improvements. Christopher Denny (A93) of Fresh Meadows, New York, helped to develop a model for alumni chapters’ high school seminar programs. Michael Sullivan (A07) of Indianapolis established the St. John’s College Alumni Association Internet Chapter. Gloria McGillen (SF12) of Boston, Massachusetts, helped to create the Class Agent Program handbook and the first networking groups for class chairs. Many other alumni were nominated for their work as class chairs or with Career Services and Admissions. To acknowledge the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus, seminar readings and tutorials at the 2015 ALF will be selected from the Chinese and Indian traditions of the Eastern Classics Program. “We [tried] to choose readings that draw out the themes of service, devotion, integrity, and education,” said Briana Saussy (A03, EC05), of San Antonio, Texas, who volunteers in the ALF Working Group. “It turns out that the Gita is an excellent piece to read when thinking about service in particular, and Confucius was very concerned with education.” The next Alumni Leadership Forum occurs from June 5-7, 2015, on the Santa Fe campus. —Babak Zarin (A11) Thirsting to return to the seminar table? Piraeus, a continuing education program just for alumni, is offered several times each year on each campus. In Annapolis on May 28-31, tutors Tom May and David Townsend will lead seminars on Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience. Tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Lise van Boxel will lead seminars on selections from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and a recent book by Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. In Santa Fe on June 7-12, tutors Michael Wolfe and Patricia Greer will lead seminars on the poetry of Rumi. Recent alumni (2004-2014) receive a 50% discount on tuition. On-campus housing is available. Register online: http:// community.stjohnscollege.edu/ piraeus?chid=32 Who are your Alumni Association leaders? To see the current list of the St. John’s College Alumni Association officers, directors, and representatives as well as the volunteer Alumni Association working groups, visit: http://community.stjohnscollege.edu/page.aspx?pid=403h The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 | 51 �st. john’s forever Bringing Santa Fe History to Life Like the oral history project led by Santa Fe tutor Claudia Hauer, the display project highlights the people and events that have helped to define the founding and development of the Santa Fe campus. Created by Meem Library and Communications staff, the display project consists of a series of selfstanding storyboards that illustrate aspects of the Santa Fe campus’s history. The storyboards are located in a number of buildings throughout the campus. “All of us have seen photos of the early years hanging in various places around campus, but we don’t really know the stories behind those photos,” says Meem Library Director Jennifer Sprague. “These projects are bringing those stories to life, honoring the people who had the courage and vision to participate in the founding of the Santa Fe campus, while also capturing the personalities that have made this such a vibrant community throughout our fifty years. And just as importantly, these projects serve as a way to spark a conversation about what we have been doing and will continue to do at the college.” —Susan Kaplan 52 | The College | st. john’s college | winter 2015 Architect John Gaw Meem (left) and Richard Weigle survey the land donated by the Meem family to establish the Santa Fe campus, 1963. �eidos “To my mind, potters fall into two main categories: those who are fascinated by the fire and those who love to have their hands in the mud. I always loved playing in the mud, from the time I was a little girl. My mother, who was a painter, told a story of when I was about three years old, playing outside in the sun after a rainstorm. As she watched me standing in a mud puddle with the sleeves of my sweater hanging out of my jacket, I dipped my sleeves in the muddy water and swung my arms in an arc, watching the sun sparkling on the flying droplets. Mud was always an attraction! I am inspired by the creativity of others, shapes I see in nature, and ideas of how things might be used to make day-to-day experiences more beautiful—your morning bowl of cereal or cup of coffee, a vessel for flowers on your table, or a colander for washing fresh berries. For colors, I tend to choose shades of blue and green with occasional red and black or even honey, depending on the purpose of the piece.” —Eleanor Peters Eleanor Peters, wife of Michael Peters, president, St. John’s College, Santa Fe, is a potter in Santa Fe. She works in the St. John’s College ceramics studio. “I started taking classes in the early 1970s, when my husband was in graduate school in Seattle. One class a week at the local rec center turned into two, and soon my husband bought me a wheel of my own.” Peters has worked in a variety of studios over the years, with different types of clay, mainly stoneware and porcelain. She usually throws on a wheel but enjoys hand-building as well. Peters creates mostly functional ware, including platters and coasters. She glazes by dipping, often applying a second color along one side of the vessel. �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, md Permit N0. 120 Communications Office 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 ad d r ess se rv i c e r e qu est e d � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <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. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Winter 2015 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Winter_2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 40, Issue 1 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Winter 2015. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1b9deca7a4e06e3dfe48f5af2a992481.pdf 082e2b9209a9fe4628d5f5e1f05a5f43 PDF Text Text College The SUMMER 2014 • S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E • ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Anna Karenina The Truth of Stories �“How glorious fall the valiant, sword [mallet] in hand, in front of battle for their native land.” —Tyrtaeus, Spartan poet The St. John’s croquet team greets the cheering crowd in Annapolis. ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �from the editor The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Why Stories? “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Leo Tolstoy, ANNA KARENINA Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. “Emotions are what pull us in—the character’s vulnerabilities, desires, and fears,” says screenwriter Jeremy Leven (A64); he is one of several alumni profiled in this issue of The College who tell stories. Leven reveals “moments of truth” with nuanced, often sparse dialogue and subtext. Although certainly not sparing with words, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) revealed human emotions with great insight, with what tutor Jonathan Tuck calls “the raw power of storytelling” in his essay for this issue. Tolstoy was born at the family estate, about 130 miles south of Moscow. Educated at home by tutors, Tolstoy enrolled in the University of Kazan in 1844 to study Oriental languages; he transferred to the less demanding law faculty but left without a degree. In 1851 he joined the army and fought in the Crimean War (1853–56). Tolstoy’s two masterpieces are War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). He deftly paints intimate details of his characters’ lives, set against the sweeping canvas of history. Notes Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling (A93) in this issue, “Tolstoy brings to life (or to the work of art) Napoleon as man and myth, the great movements of modern Russian politics, the general tumult of enlightenment rationalism (and nationalism), and the many other forces by which Europe was convulsed in the 19th century....” Tolstoy’s fictions reveal truth. It is no surprise that they continue to be embraced by popular modern culture—for instance, both Greta Garbo (1935) and Keira Knightly (2012) starred in film adaptations of Anna Karenina. We care about what happens to his memorable characters— Pierre, Prince Andrei, Anna, and Kitty Levin, to name a few. “We come to know these people inside and out, better perhaps than we know our own families or close friends. It is very hard to remember that they are not real,” notes Tuck. Film director Domenic D’Andrea (A15) tells us it Editor Patricia Dempsey patricia.dempsey@sjc.edu Contributing Editor Gabe Gomez Associate Editor Gregory Shook Design Skelton Design Contributors Thomas Alleman Anna Perleberg Anderson (SF02) Chelsea Batten (A07) Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Sus3an Borden (A87) Domenic D’Andrea (A15) John Emerson Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) Anyi Guo (A14) Eunji Kim (A15) Jennifer Levin Adam Maraschky (A13) Paula Novash Jonathan Tuck Copyeditor Cathi Dunn MacRae The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis: 410-626-2539 Santa Fe: 505-984-6104 is not just the suspense, but the connection made through storytelling that matters: “Storytelling ought to be done by people who want to make other people feel a little bit less alone.” In this issue we meet Johnnies who are storytellers in modern and ancient forms, filmmakers, poets, even a fabric artist. N. Scott Momaday, Pulitzer Prize winner and artist-in-residence on the Santa Fe campus, says, “Poetry is the highest expression of language.” Along with student poets, he shares insights on this elegant form and how it touches our spirits and hearts. The Johnnies in film featured in this issue each transform an individual vision for a story with their craft—screenwriting, directing, film editing, and digital animation, to name a few— and close collaboration with others; the end result is there for all to see on the big screen. James Schamus (A81) describes what it took to be CEO of Focus Features, where he stewarded films that speak to the historical context of our times, and, as great stories do, captivated a generation of filmgoers. For Hanna Jayanti (SF07) film editing “is a form of writing in the visual world.” She collaborated on a documentary shown at the New Yorker Festival. Mavericks such as Mike Lacy (A12) direct music videos in which lyrics are like characters, and Geoff Marslett (SF96) jumps from writing a software program for his animated feature to directing actors without scripted dialogue. Richard Saja (SF93) transforms the art of toile. These Johnnies have in common a deep appreciation of universal stories that connect us all. Screenwriter Lee Zlotoff (A74) shares his method for tapping these stories from the subconscious: “We are a narrative species; each night we dream and each of our dreams is a story. We need these stories,” he says. We need oral stories as well. In this issue, tutor Claudia Hauer describes her oral history project about the founding of the Santa Fe campus 50 years ago, and the spirited pioneers who envisioned it. Chelsea Batten’s (A07) search for connection reminds us that a good conversation just might be better than anything—even a great film. Thank you to our contributors, and especially to our readers for sharing stories! I look forward to hearing from you. —P.D. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 1 �su m me r 2 01 4 volume 39, issue 1 ART RESOURCE ILLUSTRATION BY JULES FEIFFER, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH ...We want desperately to find out what will happen next....It’s this very curiosity that keeps us reading; though the book [War and Peace] is long, we fly through it after a while, hoping that our favorites will find the happiness they have been seeking for years. —Jonathan Tuck, tutor F E AT U R E S page 18 p a ge 24 page 38 Why Stories? Modern Takes Vision Realized Faculty members consider Tolstoy, and how reading the works of the greatest minds can illuminate historical context. Seven alumni touch our deepest emotions and reveal a truth of the moment through the power of narrative stories in feature films, animated shorts, documentaries, television characters, even embellished toile. Oral histories on the founding of the Santa Fe campus, from faculty innovations to horse rides to seminar, reveal the passion of the early pioneers. on the cover: Anna Karenina illustration by Gayle Kabaker 2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �THOMAS ALLEMAN D E PA R T M E N T S From Our Readers Bibliofile Alumni 4 42 45 Alumni Notes 55 In Memoriam 58 Philanthropy: Anjali Pai (SFGI08), Tolstoy Stories From the Bell Towers 6 Spirit of Poetry: N. Scott Momaday Alexandra Wick (A15) Alexandra Welm (A14) Joshua Sturgill (SF17) 9 Lunch with Anna Karenina 10 First Person: Domenic D’Andrea (A15) 11 Summer Film Institute in Santa Fe 12 Ariel Intern: Elizabeth Fedden (SF15) 13 Reading Tolstoy: Tutor emeritus Sam Kutler (Class of 1954) Johanna Omelia (SFGI03) and Michael Waldock (SFGI03) celebrate Come Fly with Us! A Global History of the Airline Hostess. Wright (A84) create fantasy and sci-fi in Moth and Spark and Judge of Ages. 44 Hilary Fields (SF97) follows her bliss in the City Different. Nora Gallagher’s (SF70) memoir, Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic, chronicles her medical system struggles. Tutor Gregory Recco and University of Kentucky professor Eric Sanday’s essays explore Plato’s Laws. 14 Hodson Intern: Rachel Howell (A16) 15 Larry Clendenin (SF77) Retires Profiles 16 Santa Fe Celebrates 50 Years 50 Jamaal Barnes (A10) advocates 17 On Liberal Education: Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president Larry Saporta (A91), LCDR Erik Kristensen (AGI00), Curtis Wilson, Annapolis tutor and dean 43 Anne Leonard (A89) and John C. 60 Almuni News: Homecoming 2014 Johnnie Traditions 62 Croquet: A Toga War 64 St. John’s Forever Eidos 65 Adam Maraschky (A13) above: Screenwriter and director Lee Zlotoff (A74) at work in his Malibu home public service. 53 Elizabeth Powers (A89) sheds light on workplace bias. 54 Chelsea Batten’s (A07) search for conversation The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 3 �from our readers Readers Share Tolstoy Farm My main memory of Tolstoy is of Leo Pickens’s (A78) brilliant oral exam on his senior essay on War and Peace in the reading room of the old library. Separately, I learned that Gandhi was inspired by Tolstoy and lived in an ashram called Tolstoy Farm during his formative years in South Africa. There he led nonviolent protests against the “Black Law,” which deprived Asians of their civil rights, until it was repealed in 1914, seven years after its promulgation. struggle of the Transvaal Indians, and asked him to air his views on the subject of morality....” —Chris Olson (A78) Channeling Prince Andrei I will never forgive Tolstoy for what he did to Natasha and Anna K. That said, I was ferociously devouring War and Peace, for the second time, this past autumn (a book that improves with age—my age!). On the very night I was in the thick of the Borodino aftermath, I got a deep cut from “Gandhi attributes the success of the final phase of the satyagraha campaign in South Africa between 1908 and 1914 to the ‘spiritual purification and penance’ afforded by the Tolstoy Farm.” —Chris Olson (A78) Gandhi attributes the success of the final phase of the satyagraha campaign in South Africa between 1908 and 1914 to the “spiritual purification and penance” afforded by the Tolstoy Farm. The Tolstoy Farm was the second of its kind of experiments established by Gandhi. The following is an excerpt from www.tolstoyfarm.com: “It was Tolstoy’s writings that impressed [Gandhi] the most. The Russian’s ideas about renouncing force as a means of opposition were akin to Gandhi’s own thoughts, although he did not share Tolstoy’s intense dislike for organized government. The Indian had read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You in 1894. This had stimulated his search for truth and nonviolence in his own religion . . . . Prompted by his deeper appreciation of the Tolstoyan philosophy, Gandhi wrote in October 1909 the first of his four letters to the Russian. He described in it the a piece of glass straight into my upper thigh in an around-thehouse accident. Rather than take my one-inch gaping wound to the ER in Baltimore at midnight on a Saturday, I channeled my inner Prince Andrei. I washed out the wound, poured half a bottle of peroxide over it. I tore a big strip off a clean tee shirt and wrapped my thigh. The next day—not awakening in a pool of my own blood—I walked to the ER, got my stitches, and walked to Fell’s Point in time for noon tea with fellow alum João Santa Rita (A09). —Samantha Buker (A05) Free Speech I remember reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace at St. John’s with great interest. I was asked to talk about it in my senior oral exam and, for once, did not feel tongue-tied, as I often did in seminar. —Julia du Prey (née Busser) (Class of 1966) 4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 A view from inside the Tolstoy Literary Museum in Moscow. Literary Sites My wife and I were in Moscow last year and visited the Tolstoy Literary Museum there. We intended to get to Tolstoy’s house in Moscow, where he lived for a time with his wife and 13 children after writing his masterpieces, but we never got there. —Mike Woolsey (Class of 1965) Train Trips I wrote my senior essay on Tolstoy’s War and Peace in 1975, and it won the senior essay prize, tied with my esteemed classmate Cary Stickney’s (A75) essay on Hegel. My paper was typed by Jane H., my helper-typist and I on three different typewriters at the last minute, up in my room on the third floor of the dorm with the bookstore in the basement. Probably Tolstoy typed on a typewriter, too? Don’t bother looking up a copy of the paper; it was not well written! I realize this now, but I loved the experience of spending a couple of months pondering one great book and author. I retain images such as that of Nicolai lying face up on the earth, wounded, looking up at the clouds, pausing in the midst of life. All my life, I’ve been a religious seeker, and I’m in a very different place from where I was in ’75. I live back in central Maine, whence I began my journeys from home with train trips to St. John’s College in Annapolis and back. Here is peace and many distant wars. Didn’t Tolstoy’s life end with a train trip? —Laura Bridgman (A75) A Battlefield Revelation Think of New Mexico. Now think of Russia. There’s probably not a lot of overlap in your mental Venn diagram. But that wasn’t the case for me when I was working towards my MA at St. John’s four years ago. Tolstoy wrote that “Russia and hot weather don’t go together,” and it was a harsh winter in Santa Fe the first time I read War and Peace. I slogged through the snow and slush two nights a week to attend my preceptorial on the novel. And, of course, keeping up with the assigned readings meant taking Tolstoy along with me wherever I went that frigid winter. During a post-lunch lull at the pizzeria where I worked, Prince Andrei and I had a battlefield revelation involving an infinite and lofty sky. While my clothes were drying at the Solana Laundromat, I was hunting wolves with a nobleman and his loyal team of serfs and borzois. I swaddled myself in every blanket I owned when my heater was on the fritz and felt decidedly well-off compared to Napoleon’s retreating troops. Russia and hot weather don’t go together, but, for me, Russia and New Mexico somehow do. —Wint Huskey (SFGI10) Disruptive Conclusion I remember that [Tolstoy] seminar very well because of our discussion of the characters of Andrei and his pal Pierre, and because of War and Peace’s addendum—that disruptive conclusion—which we jointly concluded in seminar did not go �from our readers with the rest of War and Peace. Tolstoy’s historical P.S. was a declaration of faith, which he wanted to make happen because he declared it so. It was the beginning of a new book. It almost spoiled the whole novel—like the extra chapter added on to T. H. White’s The Once and Future King (which White’s editor wisely cut). Years later, I’ve re-read both War and Peace and Tolstoy’s addendum, but never together. In my humble opinion, War and Peace works infinitely better on its own, without that false handle of religious faith which Tolstoy glued to its end. —John Dean (A70) The Third Epilogue Time travel to the Graduate Institute, Santa Fe, 1971: My preceptorial was War and Peace. My dilemma: A week before the work was due, what to write? A strong thought passed through my mind, “Why don’t I write the Third Epilogue?” That was followed immediately by, “But you’ve never written fiction in your life.” What then ensued were six intense days, during which time I wrote a more than 90-page extension to Tolstoy’s epic work. The words just flowed to the point that there were entire pages without one typo—and this was in the days before correcting typewriters. There were times that I had no idea what would happen next in the story. As the words flowed, I cried; I laughed. I truly felt as if Tolstoy were directing what was appearing on the page. Back to 2013: A friend said, “Why don’t you put the Third Epilogue on Kindle?” After going through the learning curve of designing a cover, figuring out how to publish something on Kindle, and re-typing the document, War and Peace: The Third Epilogue is now on Kindle under the pseudonym of Samantha Jean Wiley. —Margaret Sansom (SFGI74) A Well-Worn Copy Here is a picture of my copy of War and Peace from my senior essay. Obviously, that system was color-coded! —Erin Martell (A98) “Tolstoy wrote that ‘Russia and hot weather don’t go together,’ and it was a harsh winter in Santa Fe the first time I read War and Peace. I slogged through the snow and slush two nights a week to attend my preceptorial on the novel.” —Wint Huskey (SFGI10) Contributors Behind the Lens: Anyi Guo (A14) “I like revealing things to people that they don’t know,” says Anyi Guo (A14). “Sometimes they don’t know how beautiful they are.” Guo prefers dramatic portraits to poses and finds that she captures the moment best when the subject is relaxed, allowing their personality to shine. “It helps when you genuinely like the person because I believe that a picture reflects how you—the photographer—really think of them,” she says. Her lively images of student life appear throughout The College magazine, in a 2011 yearbook she created, and in other print and digital publications. Guo favors film photography over digital. “The process is very slow, so you can’t see what you just took,” she says. “It’s almost like a Christmas gift when you look at the film and think, ‘I don’t remember taking that.’” Yet she doesn’t eschew digital photography entirely. “I love that [digital photography] captures every moment, and by just pressing the button, one of [the photos] will eventually come out right,” says Guo. “That’s the trick to digital photography—a bit of patience and a bit of luck.” Not much of a gear head, Guo keeps it simple. She uses a Pentax K-5 digital single-lens reflex, an entry-to-middle-level DSLR that’s “not really professional, but it’s good enough for the work that I do.” She uses only two lenses: one for portraits and another for everything else. “Good lenses are expensive,” she says. “They cost around $3,000, while my camera only cost $300. But what can I say? Photography is more about the eyes than the equipment.” —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 5 �Although N. Scott Momaday is best known as a novelist—his first novel, House Made of Dawn, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969—poetry is his most abiding love. He is also a visual artist and was appointed artist-in-residence on the Santa Fe campus in April. Of Kiowa-Cherokee heritage, Momaday was raised first on the Kiowa Indian Reservation in Oklahoma and then in Arizona, where he was exposed to the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo Indian cultures of the Southwest. After graduating from the University of New Mexico, he won a poetry fellowship to Stanford University’s Creative Writing program and earned a doctorate in English literature in 1963. Momaday has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts. When did you start writing poetry? I started thinking of myself as a poet when I was just a child. My mother was a writer; I followed in her footsteps. I watched her work and she read to me. There were always books in the house that were inspiring to me that led me to become a writer. What compels you to write a poem now? How do you go about writing a poem? Poetry is the highest expression in language. It’s my goal to be as responsible in language as I can be and that leads me directly to poetry, the crown of literature. I try to find an idea that I want to explore in poetry and then I work it out mostly in terms of traditional English forms. I do a lot of traditional work in iambic pentameter, but I also write free verse (a contradiction in terms). I like prose poems, short, lyrical pieces that are not written in free verse but in a kind of free style. My most recent poem is “The Sake of Appearance.” I was interested in the idea that nothing—nothingness—is an important concept. I composed a poem of about nine lines; it’s written in iambic pentameter with a definite rhyme scheme. That’s how a poem comes about: TERI THOMSON RANDALL The Spirit of Poetry you have an idea and put the idea into the highest possible expression. Can you describe the work you’re doing as artist-in-residence? I meet with students every two weeks or so. I assign a poem to read or a painting to study and we have a discussion. It’s a wonderful exercise in the seminar form and I’m delighted with the students I’ve encountered here. I look forward to continuing in this post for a good, long while. Some of the works we have discussed are “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens, “Poem in October” by Dylan Thomas, Peter Brueghel’s “Hunter in the Snow,” and Munch’s “Cry” and “The Red Vine.” Is talking about a painting similar to talking about a poem? They are different expressions of the spirit. A poem is composed in language as we understand the term. A painting is vivid and uses visual expression, so they’re worlds apart in many ways. But you can talk about them in the same terms: What is on the poet’s or painter’s mind? How does he realize his vision? What are the techniques he uses to convey his expression? How does he communicate his spirit? 6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 “It’s my goal to be as responsible in language as I can be and that leads me directly to poetry, the crown of literature.” N. Scott Momaday How did you develop an interest in painting? My father was a noted Native American painter, so I watched him work when I was growing up. I didn’t want to be a painter at that time; it was not until I was well into my adulthood that I began painting and drawing and making prints. What is your goal in working with St. John’s students? I’m trying to give the students the benefit of my experience as an artist and to share with them something of the oral tradition. St. John’s students can benefit from it because oral tradition is very powerful. The best expression we have of it is theater: You go to a production of Hamlet and you see oral tradition in the raw, people speaking �PHENOMENAL POEM to each other on the stage and giving meaning and expression through voice and body language in the way you don’t find in the pages in a book. It’s a welcome addition to reading. Does your new position mark a change in your relationship with St. John’s? I have been associated with St. John’s College for some time in different ways. I’ve given the Commencement address, delivered public lectures, and [Mike Peters], the president in Santa Fe, is a good friend. I’m pleased to have a relationship with the college; I think the world of it and want to keep my ties to it alive. This is [my] first chance to meet with students in a discussion situation. I’ve had a whole career of teaching in large institutions. I taught at Stanford [and] other colleges, and I find that St. John’s students probably have a greater freedom of thought than students have elsewhere. Being exposed to great books is wonderful and I want to know more about that process, how it works having such close association with the greatest thinkers of the human experience. That’s not something you can say about most places. — Interview by Sus3an Borden (A87) “Earth and I Gave You Turquoise” is the first poem Momaday kept, written when he was an undergraduate. Earth and I Gave You Turquoise Earth and I gave you turquoise when you walked singing We lived laughing in my house and told old stories You grew ill when the owl cried We will meet on Black Mountain I will bring corn for planting and we will make fire Children will come to your breast You will heal my heart I speak your name many times The wild cane remembers you Poems were popping up everywhere on the Annapolis campus on April 24—National Poem in Your Pocket Day. Since 1996, April has been National Poetry Month, started by the Academy of American Poets to celebrate poetry. In 2008, the Academy made New York City’s Poem in Your Pocket Day a national event; several students read about it in the Gadfly. There were poems taped on walls and placed on tables in the Mellon fishbowl. Chinese poems had accompanying English translations. A Chilean poem was posted on a student’s Facebook wall. Students pulled iPhones from their pockets to read poems aloud. When it was Wick’s turn, she read “Revolution Within an Electric Embrace,” her original twopage poem. “I’ve been thinking about all these things throughout the year, and I put them into rhyming couplet form.” In the machine, she sees the force that she learned about from Newton: In a Mellon science lab, a poem moved several students to tears—and joy. Tutor Patricia Locke had previously agreed that the student who came up with a name that everyone agreed to adopt for the “Faraday Machine” would be exempt from the end-of-the-year paper. Alexandra Wick (A15) thought of a name, “Revolution Within an Electric Embrace,” that was also a poem: “I didn’t have any confidence that I could win it with a name alone, so I decided to write a poem and appeal to the end-of-the-year nostalgia,” says Wick. When she learned that it was also Poem in Your Pocket Day, she found it a perfect convergence of forces. “This embrace, though stable, can never be at rest— The wire cannot linger and put its head on electric’s chest. Here the wire reminds me of Phèdre herself, longing to clutch. Her passion hovers about Hippolyte but never allowed to touch.” It was not the first time Wick had read a poem in lab class. “I really like the junior year because of the holistic experience of math, lab, and seminar. Ms. Locke has prepped us to see lab this way; she has brought in poems about the experience of bursting into tears and what kind of phenomenon it is, or a video of birds flying in what looks like magnetic lines of force. So we’ve been primed by her to see science as poetry, and poetry as science; I like that transitive property of phenomena.” My young brother’s house is filled I go there to sing We have not spoken of you but our songs are sad When Moon Woman goes to you I will follow her white way Tonight they dance near Chinle by the seven elms There your loom whispered beauty They will eat mutton and drink coffee till morning You and I will not be there I saw a crow by Red Rock standing on one leg It was the black of your hair The years are heavy I will ride the swiftest horse You will hear the drumming hooves “If attractive force spins the planets above, Why not be simple and just call it love? Then force is love and love is God, And the world’s a stage on which we’ve all starred.” And the motion of the machine reminds her of Phèdre’s struggle: By the end of the reading, everyone agreed they had a winner. Locke modified the assignment and gave students the option of writing a poem instead of the paper. Whether handwritten on paper or read from an iPhone, Locke says, “the whole idea is to encourage people to start reading poems and realize that they do have poems in their pockets at all times, and have it be more part of their daily life. I like poetry because it seems to be the most intensified language we have. It has meaning on multiple levels that act with each other and it really is an entity itself. It’s not just pointing to something else; it is its own being.” — Eunji Kim (A15) briefly quoted “The uniqueness and glory of St. John’s is not about the outside world or our next steps, it is about a life absorbed and obsessed with books, ideas, and the importance of those who thought and wrote before us. But the question remains, even if unspoken,‘What are we going to do, and from your perspective as a graduate, why?’” John L. Gray (EC12), director, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 2014 Commencement speaker, Santa Fe The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 7 �from the bell towers Alumnus and Tutor Co-direct NEH Summer Institute POEMS FROM THE HEART JENNIFER LEVIN Alexandra Welm’s (A14) first publication, My Eden Home (Alondra Press, 2013), is a collection of poems accompanied by her illustrations, completed when she was 19 years old. Putting the book together, she says, “was as close as I could possibly feel to having a baby.” Having worked with magazines in high school, she downloaded a layout program and positioned the poems and art. “It was so entirely my own; I’ve never had anything like this that’s mine. When I realized it was actually going somewhere, I could hardly believe it.” Joshua Sturgill (SF17) BOOKSTORE POET Welm loves fiction, but poetry has always been a more accessible medium for her. “I loved dabbling in other people’s stories; I loved writing extensions to them and exploring what my favorite characters did, but I don’t have an expansive enough imagination to make my own stories. Poetry was something I felt I could always tap into.” Joshua Sturgill (SF17) doesn’t call himself a poet. The oldest freshman on the Santa Fe campus, Sturgill, 37, worked in a bookstore in Kansas for 10 years while keeping a journal and writing essays and reviews about literature and philosophy. Many of his journal entries were fragments and impressions—poetic and otherwise—recorded for future reference; some he turned into poems. My Eden Home is not only the title of the book, it is also the title of a poem that Welm cherishes. “I wrote it after my father passed away and it felt powerful to me,” she says. “It seemed to say everything I wanted to say about an event which otherwise I simply couldn’t put into words.” When Muse Times Two, a poetry series in Santa Fe sponsored by the nonprofit organization Lore of the Land, announced its first annual competition for local college students, Sturgill decided to work with the notes he took during Holy Week in 2013. The result: a three-part poem called “The Narrow Year” was selected as the winner for St. John’s. Welm believes in the storytelling power of poetry. “It allows both the reader and the writer to experience powerful emotions in a condensed space,” she says. “What would take many chapters in a book, you feel instantly with a poem. You feel great loss, great pain, great love. And it washes over you immediately in just a couple of lines.” On Sunday, April 13, Sturgill read his poem at Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse, in a lineup that included the winners from the other colleges in town—Santa Fe University of Art and Design, the Institute for American Indian Arts, and Santa Fe Community College. Each school was asked to submit poems by three students; the Muse Times Two jury selected one winner from each institution. — Eunji Kim (A15) “I’m an Orthodox Christian and Holy Week is a really intense time—lots of services but also a meditative period,” says Sturgill. “I wrote about events from last year and it’s interesting that one year later, I read my poem on Palm Sunday.” To read these poems in full visit: www.sjc.edu/ news-and-media Joshua Parens (A84) and Joseph Macfarland (A87) are co-directing the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute on Medieval Political Philosophy, from June 16 to July 11, 2014, at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Parens is dean of the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts and a professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas; Macfarland is a tutor in Annapolis. They are co-directing the Institute with Douglas Kries, professor of Christian philosophy at Gonzaga. The Summer Institute is intended to address the relative neglect of medieval political philosophy in undergraduate education (compared to ancient and modern thought), and more specifically, the relative neglect of Islamic and Jewish medieval thought. Examining writings by Alfarabi, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, and many others, participating faculty and graduate students will be able to rediscover and contemplate the confrontation between reason and revelation free from many modern presuppositions. It is hoped that the 25 participants from colleges and universities across the country will subsequently incorporate medieval political philosophy into their courses. Learn more about the Institute: http:// medievalpoliticalphilosophy.gonzaga.edu Sturgill’s winning three-part poem traces a challenging yearlong journey that culminates in this verse, a resurrection of hope: 3. I drank an ode this morning: sunlight ANYI GUO (A14) standing in a cup of tea. I saw the leaves Alexandra Welm (A14) unfold a solemn reflection of life, lending the water green memory. Imperceptibly (except by intuition) the cup pulses, rings, to my pulse and I hold myself uncoiling from a point of concentrated hope—there! that hint of rainbow! rising in an angle of the steam — Jennifer Levin 8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 briefly quoted “We are stories, each of us an imagination, each of us tracing an arc of beginning, middle, and end, on the course of which each of us must struggle…” National Book Award finalist Andrew Krivak (A86), 2014 Commencement speaker, Annapolis �from the bell towers “Reading Anna Karenina might well take time, but it is time very joyously spent,” says Annapolis tutor Brendan Boyle, who was part of a yearlong study group on the Tolstoy novel. Although Tolstoy’s War and Peace has been read by Johnnies since the inception of the New Program, Anna Karenina is usually relegated to preceptorials and post-graduation reading. It is clearly worth the community’s attention. Dostoevsky called it “flawless as a work of art” and Faulkner said it was the best novel ever written. The study group, made up of faculty, staff, students, and other community members, met at lunchtime for 15 Mondays throughout the year, reading roughly 50 pages for each session. Participants looked forward with “delight” to each reading, Boyle reports, as they followed married aristocrat Anna’s struggle with questions of marriage, passion, society and her affair with Count Vronsky. Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) launched the study group nine years ago out of a desire to stay in touch with what he calls “the real work of the college.” In the early years of his presidency, he often led undergraduate seminars. When his job became more demanding, tutor Debbie Axelrod became the group’s co-leader. They began with short fiction but have recently been reading long works including War and Peace and Ulysses. Axelrod says that Anna Karenina shows Tolstoy’s great sense for human emotion and interaction: “Tolstoy gets it,” she says. “When he describes what a person is feeling or how a relationship is unfolding, so many times he writes exactly what they would say, exactly what they would feel.” Nelson agrees. “Tolstoy seems to create a character who behaves in a certain way, but these characters are complex,” he says. “Just when I think: ‘Well, they fit that mold,’ it turns out they don’t. And that’s true of every character in this book.” Sophomore William Brown (A16) believes that this surprise is part of a ANYI GUO (A14) Lunch with Anna Karenina “Tolstoy seems to create a character who behaves in a certain way, but these characters are complex. Just when I think: ‘Well, they fit that mold,’ it turns out they don’t. And that’s true of every one of the characters in this book.” Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president narrative ambiguity that is characteristic of Tolstoy. “In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy often writes in a style that suggests he shares opinions with the characters when he is writing about them, but then it changes when he’s talking about different characters.” Brown sees an interesting technique throughout the book: “There’s a way that the characters infect the narrative and the narration becomes much less certain as a result,” he says. “That’s one of the things I find myself most interested in.” Linda Tuck, wife of retired tutor Jon Tuck, joined the group this year after retiring from a career as an elementary school librarian in Anne Arundel County. She notes that one of the strengths of the group is the variety of people participating: staff, undergraduates, GIs, retired tutors, current tutors, and other members of the community. Often, she says, the chemistry of the group is working so well that she holds back from participating. “Lots of times the discussion is so lively that I’ll have things I want to say and I don’t say them because the conversation is going and it’s wonderful to listen to,” says Tuck. Boyle agrees that the participants work extraordinarily well together. “The group itself is, I think, a model of humanistic investigation,” he says. “If one takes a class on Tolstoy or, say, Dostoevsky, it will invariably be occupied with questions about political, economic, and cultural developments in late 19th-century Russia. The works themselves have a tendency to get lost. Our seminar, by contrast, allows the book to question us about love, marriage, children, happiness, God. ‘Why might Anna love him?’ ‘What would a free life look like for Anna, for Vronsky, for Levin, for us?’ In our seminar, that’s what we’re trying to figure out. As, I think, Tolstoy himself was.” —Eunji Kim (A15) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 9 �from the bell towers THE MIRACLE OF FILM I applied to St. John’s not because I wanted to be a filmmaker but because I wanted the films that I made to be for something great. This is what I told those who said, “Aren’t you a film major?” “But there’s no film department?” “But wait— philosophy?” In truth, the real reason I applied is that I was insecure at parties, decidedly unable to hold my own (read: to sound “smart”) when stuck at the punch bowl with a friendly stranger. I came to St. John’s because I wanted to learn how to hold a conversation. I knew that depended on my ability to think well and deeply, and to collaborate—a concept with which I was familiar, but practiced little. None of my adolescent friends were terribly interested in making movies, so the films that I made were almost always solo projects. To make a truly good film is to find some collaborative center of gravity, some harmonization of all its parts. If a film, miraculously, turns out to be good—and a good film, regardless of the individual talent involved, must always be a miracle—then it is both everyone’s and no one’s fault. Toward the end of my freshman year, some friends and I made a short halfnarrative, half-documentary film, And for My Next Trick. It was about an eccentric freshman who was with us for a few months before he abruptly disappeared, leaving behind most of his possessions and a cryptic message scribbled in darkpurple sharpie on his dorm-room wall. The movie premiered during “Dead Week,” and a surprising number of students—about 50—showed up. We tried to make it funny. A lot of people laughed, and reportedly, some cried. I say this not to congratulate myself (although I will occasionally re-watch the film’s frankly awesome and climactic swing-dance-turned-fight-scene), but rather to note that the movie united my class in a way that was meaningful and unexpected. Without realizing it, we had told a story about the caricatured versions PHOTOS: ANYI GUO (A14) by Domenic D’Andrea (A15) SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY, WE TOLD OURSELVES THAT STORYTELLING MATTERS, THAT IT MEANS SOMETHING AND OUGHT TO BE DONE BY PEOPLE WHO WANT TO MAKE OTHER PEOPLE FEEL A LITTLE BIT LESS ALONE. of ourselves to which we cling when thrust into a new community. We’d made a movie about how it felt to be a freshman. As I sat in the projection booth and the crowd below me laughed, I knew that with this clumsily shot and hastily edited movie, I had struck that fine chord between the Bitter and the Sweet of something true. A few days after the screening, one Very Cool Upperclassman told me, “Film is the culmination of the liberal arts, a marriage of visual art and narrative and music and dialectic and philosophy—all unfolding in time.” This is true, but what I like about film is that it is an expression of the visible. There must be something real before the lens of a camera. And that something begs to be seen both for what it is—the light through a tree or the subtle crack of a smile—and for how it fits into a greater narrative: that tree the place where a painful longing first was felt, that smile a hint of mirth during an argument between two old but not close friends. Is this any different from poetry or theater or music? We experience and repurpose things to tell stories. We know this. We do it all the time, but film reaches the places that words struggle to touch. This is why a coherent film—not necessarily a good or great film—is a miracle. This statement is a slightly pretentious 10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 way of saying that a good story—be it visual or musical or spatial or all of the aforementioned at once—requires a whole lot of work and collaboration. I don’t just mean collaboration between myself and the audience or myself and the crew, but between myself and the film’s subject matter. For this reason, film is not just a liberal arts thing or a conversational thing. It’s a tender thing. More accurately, it’s a trusting thing. That is why I like film so much. At the Annapolis Film Festival last year, I heard this sentiment articulated by Albert Maysles during a screening of his acclaimed documentary, Gimme Shelter. “If when you’re making a film you’re not trying to make friends,” he said, “then I don’t really know why you’re making that film.” I’m happiest when I’m chasing a moment with a steadicam, with a few friends and a small window of time to get a shot “in the can” before the sun sets, or before that ominous storm cloud eats it whole. Make no mistake: this description is romantic because it has to be. In truth, setting up a scene is arduous. The amount of time it takes to shoot something is typically quadruple the duration of the final result. I’ve talked here mostly about the “making” because it is the “telling” of storytelling that interests me. In the telling—that is, in the making, in the long nights of editing hours of footage with some faithful friends and a big bag of candy, a filmmaker anticipates how the story will be seen and understood. Somewhere along the way, we told ourselves that storytelling matters, that it means something and ought to be done by people who want to make other people feel a little bit less alone. And if we get good at making things together, odds are we’re doing something right. View Domenic D’Andrea’s (A15) films at www.vimeo.com/domdandrea. �from the bell towers o f f t h e wa l l GIMME FIVE The virtual world was buzzing with comments from students, alumni, and parents in response to Annapolis President Chris Nelson’s SignPosts blog, “Five Reasons to Attend St. John’s College”: www.sjc-christopherbnelson.com “I am a parent of a sophomore, and whenever I have to describe the kind of college my daughter attends, my short pitch default answer is always this: ‘Every single kid going to this school is incredibly employable when they come out. Because every day, in every class, they have to fully participate in their own learning, thinking, and defending their understanding of something. Most important, they have to do it with respect for every other person in the room.’” —Lisa, St. John’s parent “As a fellow parent, I am simply amazed at the level of maturity and thoughtfulness that my 19-year-old son has demonstrated since being here a little over one semester! It is hard to believe how much growth he has realized in such a short time. Not to mention him literally telling me—for the first time in his life—that ‘I’ve fallen in love with a man who has been dead for 2,089 years— Euclid! I really love math.’” —Anonymous parent “Is no degree better than a liberal arts degree?” is a new study published on Forbes.com in May that considers millennials (born between the early ’80s and the early 2000s). “The only ones who could find this study, its premises and findings, to be valid are those who have not been trained in critical thinking.” —Caroline Killian (SF05) “If your sole aim is to get well paying jobs, and you have no interest in meaning, thoughtful reflection, or understanding of different worldviews, then focusing solely on money makes sense. To those who desire a thoughtful life, a life better prepared for all of the interesting twists and turns, our college motto makes the case.” —Anonymous alum A still from Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film. READING GREAT FILMS Moved by the power and beauty of early cinema, Scott Buchanan once envisioned the New Program with a fifth year devoted to the study of great cinematic works. More than 75 years later, this summer marks the arrival of the St. John’s College Film Institute (June 15 to August 8) at the Santa Fe campus. Several alumni, including Hannah Jayanti (SF07) and Bob Tzudiker (A75) are leading workshops. An idea spawned by Santa Fe Graduate Institute Director David Carl and other film-minded tutors at the Santa Fe campus, the Film Institute emphasizes reading films as well as viewing them; it includes seminars, tutorials, and workshops with film professionals. “A great film has to work on multiple levels, with many possible interpretations,” says Carl. “It has to exceed the artist’s intentions and provide a forum in which [audiences] can engage serious questions.” Summer Academy 2014 at St. John’s College AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE for High School Students Students from around the world immersed themselves in Summer Academy 2014 in Santa Fe and Annapolis. Learn more: www.sjc.edu Local theater groups are showing films on large screens at venues throughout the city. Films include: F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957), and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975), among others. Each week focuses on films by a different director as well as books that either they or critics have written about their work. “Like poetry, a director or cinematographer is very deliberate about what we see,” says Carl. “Images are inseparable from the story.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 11 �from the bell towers Ariel Intern Finds Order and Purpose ANYI GUO (A14) In July 2014,the Laboratory of Anthropology (LOA) Research Library at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on the piñon-studded Museum Hill in Santa Fe will migrate its catalog to the Koha Integrated Library System, a move that will make the library records searchable on the Internet for the first time. Helping to facilitate the migration is Elizabeth Fedden (SF15), who was awarded a second Ariel Internship to work for LOA Library Director Allison Colborne. Fedden started working at the library in fall 2012 when she helped with a book sale to PROGRAM PAGE TURNERS Is there a work of fiction or storytelling on the Program that you find to be especially compelling? JENNIFER LEVIN “My favorite narrative on the program is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because the language of the story transcends the story itself. Its cadence and rhythm become the central characters.” — Josh Kelly (SF15) Elizabeth Fedden (SF15) raise funds. She continued to work with Colborne on other projects; when Fedden learned about the database migration project, she applied for the Ariel Internship to fund the work. “I’m not very tech-savvy, and it was a good opportunity to work more with computers,” says Fedden. Fedden, 29, a native of Normal, Illinois, came to St. John’s after serving as a U.S. Army nurse at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She then spent five years working in cafés, becoming a competitive barista, and volunteering at the World Barista Championship in Bogotá, Colombia.She eventually came to realize that in order to move beyond the espresso machine, she needed a college degree. At first, the LOA Library database cleanup was overwhelming—detailed and often tedious—moving authors’ names and book titles into the correct fields, deleting “Herodotus’s Histories. I find the best way to learn about people is through actual actions. I think it is easier to learn about people, philosophy, virtue, and anything through actual human actions.” — Sally Jankovic (A17) “One of my favorite narratives so far has been Don Quixote. I can identify with someone who sees all around him what he needs in order for the outer world to match his inner world.” “As You Like It, because the hero is a woman, and it is hilarious to watch [the characters] run around the forest and pretend they know what’s going on when no one really understands.” — Caroline Snizek (A15) “I love the Iliad. It was the first book we read here during freshman year and I remember being enthralled by it. It is so exciting—tales of glory and the gods. I have two copies in my room, a Lattimore and a Fitzgerald translation. I plan on rereading them both this summer.” — William Kinum (A17) “The thing that really moved me was both of the Euripides plays. But I would choose the Bacchae because it is so sensual and violent at the same time. It’s a very disturbing combination and unlike anything else on the Program [so far]. It certainly leads to a very interesting discussion. I’m still not sure what it’s about, but it was definitely compelling.” — Collin Ziegler (A17) — Joseph Leakakos (SF15) or merging duplicate records, running into the stacks to confirm the location of an obscure holding, and making sure records are precise. “If periods aren’t in the right places, the record won’t come up,” says Fedden, who is exploring a master’s program at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign; she is particularly interested 12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 in library conservation, digitizing fragile materials, and making them searchable. Colborne calls Fedden a librarian in the making. “I’ve had other interns, and you can just tell,” says Colborne. “I never have to explain things to her. She understands the order and the purpose.” —Jennifer Levin �from the bell towers Spurred by Henry Robert (Class of 1941), this spring the Annapolis alumni chapter, headed by Beth Martin (A94), formed a study group to read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace. Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) met with participant Sam Kutler (Class of 1954), retired tutor and dean emeritus, to discuss Tolstoy’s great work. How many times have you read War and Peace? I’ve read it more than four times. As many senior seminars as I’ve done, I’ve read it at least that many times. The small things get changed because you’ve forgotten exactly where they are, but you know where the large movements are; you know what’s coming. Is there a particular scene or line that has stayed with you? When Pierre speaks to Andrei and says, “You gave such a beautiful talk about forgiveness. This is the time to forgive Natasha.” And Andrei says, “I never said I could do it.” He’s too proud. That’s a very important part of the novel. Tolstoy says “this is not a novel,” but he’s wrong. People have often described Tolstoy’s novels as “character driven.” Do you agree? Tolstoy wants War and Peace to be history driven, but the book is character driven. Many years after reading War and Peace, fine memories of Natasha, Pierre, and all the other characters linger. I cherish most Pierre’s statement to Andrei about forgiving Natasha. Pierre was always in love with Natasha, even when she was a child, and he would have given anything to be in Andrei’s shoes so he could have forgiven her. That would have been the greatest act of his life. I’ve always thought about that business about forgiveness. Do you have a favorite character in the novel? I’ll tell you a story instead of answering that question. I think the Program was made solid by Jacob Klein. I went to Mr. Klein’s seminar before I joined the faculty in ’61. He went around the room and asked every single person, “What is War and Peace about?” When he’d finished, he said, “You’re all wrong. It’s about Natasha.” Tolstoy doesn’t mind repeating the same phrase. He wants to drive it home the way Beethoven does. He’s a very musical writer. The main problem for me is thinking of what a strange couple Prince Andrei and Natasha would be. He’s so stern and unusual and half of him is his father. A little bit like Hamlet in that respect. I don’t know if that had any effect on Tolstoy. to read. I wince a bit with Tacitus. I enjoy the freshman and sophomore readings more than those of the junior and senior year. They seem more plausible and richer. But the last time I did the junior year, I thought they were strange books and very well chosen. Every time I reread a book, it was a new adventure, and every time I did it in seminar, it was never the same. People were always interested in talking about different things. Why should we read War and Peace? We should read it because of its extreme richness. I love its repetitions, I love that everything’s there on the surface, but Tolstoy doesn’t mind repeating the same phrase. He wants to drive it home the way Beethoven does. He’s a very musical writer. How would you compare Anna Karenina to War and Peace? I recognize it as a masterpiece. I can’t find time to read it often, nor can I compare the two novels, for they are so different. War and Peace is dear to my heart because of the well-drawn characters and because Tolstoy is anxious to disabuse us of our false notions about war. How can we find joy in reading an assigned book? JEN BEHRENS Return to the Novel The list of books on the Program is so good that I always delight in reading any of them, even if not especially Adam Smith. I would have found it hard, year after year, to do Justinian—we used to read Justinian on how the Romans freed their slaves. It was a bit tedious. We got rid of books like that when we started the preceptorial list. There’s hardly anything that isn’t a delight the surface is so huge. The hard part is to integrate it all in your imagination. Seminars are very helpful because somebody will speak who has an entirely different way of looking at it. Every single time I’ve read it, it got better. That’s one test of a great book: its “rereadability.” —Interview by Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 13 �from the bell towers Working at Talmar Gardens in Baltimore, Maryland, last summer was the perfect first internship for Rachel Howell (A16). Talmar Gardens is a nonprofit organization that provides horticultural therapy, which uses plants and horticultural activities to assist in improving one’s body, mind, and spirit. Howell turned to horticultural therapy in hopes of merging two of her interests: psychology and nature. “The brain is an amazing thing,” she says. Growing up on a small farm surrounded by gardens and animals nurtured her love of nature and working with plants. At Talmar Gardens, Howell interned in a vocational program in which students with mental disabilities learn a horticultural trade. “It involved working out in the field, transplanting plants in the greenhouse, and showing the students how to use the tools and how to work with others.” Howell’s Hodson internship helped her refine her interest in horticultural therapy and exposed her to expectations of the work world. “Class will go on without [me], but if I’m not there [at my job], they’re going to have a problem getting the group going,” she says. She sought to develop leadership and communication skills through the internship, taking charge of her assigned group of students and learning to communicate clearly. “I had to be direct, lay everything out, and be specific when I was talking to the students.” This experience complemented the communication skills that she has been developing at St. John’s College. “I also learned patience,” she says, “from dealing with things like rush-hour traffic to working with students with mental disabilities.” Howell did not receive much instruction on how to work with the students, so she learned on the job “by watching what other people did. We would have meetings once a week about the students. We talked about their progress and I would ask questions: ‘This happened, this is how I dealt with it. Is there a better way to deal with it?’” The most fulfilling moment was at the end, when her group graduated from the vocational training program. “I was so proud of them and happy to see them be proud of themselves for what they had accomplished. I was really glad to have had a part in it.” — Eunji Kim (A15) CHILDREN’S LITERACY ADVOCATE Joanna Purpich (A14) takes the idea of “find a need and fill it” to heart. While volunteering as a math and reading coach for elementary and middle school students this past year at the Bloomsbury Square Community Center in Annapolis, Purpich discovered that the organization’s supply of children’s books needed a serious boost. An avid reader and advocate for children’s literacy, she sprung to action. On April 9, she launched a children’s book drive on the Paca quad, inviting the college community to donate new and gently used books, primarily for ages 7 to 14. She collected more than 200 books, including classics such as Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and Anne McCaffrey’s The Coelura. “The drive was a success,” says Purpich. “Being a community of book lovers, St. John’s is a great place to do a book drive.” The following day, Purpich delivered the books to the community center. “The kids were excited to see the boxes. We sat in a circle and read Shel Silverstein poems.” Purpich is looking forward to organizing another children’s book drive. “I want to make sure teachers have tools to effectively reach students.” Purpich hopes to forge a career in publishing; this summer she is attending the University of Denver Summer Publishing Institute. ANYI GUO (A14) ANYI GUO (A14) Plants and Psychology: Hodson Intern Finds the Link Purpich was raised on classics by Roald Dahl and Tolkien. “My favorite was The Hobbit.” Growing up in Houston, Texas, her parents encouraged reading. “For a bedtime story, my mom read Don Quixote to me. I felt comfortable with epics and books with cool plotlines.” One book, in particular, she holds dear to this day. “I keep a copy of Harry Potter, to comfort me when I’m sick or not feeling well,” says Purpich. “My original copy is missing its spine and completely worn out from use—and from being dropped in the bathtub.” — Gregory Shook 14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �from the bell towers Hitting the Global Airwaves LARRY CLENDENIN (SF77) RETIRES Pictured (left to right): Linda Lin, co-op producer, U.S. Department of State; Maria Acosta, Teleamazonas reporter; Francisca Soto Bravo (A17); Edison Choco, Teleamazonas cameraman After nearly three decades as admissions director on the Santa Fe campus, Larry Clendenin (SF77) officially retired in July. “Every student who has signed the college register at Convocation over these years, and therefore every student who has received a diploma at Commencement for most of those years, owes something to Larry’s work,” says J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean. “I am deeply grateful for his service to the college.” During the last 30 years, Clendenin has witnessed tremendous changes in higher education, particularly in the ways that colleges and universities reach out to prospective students. “What is really different is the communication—the connectivity and mediums that are available to us,” says Clendenin. “That really pushes on our lives and on our private time, and opens up more public avenues. But young people keep up with it.” Clendenin has also seen the cost of higher education rise, St. John’s College garnered international attention when television documentary film crews visited the Annapolis campus last fall. They traveled to the U.S. on separate assignments, but with a similar interest: discussion-based higher education. A noted television journalist, producer, and camera crew from the Korean Educational Broadcasting System (EBS), one of the leading networks in Korea, visited in October. In a partnership with the U.S. Department of State, a similar team from Teleamazonas, a major television network in Ecuador, arrived in November. Both news teams immersed themselves in campus life: they met with students, faculty, and staff, and attended seminars, labs, and concerts. They were especially interested in the college’s emphasis on original sources and classroom discussion. Each news team noted the heightened interest among youth in their respective countries in studying classic works and perfecting conversational English. Among the students who participated in the documentaries were JuChan Park (A16) from Korea, and Francisca Soto Bravo (A17) from Chile; they shared their experiences as international students at the college. talk of the tow ers Santa Fe Admissions staff and Larry Clendenin In Annapolis, four new tutors have joined the faculty. Robert Abbott (A04) is from the University of Chicago, where he is working on completing his joint PhD from the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Germanic Studies. Karin Ekholm (A00) joined the college from the University of Cambridge, where she was a teaching and research fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. She received her PhD in history and philosophy of science from Indiana University. Rebecca Goldner (AGI02) comes to the college from Villanova University, where she earned her PhD in philosophy. Matthew Holtzman (A00) earned his PhD in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. In Santa Fe, Mary Anne Burke is the new Facilities and Athletics manager, and Aaron Young is the new director of Human Resources. Chris Gruber is the new Webmaster, and Lisa Neal is assistant director of Communications. In Annapolis, several new directors have joined the college: Bill Hocking, director for the President’s Initiative for a Liberal Education; Tim Leahy, director of Information Technology; and Susan Jenkins, director of Web Initiatives and Social Media. Annapolis Treasurer Bronte Jones left the college in September; Bud Billups, interim treasurer, retires (again) this summer. which he says can be “overwhelming for a lot of families. St. John’s is doing a good job of addressing that. One thing I tell parents is that our graduates go on to write great literature, make movies, and become businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, and teachers.” Clendenin emphasizes that St. John’s is about finding the right fit. “We’re talking about a particular student and whether or not it’s going to be practical,” says Clendenin. “It’s not a question of whether it’s practical for all students. But for those of us for whom this is perfect, it brings out the best in us. It brings out great things that take us where we want to go.” — Jennifer Levin The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 15 �from the bell towers Santa Fe Campus Turns 50 This summer, St. John’s College kicks off the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus. The yearlong celebration includes activities and events that will recognize and honor the people and the community that make St. John’s in Santa Fe so distinctive. “This year marks a significant milestone in the history of the college and the Santa Fe campus, conclusively demonstrating for more than 50 years that the St. John’s Program is an education for all and has no geographical or cultural bounds,” says Santa Fe President Mike Peters. THE ST. JOHN’S EDUCATION IS FOREVER YOUNG. THE PIONEERS, THE WESTERN COLONY, THE ODYSSEAN WANDERING, WERE— AND ARE—IMPLICIT IN THE GENETIC MAKEUP OF THE PROGRAM. Richard Weigle, founder and president of the Santa Fe campus It was a bold and visionary move to establish a campus in Santa Fe, offering the college’s unique, and in many ways radical, academic program to more students. “The founding of the Santa Fe campus in 1964 was a reminder that the educational program installed in Annapolis in 1937—one that could be mistaken for something traditional, if not hidebound—is in fact radical, volatile, and nomadic,” says J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean. “As was said of the Greeks, the St. John’s education is forever young. The pioneers, the Western colony, the Odyssean wandering, were—and are—implicit in the genetic makeup of the Program, waiting to be expressed.” The commemoration of 50 years in Santa Fe “gives us a perfect opportunity to highlight the significant place that the college has in higher education, reaffirm together our core values as a community, and heighten the visibility of St. John’s locally and nationally,” says Victoria Mora, Santa Fe vice president. “It also is important for Santa Fe to step up and leverage gifts to the campus in honor of the anniversary, making us a stronger partner in our one college, two campus structure.” The college also will salute innovations first established in Santa Fe—such as the Graduate Institute, the Eastern Classics program, and Summer Classics. On June 20, a public media event launched the celebration with proclamations and remembrances. The campus is taking every opportunity to mark the anniversary throughout the summer, beginning with Music on the Hill, Summer Classics, and the first-ever Summer Film Institute (www.sjc.edu/events-and-programs/santafe/summer-film-institute). The celebration will continue throughout the academic year and will include a national academic conference, “What is Liberal Education For?” on October 16 through 18 (www.sjc. edu/events-and-programs/santa-fe/50thanniversary-conference). The conference is envisioned as a broad platform to speak about the challenges and opportunities for liberal education today, and to engage in exemplary studies in the liberal arts. Sterling reflects on the value of the conference and its place in the campus’s 50th anniversary celebration: “Our insight into the true ends and appropriate means of an education for the human being as such suggests an alternative to what has sadly become mainstream and conventional. Such an education should be made available to, and pursued by, many more people—ever more people. This was audacious in Annapolis in 1937 and in Santa Fe in 1964, and seems more so now. But it happens to be true.” — Jennifer Levin 16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 2013-2014 NEW BOARD MEMBERS Elizabeth (“Betsy”) Ann Bassan (A75) is founder, president, and CEO of Panagora Group, a womanowned small business providing integrated and novel solutions in health and development. Previously she held executive and leadership positions with Chemonics International, Save the Children, and the Society for International Development (SID)-Washington. She is a senior planner and management specialist with more than 30 years of experience designing, implementing, and evaluating international development projects, strengthening institutions, and building public-private partnerships. Her sector expertise includes global health and private sector development. Her regional experience includes Africa, Asia, Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East. She lived and worked overseas for seven years in Kenya and Sudan. She speaks French and holds an M.A. from Columbia University, where she participated in a joint degree program on Planning in Developing Nations. Robert Mass is head of Goldman Sachs’s International Compliance, which comprises Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific Compliance. He is also global head of Securities Division Compliance. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1992 as the first head of Compliance for the J. Aron Currency and Commodities Division. He managed FICC Compliance for eight years until 2004. He was named managing director in 2001 and partner in 2010. Prior to joining the firm, he was an assistant district attorney in New York County, where he served as deputy chief of the Investigation Division and chief of the Labor Racketeering Unit. Before that, he worked at Kramer, Levin, Nessen and Kamin, a New York corporate law firm, and at the American Civil Liberties Union. He is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Harvard Law School. Mass has participated in the New York Executive Seminars for many years, as well as in Summer Classics in Santa Fe. �from the bell towers TONY J. PHOTOGRAPHY Committed to Liberal Education Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president Last October, more than a dozen college and university presidents dined at the Penn Club in midtown Manhattan while fielding questions from a select group of editors, producers, and journalists—from CBS News, the New York Times, Inside Higher Ed, Bloomberg News, the Christian Science Monitor, Money magazine, NPR, and Forbes, to name a few. What was on their minds? Questions such as “How can you show the success and value of a college degree?” and “How is the increasing student-debt burden impacting college and career choices?” Annapolis President Chris Nelson (SF70) was one of the few liberal arts college representatives in the mix. The media’s take on higher education heavily influences public opinion, so it is important for St. John’s College and liberal education to be well represented. This higher-education media dinner is one of many events Nelson attended this year as part of his outreach campaign to increase the visibility of St. John’s College and liberal education. Nelson’s message is reaching alumni, students, and friends who are familiar with and support liberal education as well as audiences who—after listening to Nelson—want to learn more: prospective applicants, parents, donors, teachers and guidance counselors, policymakers, and, of course, the media. Nelson, a respected national spokesperson for liberal education, is regularly publishing and making appearances. His blog for Huffington Post (www. huffingtonpost.com/christopher-nelson) touches on topics such as “Lincoln and Liberal Education,” “The Miracle of Imagination,” and “The World’s Longest Running Seminar of Free Government.” His “SignPosts” blog (www.blogs.sjc.edu/ christopher-nelson) celebrates everything at St. John’s from Senior Orals to the joys of original thought and Euclid. His blogs are linked to a growing number of other sites—further increasing the reach of the message about St. John’s. Nelson is recognized as a leader in national, state, and local higher education circles. As an advocate for liberal education, he is a regular contributor to higher education-specific and mainstream media. Nelson is invited to comment and join forums for noted publications such as Time and The Hechinger Report. His letter to the editor, “The Fervor for Great Books and Big Ideas Isn’t Dead,” appeared in the New York Times in May. He was invited by the Washington Post to review an important new book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University. Nelson is also writing his own book. In fact, the cornerstone of his outreach campaign is a book intended for a wide audience; he plans to meld his congenial “deskside” conversations with stories that speak to the values of St. John’s College and liberal education. Nelson reflects, for instance, on his son’s encounter with liberal learning and “repairing an old junker, a 1960s vintage Volkswagen bug.” As his son tried to fix the broken washers for the windshield wipers, Nelson says “he was led to find for himself the answer to the problem just by a series of questions. His experience was liberating and a reminder that we all practice the liberal arts constantly. The “All members of the St. John’s community are potential ambassadors for liberal education and for St. John’s College.” only question is whether we practice them well or poorly. If we open ourselves to the possibility of learning something new, without relying on manuals or seasoned experts, we can all make new discoveries for ourselves.” Nelson is working closely with a team of staff and faculty and a media consultant, as well as alumni and friends, as he moves forward with his campaign. “But of course, all members of the St. John’s community are potential ambassadors for liberal education and for St. John’s College,” says Nelson. “My role is to spur on that continuing conversation about the value of what we do at the college, so that it can be better understood and appreciated.” —PD Learn more about Nelson’s activities: www.sjc.edu/about/leadership/presidents/ annapolis-president Subscribe to the SignPosts blog: www.blogs.sjc.edu/christopher-nelson briefly quoted “In the end, liberal education must take its bearings from the most fundamental question of all: What does it mean to be human?” Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (sf70), in his book review for The Washington Post of Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, by Michael Roth, president, Wesleyan University The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 17 �18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �tutor views Why by Jonathan Tuck For rising seniors at St. John’s College, summer provides an important rite of passage. In preparation for the first two seminars of the fall, each of them must read Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It’s prudent not to begin too late: the vast historical novel of the Napoleonic wars occupies 1,215 pages in the excellent Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, apart from notes and index. The Use of Stories: Faculty members consider Tolstoy and compelling works of fiction on the Program. OPPOSITE: A scene from War and Peace ART RESOURCE, NY At the rate of 90 pages per week, it’s enough to fill the whole summer with seminar readings for each Monday and Thursday. The action ranges across most of Europe and involves armies of hundreds of thousands of men. It is truly a “great book” in size and scope as well as in power and beauty; yet most of the reader’s concern is narrowly focused on the fates of six or seven characters, members of three noble Russian families. We come to know these people inside and out, better perhaps than we know our own families or close friends. It is very hard to remember that they are not real. As Isaac Babel said, “If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” When the narrative proper concludes with Part One of the Epilogue, we feel betrayed. It cannot be that there is no more! Another generation is growing up: what will become of young Nikolenka? And what about Pierre? Will his political activities get him into trouble? How happy are these marriages? We want desperately to find out what will happen next. It’s this very curiosity that keeps us reading; though the book is long, we fly through it after a while, hoping that our favorites will find the happiness they have been seeking for years. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 19 �Q&A tutor views Why is Tolstoy on the Program? An old saw I have heard is that St. John’s students graduate unaware of the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution. It is one of many variants on the theme that we somehow neglect “history.” The particular variant and the general charge have some force to them, though the true force is not what is most often intended. What is most often intended is the idea that we do our students a disservice by leading them to neglect the “historical context” in which the authors wrote (and which shaped their ideas). The typical argument is upside down: In fact, we come to understand the historical context by reading the works of the greatest minds that illuminate such context. It is in this light that some of the power of reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace emerges for us. Tolstoy brings to life (or to the work of art) Napoleon as man and myth, the great movements of modern Russian politics, the general tumult of enlightenment rationalism (and nationalism) and the many other forces by which “Europe” was convulsed in the 19th century, the twilight of the ancient regime, and the lived experience of the consequences of Hegel’s interpretation of the “worldhistorical.” Without reading the great literature that comments on, or animates, the times, we do indeed have a “historical” lacuna. Reading the enlightenment philosophy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, without reading War and Peace, is something like reading Plato and Aristotle without reading Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles. —J. Walter Sterling (A93), Santa Fe dean This longing is inspired by the raw power of pure storytelling. Most of us have stayed up all night to finish a compelling tale. We have to find out; it seems like a matter of life and death, as it was for the Sultan and Scheherazade. Sometimes the story will lack the grandeur and dignity of Tolstoy or Homer; we call them “guilty pleasures”—police procedurals, country-house whodunits, Gothic romances, beach reading, pageturners. But why should this pleasure make us feel guilty? As Aristotle reminds us, our desire to know, to “have seen,” is natural to us as human beings. Unlike gossip, for example, even the most trivial fictional narratives don’t seem to harm anyone else. Perhaps certain kinds of coarseness in a story can harm us, but often the shame we feel at having squandered a few hours on the wrong sort of book springs 20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 from a tacit comparison: we could have spent that time reading something more useful, something good for us. What use can we make of stories? At St. John’s, novels usually appear in the seminar list right after a lengthy vacation. War and Peace, Don Quixote, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov—each long book gets only two evenings of discussion. The usual result, of course, is that we try to see the work as a synchronic whole, rather than focusing on the diachronic experience of reading. We look back and try to pick out themes and ideas. At the end of his book, Tolstoy does the same thing. In Part Two of the Epilogue to War and Peace, he discards his characters and suddenly turns philosopher, telling us what we should infer from the events of the story about causation in history and human freedom. Many of �the truth of stories Q&A his claims have appeared before, embedded in the text. (For example, see the beginnings of Volume III, Parts 1, 2, and 3; Volume IV, Parts 2 and 3; and Epilogue, Part 1.) Like many other readers, I have always thought that Tolstoy marred his great novel slightly by giving in to the temptation to preach a moral at the very end. He should have trusted his tale more. But in our seminars, in our necessarily retrospective treatment of his story and other stories, we often do something very similar. We distance ourselves from the events narrated in searching for their meaning. Should we first approach a seminar work from the outside, as a whole, or work through it from the inside? If we are reading a work that is not a story—say, a philosophical work with an argument—we often try first to restate the argument with precision. But when we read a story, we seldom feel the need to retell the plot. Instead, we reach into the story from without, looking for what it is “about.” We are used to arguments; it is tempting to try to find a doctrine, a truth-claim, in everything we read. Our desire to make our stories philosophical may assure us of our own seriousness, but do we then misrepresent the concreteness of our experience of reading? I have sometimes flippantly tried to deflect students who try to turn a novel into a treatise by saying, “The moral of every great novel is that There is and should be wisdom in the best stories, even if it is hard to specify it in the form of a proposition. Although Tolstoy’s story seems to tell itself, as Babel said, there is always a teller behind the tale, and a reason for telling it. Stories that provoke reflection and repay rereading are never just about themselves. Pace Socrates, the war between philosophy and poetry need not last forever. It’s no doubt foolhardy to try to write a short paragraph about a writer with such epic proclivities. But Tolstoy himself suggests that small drops may reflect entire globes. At a key moment in War and Peace, Pierre has a brief vision of a vibrating globe composed of water drops. In an urge to reflect the divine being at the center of this globe, each drop strives to expand, spreading until it eventually merges with the whole and loses its identity. The peasant Platon Karataev embodies this essential tendency: his every feature and gesture is “round,” he doesn’t distinguish one person from the next, and his speech consists mostly of common folk-sayings. Even the dog that has attached itself to Karataev is characterized only by an absence of particularity—by “its not belonging to anyone, and the absence of a name and even of a breed, even of a definite color.” The impulse to dissolve the bounds of individuality extends even to the central characters: Pierre and Natasha finally appear as a typical married couple, talking contentedly “as only a husband and wife can talk.” This drive toward the archetypal isn’t peculiarly human: the old oak that initially attracts Prince Andrei’s attention by its apparent refusal to put out leaves in expansive springtime gestures has, a month later, become indistinguishable from the other trees in the forest. Only after some effort does Andrei discern it “spreading out a canopy of juicy, dark greenery.” As the old oak comes to life it looks more and more like every other tree in springtime. Perhaps we read Tolstoy, then, for the very reasons we read every other great writer: to catch sight, if we can, of how particulars reach out toward the universal. —Margaret Kirby, tutor The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 21 �Q&A tutor views When we tried to take him off once on the Santa Fe campus, the rising seniors wouldn’t let us. We could not persuade them that there could really be a substitute. I think Dostoyevsky is right to say that Tolstoy writes the way a dreamer dreams: with every detail in place, fully realized down to the last cuff link and collar button. Or so at least it seems to the rapt audience. The deployment of such Old Master portraiture on the biggest story of the 19th century—the story of Napoleon’s conquest of Russia and subsequent ignominious retreat—makes a book unlike any other I know. Tolstoy means to step into the same arena as Homer: War and Peace is his Iliad and Odyssey in one. And he is worthy of his model without ever seeming a mere imitator. Robert Bart once proposed that we read great works of literature partly in order to approach the various Medusas of human life as Perseus did the Gorgon: not looking directly into their petrifying faces but in the reflection of a shield. Tolstoy offers a shield for anyone who hopes not to wind up paralyzed by Love or War, Ambition, Ideology, Politics, or History. One comes to live inside his book and through his characters for the weeks one reads it, and perhaps (especially after a good seminar or two) never entirely leaves it behind again. The characters are unforgettable. Sixteen-yearold Natasha is able to look into a mirror before her first ball and say, in all sincerity, “Who is that charming girl?” Pierre is saved from a firing squad because of how he looks into an officer’s eyes. For Prince Andrei, living becomes an insoluble problem. How does one know that the pictures a book shows of human hearts life is complicated.” Similarly, Mark Twain begins Huckleberry Finn with the disclaimer: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” Apart from a desire to be funny, Twain may have other motives here, but he knows, and we know, that his story has a moral content that can be questioned and discussed. That’s why Huck Finn is a great book. There is and should be wisdom in the best stories, even if it is hard to specify it in the form of a proposition. Although Tolstoy’s story seems to tell itself, as Babel said, there is always a teller behind the tale, and a reason for telling it. Stories that provoke reflection and repay rereading are never just about themselves. Pace Socrates, the war between philosophy and poetry need not last forever. The heroes and heroines of War and Peace all suffer greatly in their search for happiness and meaning. Some of them, especially Pierre Bezukhov, continually ask about the meaning of their experience, even while it is happening; but all of them engage in such questioning at the novel’s end. Though most readers love Pierre, it is hard not to consider 22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 him somewhat comical, at least some of the time; part of the reason is that he sometimes seems to think that the meaning of life should be easily expressible in the form of doctrine or a proposition. If learning comes through suffering, perhaps these characters learn not to expect such easy answers. Because they seem so real, we suffer along with them, and we learn, too. If the story can make us wiser, it must be a complex kind of patient, experiential wisdom. It’s fitting, then, that we survey the events of the story in retrospect, as the characters do themselves. If Tolstoy erred in Part Two of the Epilogue, it was only in his tone of impatience and overt didacticism. In the greatest stories—and War and Peace is one of them—the ideas, the themes, the world view are fully incarnated in the action and the characters. Often it’s necessary to abstract them in order to speak of them, but it should feel like an act of violence, like a translation or a prose paraphrase of a poem. The way to regain the perfect interpenetration of Aristotle’s big three—plot, character, and thought—is to read the novel again. Jonathan Tuck is a tutor in Annapolis. �the truth of stories Illustrations: below and page 18: Illustrations for War and Peace found in the collection of the State Borodino War and History Museum, Moscow. Paintings by Andrei Nikolayev. page 20: The reading of the novella, The Kreutzer Sonata, at the Leo Tolstoy House (1889), painting by Grigori Myasoedov. opposite page: Tolstoy in his study. Engraving in “The Artistic Illustration” (1892). Our desire to make our stories philosophical may assure us of our own seriousness, but do we then misrepresent the concreteness of our experience of reading? I have sometimes flippantly tried to deflect students who try to turn a novel into a treatise by saying, “The moral of every great novel is that life is complicated.” are true pictures? Maybe the great books are the ones that help you start to know. Tolstoy writes that kind of book. —Cary Stickney (A75), tutor into the past, scarcely holding in check the frailties and tensions in their lives and those of their several guests. And yet the revealing, unsettling power of the past is made beautifully and clearly present through song and memory, in Joyce’s words. —Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean I like to think of the four years as starting with adventure stories. In my romantic way of looking at things, the freshman year would be better served by the Odyssey, but you can’t read the Odyssey before the Iliad. The sophomore year used to start with the Aeneid. The junior year begins with Don Quixote. War and Peace fits right in there with that—a large adventure story for every year. One might say that War and Peace shouldn’t be on the Program because it doesn’t fit in so well with the other books. We don’t have a good way of studying Napoleon, and War and Peace is not a good way of studying Napoleon because you just get a caricature of him. —Sam Kutler, (Class of 1954), tutor emeritus Is there a work of fiction or storytelling on the Program that you find to be especially compelling? James Joyce’s “The Dead” is a story I return to again and again. It is, to my mind, one of the great short stories in the English language. A pensive, gentle, but uncompromising spirit pervades the annual dance and dinner at the Misses Morkan’s. Their small evening is a civilizing force that is slipping ILLUSTRATIONS: HIP, ART RESOURCE, NY “Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War was the first thing I had ever read that showed me there was movement toward order in the world (as well as chaos).” —Jim Beall, tutor What story is more compelling than the story of Odysseus’s homecoming? And who can tell a better tale than Odysseus himself? Disguised as a beggar, he responds to Penelope’s insistent questions about his identity by claiming to be a man from Crete who entertained Odysseus on his way to Troy. Penelope melts in tears at the story, but tests him by asking what Odysseus wore and “what sort of man he was.” The beggar describes a purple mantle and a tunic made of exceptionally fine fabric, but pins his reply on the description of a golden brooch that fastened the mantle. So artfully did it depict a hound attacking a fawn that the viewer forgot he was looking at an image and simply saw the fawn struggling convulsively in the hound’s grasp. The beggar’s tale takes Penelope back, vividly and concretely, to that day, some twenty years earlier, when she saw Odysseus off, and “attached the shining pin, to be his adornment.” At the same time, the brooch, on which the story fastens, begins to bind Penelope to her husband in a new way. The object itself is long lost; what remains and makes itself present is their common memory of it. Whoever the stranger now before her is, Penelope must be bound to him by the memory of that marvelous brooch, as she was bound to her departing husband by its tangible presence and the physical act of pinning it on his cloak. By focusing on a work of visual art, Odysseus also binds them in the knowledge that this story never fully reaches its conclusion—the fawn is forever struggling in the hound’s grasp; the hound is forever unable to relax his grip. —Margaret Kirby, tutor The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 23 �CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Mike Lacy (A12); Lee Zlotoff (A74); detail of textile art by Richard Saja (SF00); sketch by Jules Feiffer of himself with Norton Juster in Hannah Jayanti’s (SF07) film; detail of animated film, Mars, by Geoff Marslett (SF96) 24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �Modern Takes Storytellers What makes a story memorable and compelling? When these alumni connect with our deepest emotions, we recognize ourselves in their stories. They use everything from modern digital filmmaking and editing techniques to traditional, time-honored methods—visualizing a great story, observing character, directing a scene, writing a screenplay, scribbling notes and plot outlines on napkins and whiteboards, dreaming, even embroidering fabric—to reach us. Great Expectations A Film by Hannah Jayanti (sf07) Premiers at the New Yorker Festival Norton Juster’s children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth, with illustrations by cartoonist Jules Feiffer, has inspired love bordering on worship for generations. It’s the story of a boy named Milo “who didn’t know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always.” He comes home one day to find a mysterious package containing materials for a small purple tollbooth. After putting it together for lack of anything better to do, he idly drives a toy car past it—and finds himself in the Lands Beyond. There, he explores a world both fantastic and overly literal, and sets forth on a quest to free the princesses Rhyme and Reason, “without whom wisdom withered.” A few years ago, Hannah Jayanti (SF07) felt as aimless as Milo. She left St. John’s not intending to follow in the footsteps of her father, a documentary filmmaker. Instead, she was torn between “building incredibly hippie eco-houses” and academia. At first, the latter won out. Then she moved to New York City to study photo and video at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). She found herself struggling with the visual side of the MFA. Then she made an experimental film for a video class that took the opening narration of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and rearranged ELLI CHUNG by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) the dialogue into stream-of-consciousness. This “strange little piece” required extensive editing, and Jayanti “lost herself” in the process, discovering that “this is the way my mind works. Editing is a form of writing in the visual world.” After that, she left SVA to explore forms of film that relied heavily on the editing process. Among other freelance projects, she made book trailers for Random House—a strange new genre, “half commercial and half artistic.” While they often resemble movie trailers, book trailers are not excerpts of a previous visual work; a book trailer must film scenes that reference an entirely different medium. Jayanti also made documentary-style author videos, which she enjoyed: “Editing is half of directing [a documentary],” she says. “You have no idea what the story will be until you get into the editing room—it’s where the story really comes together.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 25 �storytellers Her chance to make a feature-length documentary came in 2011. Janice Kaplan, a communications consultant she had met in Washington, D.C., sought Jayanti out in connection with the 50th anniversary of The Phantom Tollbooth. They intended to make a short video commemorating the anniversary, but after spending a weekend with Juster at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts, they knew there was enough material to sustain a longer film. “After that, people came out of the woodwork,” says Jayanti. That project became The Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations, which premiered at the New Yorker Festival in October 2013. It continues to appear at venues throughout the country: “art institutions, libraries, universities, museums, non-profits.” Jayanti herself was a big fan of the book as a child. She loves “how many levels [the book] works on, how much you can get out of it at any age. The combination of really sharp wit and real, real warmth—that’s a really tricky combination to get for a writer.” She finds herself thinking often of the Terrible Trivium, a blank-faced monster who delays Milo’s quest by asking him and Tock to do menial tasks such as moving a pile of sand grain by grain—a metaphor that rings painfully true for anyone who has had a day job. When she started filming, Jayanti was still managing a photography studio in Chelsea. “For the first eight months, I just paid for things, worked nights and weekends,” she says. Gradually she went part-time as she realized how much work The documentary showcases interview footage with Juster, Feiffer, Jason Epstein, New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik, children’s illustrator Eric Carle, and kids sharing their enthusiasm for the story. the movie would entail, and she is now fully freelance. To raise money for the film, she turned twice to Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website. Both times, she raised twice what she was asking for. She liked that “with Kickstarter, people feel they’re part of the process, like a mini shareholder in the film.” It’s a way for artists to connect directly with their audience and vice versa—readers for whom The Phantom Tollbooth has “tremendous emotional value” were able to contribute meaningfully to what they loved. Still, Jayanti didn’t want to make just a fan movie. So she explores general themes: the importance of books in shaping our worldview, and the decades-long friendship between Juster and Feiffer, who trade quips and memories on screen together. Through them, she hopes viewers who haven’t read the book will be able to connect to the film. “You can love these men, and then fall in love with the book.” The documentary showcases interview footage with Juster, Feiffer, Jason Epstein (the editor at Random House who published the book), New Yorker staff 26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Hannah Jayanti (SF07) in the field directing. An illustration by Jules Feiffer from The Phantom Tollbooth used in Jayanti’s film. writer Adam Gopnik, children’s illustrator Eric Carle, and kids sharing their enthusiasm for the story. To break up the film’s inevitable talking-head nature, Jayanti commissioned two sequences from Eleanor Stewart, a Scottish stop-motion animator. During the opening credits, the first sequence is accompanied in voiceover by actor David Hyde Pierce, describing the book’s creation: Juster and Feiffer lived up and downstairs in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone, and would climb the stairs to share pictures and chapters. The second sequence brings to life some of Juster’s philosophy, “which is, essentially, that facts aren’t important in and of themselves;” it’s “the connections between them.” Jayanti points out that “everyone in the Lands Beyond is a specialist.” Words are a separate kingdom from math, the borders jealously guarded. Milo’s rescue of Rhyme and Reason unites the kingdoms and brings harmony to the Lands Beyond, which can be read as Juster’s argument for a liberal arts education. “That’s really what life and learning is about,” according to him, “making connections with things, not how much you know or what specifics you know,” says Jayanti. “Which is quite St. John’s.” The Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations is available on DVD or live streaming at phantomtollboothdoc.com. More information: www.facebook.com/TollboothDocumentary and hannahjayanti.com. �storytellers Accidental CEO When did you realize that you have a gift for storytelling? Writer, producer, scholar, film executive– James Schamus (a81) takes up cycling Interview by Patricia Dempsey “ T here have been a couple of film scholars who wrote scripts, but he’s the only person in the business I’ve ever seen who said, ‘I can’t go to Cannes because I’ve got to work on my doctorate,’” notes Variety editor Tim Grey in a New York Times story ( “The Professor of Micropopularity”). It’s a wonderful quote about James Schamus (A81), an Oscar-winning collaborator. Brokeback Mountain, which Schamus produced and Ang Lee directed, won, among other honors, three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and four BAFTA Awards. This year he stewarded Dallas Buyers Club, which was nominated for six Oscars and won three. Schamus is a delightfully eclectic, passionate professor in Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches film history and theory, an academic whose career as a film executive is legendary. Many of the films he wrote, produced, and distributed around the world during his 12-year stint as CEO of Focus Features not only won awards, they broke barriers. Films such as Lost in Translation and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have a captivated a generation of filmgoers. “Think of all the great films you’ve seen in the past 15 years—chances are James Schamus was behind them,” notes The Guardian. On leave for a year from Columbia, the visionary film executive has traded in funding frenzies and boardroom politics—everything, it seems, except his bow ties and love of film. Schamus lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, novelist Nancy Kricorian. He shares a Manhattan moment with us, taking a break from cycling and the writing life. Probably when I got away with a number of bald-faced lies when I was quite young. Tell us about working with award-winning film director Ang Lee. You wrote and produced many of his films. Is he a mentor? Ang and I are kind of co-mentors. We have come of age, and have indeed aged, together. We both have a combination of ambition on the one hand, and a kind of childlike interest in new things we’re ignorant about and humbled by, on the other hand. Hence, I suppose, the wide variety of films [for example, Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Sense and Sensibility; The Ice Storm] we’ve done together. Is there a favorite film, one that “sets the standard” for you? The thing about movies is that your favorites can be less than classics and your most-admired works can be less-than-loved. And often truly imperfect movies have moments of profound sublimity and emotion that more perfectly crafted films can’t compete with. PETER BOWEN You are known for your interest in films about “outsiders,” such as films about the West, the story of America, and immigrants. Is this still true today? Examples include films that you stewarded at Focus Features, such as Dallas Buyers Club, Brokeback Mountain, The Pianist, and Milk. Outsider narratives will always draw me in at first blush, but sometimes you find them by going “inside,” too; The Ice Storm concerns wealthy, privileged suburbanites, but emotionally I find them all compellingly outsider-y. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 27 �storytellers Give us a glimpse into a “day in the life.” How do you spend most of your time? I’m on leave from Columbia this year, so my commute is the 1-train to my office in Chelsea, supplemented by my current addiction to New York’s bike-share program, an addiction that has resulted in the saving of hundreds of dollars in taxi fares and the burning of thousands of calories. Since October and my departure from my former job running Focus Features, I’ve written two screenplays (and I am working on a third), have set up as a producer of a few movies, and have been doing my usual compulsive movie going and reading. (Current obsession, one embarrassingly shared with much of New York’s hipsterdom, is Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle). How did you come to be CEO of Focus Features? What skills did it take to do this job well? I was an accidental CEO, but found the work very gratifying, though the past few years I found it increasingly difficult to balance my creative work with the business side of things. What makes a good CEO? Like teaching, there are no hard and fast rules—great teachers tend to mold their methods around their own strengths and weaknesses. I’d say my own strengths centered around an attention to creating an environment of trust and support at the company, making sure everyone, from assistants to presidents, felt secure raising their voices and safe knowing they had permission to fail. I made it a point to applaud everyone’s failures, my own included, as well as our successes. If you don’t fail, that means you haven’t risked anything. At Focus, how did you know which films—many were “indies”—would be popular at the box office? “Outsider narratives will always draw me in at first blush, but sometimes you find them by going ‘inside,’ too; The Ice Storm concerns wealthy, privileged suburbanites.” You have successfully financed, produced, distributed, and written many major, awardwinning films. Did you ever consider directing? No—when you have a choice between yourself and Ang Lee to direct your screenplay, whom would you choose? In a Guardian (January 2014) interview, you say that being a “boy wonder screenwriter” would not have been a good thing for you. If not writing, what aspect of filmmaking is your passion? Producing—making things possible for creative people to do their best work. Is there a film you saw in your youth that moved you, inspired you to write and produce movies? No. I loved all films and all kinds of films—from the trashiest to the most artsy. As a kid, I was odd enough to enjoy watching the Friday night classics line-ups on my local public television station. Hard to imagine PBS actually running D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance for its full duration! If you could take one book and one film with you, marooned on a deserted island, what would they be? A handbook and video on boat making. It has been said that films rather than books are the dominant storytelling medium of our century. Do you agree? Do you enjoy going to the movies alone? Or is it always a social occasion? Favorite theater? Neither is the dominant form. The dominant forms of storytelling of our time are the result of the algorithms which track and construct our digital identities and experiences. Every day, some 300 pieces of data you generate through your phone, computer, car, etc., are sold or bartered, and that data is constantly reconfigured and repackaged to shape what you see, hear, and interact with. The story of your life has become a function of this constant feedback loop between the data you produce and the data field constructed for you as the space you have to signify and produce more data. I make it a point to head to the multiplex at least once a week, usually by myself, to check out the latest on offer from the studios, as well as the trailers and pre-roll. New York has still, thankfully, a great range of arthouse screens; I’ll bike to any of them for the right film. I didn’t. 28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 At the Cannes Film Festival, did you take to the red carpet? No. I’m not much of a tuxedo fan. What, if anything, has changed in the film business since you got into filmmaking and producing? The complexity of the business and the corporatization of the culture. Any essential differences in the film industry in Hollywood as compared to New York? Yes, there really isn’t a New York film industry—though there are very good crews, producers, and filmmakers who live in New York. How do you “teach” film? Are you a film critic as well as a teacher? I actually don’t teach film—I teach film history and theory, and often teach philosophy and aesthetics. My undergrad lectures are not Johnnie-style, but my graduate seminars—in which we often read folks such as Plato and Kant—are run “revolving-chair” style, so the last person to speak chooses the next, a habit difficult for nonJohnnies to form. But they get there after a few weeks. Any changes with this generation of students—are they more sophisticated readers or filmgoers than previous generations? Are they better storytellers? Students today are much more at home thinking of audiovisual media as forms of communication rather than as forms of mystifying entertainment. For them it’s another language they can learn. Any up and coming filmmakers whose work excites you? Happily, way too many to list here. There is an ocean of great work being done in so many different genres today. It’s dizzying. Do you wear signature bow ties in the classroom? Or was that more as a film executive, and for black-tie affairs? Somehow, the whole bow-tie thing became a schtick, but yes, I do wear them often when I teach, too. Tell us something about yourself that readers may be surprised to know. I’m a VERY slow reader. �storytellers Love Story Jeremy Leven (a64): Writing the Subtext of Our Lives by Paula Novash I n the romantic comedy Don Juan DeMarco, written and directed by Jeremy Leven (A64), the title character declares, “There are only four questions of value in life. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love.” It’s a compelling line typical of its author. Leven is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, director, producer, and bestselling novelist who infuses his storytelling with thought-provoking, soulful subtexts. “Everything I do has a spiritual and philosophical underpinning,” he says. “I think that’s true for almost anybody in the creative arts. We experience some energy within us that reconstitutes into inspiration and vision, and where does that come from?” Leven explores this mystery in modern fables, where the stakes—love, fortune, and destiny—loom large. “You try to create dialogue that reveals the truth of the moment, so that what the characters say and do sounds real.” Leven’s career spans five decades. His films, which have taken him to locations across the U.S. and Europe, include The Notebook, Don Juan DeMarco, Alex and Emma, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and My Sister’s Keeper. He is also the author of the novels Creator and Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S., both of which he adapted for the screen. Leven’s early credits include directing the musical, “The Perils of St. John’s,” for the Johnnie’s Modern Theater Group— which he founded and directed—during his college years. “I always thought I’d begin Jeremy Leven (A64) discusses a scene on the set of Don Juan DeMarco with Johnny Depp. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 29 �storytellers an Oscar speech with ‘I owe my whole professional life to St. John’s College, where I learned how to think, write, and read,’” he says with a smile. Leven began that professional life as a Harvard-and-Yale-affiliated clinical psychologist and neuroscientist. After the breakout success of Creator, he took a leave from Yale University Medical School. Leven realized he was at a crossroads. He consulted a Yale mentor who told him, “You will never not write; you are a writer.” Leven began adapting his novels for the screen. “Writing and psychology are both about problem solving, which is what I like to do,” Leven says. Both professions also involve examining the complex behaviors, emotions, motivations, fears, and desires that connect us. On film, Leven says, the magical process of creating a believable character is collaborative. “You try to create dialogue that reveals the truth of the moment, so that what the characters say and do sounds real. It’s like a blueprint, and hopefully you’re giving the actor something interesting to work with.” Another powerful layer is the subtle art of subtext, infusing what is felt, but not explicitly stated, into a scene. “In the best acting, the viewer is seeing two emotions from the character. For example, say we’ve set up a story of abuse that reaches back through generations. A man and his elderly father are driving by a playground and they see a child being spanked. The father tears up and the son, who is driving, reaches out and places his hand on his shoulder. This gets that double emotion, as we sense that the father is saddened by what he did to his son but is also feeling vulnerable as he remembers how he was beaten by his own father. And the son is both comforting his father for what the father went through himself, and in doing so, forgiving him.” When writing a screenplay or adapting one from a book, how does Leven show the studio, director, and actors that his script will make a good film? He says it’s by tapping into the emotions underlying his characters’ actions. “Emotions are what pull us in—the characters’ vulnerabilities, desires, and fears. We can relate to them even if the “Everything I do has a spiritual and philosophical underpinning. I think that’s true for almost anybody in the creative arts. We experience some energy within us that reconstitutes into inspiration and vision, and where does that come from?” details of our lives are different from what the characters are experiencing.” Leven was reminded of this when he wrote the screenplay for The Notebook, adapting the love story from the book by Nicholas Sparks. “Lots of what’s in my screenplay isn’t in the book. I added events and made the characters much more complex,” he says. “But Nicholas told me the movie was the closest adaptation he’s seen of any of his books.” “Emotions can be conveyed powerfully in film, because you can get in so close and really focus on tiny facial movements and gestures,” Leven continues. “It’s completely different on stage, for instance, where gestures have to be larger than life to be appreciated by the audience.” As a Hollywood veteran, Leven has worked with many A-List actors, from whom he has learned subtleties of subtext and dialogue. He tells a story about Marlon Brando, whom he directed in Don Juan DeMarco. “I jokingly said something in an Irish accent and he said, ‘Well, you know, there’s not just one Irish accent.’” Leven says Brando proceeded to perform at least a dozen different roles: “a barkeep, a farmer, a barrister, a judge, an aristocrat. And with every one not just the accent, but his body, muscles, and face changed as he tapped into the emotion, the essence of the character. It was riveting, and every character was someone who will keep me watching a screen for two hours.” As a novelist, work is solitary bliss. As a screenwriter, Leven compromises and collaborates with directors, actors, and other writers, changing characters and plot lines. Even the music, says Leven, is a character in the film. “For a movie script, there are specific rules to follow,” he continues. “One page equals one minute of screen time, and you have to capture the 30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 audience by the 12-minute mark. There’s a set, three-act structure: You can have a great idea and a great ending, but you have to make sure you have enough story to fill that 60 minutes in the middle.” And, Leven explains, “You’re writing with others in mind. A screenplay needs to show studio executives that the story will appeal to a wide audience. It needs to give the director enough information to see how to make it, and also create characters that actors will want to play. The fun part of this is it becomes a scientific process, a challenge.” Leven jokes that in Hollywood, studios look for a “high concept” film—which refers to a concept so low it can be expressed in one sentence. “It used to be that films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or The Lion in Winter had more substance dramatically,” he says. “This doesn’t happen anymore. Executives look to invest $100-200 million and make billions of dollars.” Leven’s most recent film, 2013’s Girl on a Bicycle, (which the New York Times called a “sweet, often witty romantic comedy”), is set in Paris. The plot revolves around a recently engaged tour-bus driver who dreams about a beautiful woman he encounters on his route. One of the movie’s themes is “the imagined life, the life you might lead,” says Leven. “What is life without dreams? Our dreams keep us going.” His new novel, The Savior and the Singing Machine, is about a young woman who may be a messiah. He’s also working on a stage musical for his love story, Don Juan DeMarco. “Love is the greatest emotion, and arguably the one people identify with most,” he says. “It is probably the most spiritual thing we can experience.” �PHOTOS: THOMAS ALLEMAN storytellers “There is no limit to what is possible,” says Lee Zlotoff (A74). “We need to get out of the way so our creative process can succeed.” Whiteboarding in Malibu Lee Zlotoff (a74) Taps the Narrative Power of the Subconscious W by Patricia Dempsey hat a view. Some 2,500 feet above the legendary surf of Malibu, Lee Zlotoff (A74) is in his living room, scribbling on a whiteboard. It’s an infinite horizon for ideas, a place to dream big. He works in his mountaintop home amid simple inspiration: the folk art he collects, a studio for building models, and the view— when the foggy “June-gloom” lifts—of the blue Pacific. The noted writer, producer, and director often sketches with colored markers to visualize plot outlines and character and screenplay ideas. “I do most of my creating on the whiteboard— not the keyboard. By the time I sit down to write on the computer, the heavy-duty lifting is done. I turn to the computer to flesh out, say, dialog that I’ve already imagined for the piece.” Zlotoff, known for his hit television series MacGyver (launched in 1985), has a new gig: he is writing a book to share his creative process. It will help everyone—from writers and military officers to entrepreneurs and teachers—to be more effective. The book, The MacGyver Method, provides a step-by-step process for tapping into the power of the subconscious to solve problems, discover new ideas, and clear the cobwebs of “conscious interference,” says Zlotoff. “It’s about having an active dialog with your subconscious; that’s the key, so you can, whenever you choose, tap into the most effective part of your mind.” Zlotoff calls the subconscious “the storehouse of our stories. We are a narrative species; each night we dream, and each of our dreams is a story. We need these stories. This is why film is so compelling—it connects directly with your subconscious in a way that books do not. Between the visual images, the music, and the dialog of a film, your mind is being subtly stimulated on many levels.” Certain stories endure, he says, because they resonate or connect with deep, internal narratives shared by a large population. “Ironically—or should I say paradoxically—the more unique and specific the details of a given story, the more universally it tends The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 31 �storytellers to be embraced and accepted—as opposed to the frequent homogenizing that is a hallmark of many Hollywood films. Some examples are The Graduate, Star Wars, or The Godfather series, which are very specific visions that tap into the universal narratives of the search for identity, purpose and family.” In fact, the great turns in stories, says Zlotoff, are based on paradox. “What you don’t expect happens, but it still makes perfect sense, like John Nash’s journey in A Beautiful Mind. You follow the story, accepting all that you see, only to realize midway that you’ve been sharing the delusions of the main character.” How does one tap into this power of stories and the subconscious— whether making a film, writing a screenplay, or trying to solve a business problem? The steps are simple. To name a few: Write down the problem. Task the subconscious. Incubation. “We need to get out of the way so our creative process can succeed,” says Zlotoff. To let his ideas incubate, Zlotoff builds models, a skill acquired during his high school years at Brooklyn Tech, working with molten metals and other materials. He is currently building a World War I trainer plane. “I like to work with my hands. I started by making paper models of world monuments: the Empire State Building, the Taj Mahal, the Vatican, whatever I could find a kit for,” he explains. “I then progressed to wood models of ships and planes, as model building proved the best ‘incubation activity’ for my creative process.” Zlotoff describes how it helped him develop a character’s narrative story in The Spitfire Grill feature film script. “Whenever I would return from model building, I kept seeing this man hiding behind a tree, watching the main character, who was a young woman. I made a note of it but, having no clue who this man was, I put it aside. He continued to reappear when I worked on the story, so I realized I had to figure out who this guy was, and why he was there. Eventually he became an who now directs a preschool in Los Angeles. (They are divorced, with four children and four grandchildren). Zlotoff got his start as a screenwriter in the mid-1970s in New York City as a secretary on a soap opera, The Doctors. He told the producer that he could write a better show, and gave him Disasters in the Sun, a sample script. “You have to be gutsy to survive—it’s a rough business,” says Zlotoff. “He liked the script and I became a soap opera writer.” Zlotoff’s speed as a writer was invaluable. “I could create an okay script in 10 days. My speed, in part, fueled my meteoric rise from freelance writer to story editor to being approved to write pilots.” Later came MacGyver. Although CBS/Paramount still retains the rights to the original series, all the “so-called separated rights reverted back to me,” says Zlotoff. But those 139 episodes of the original show continue to run all over the world. In some places, MacGyver is a household word. “In Korea,” Zlotoff notes, “a pocket knife—any kind of knife that one carries—is called a ‘MacGyver.’” Zlotoff sees MacGyver as “Johnnie perfection. He takes a Johnnie approach of thinking across disciplines to solve problems.” The character merges an “ability to think outside the box, as we’re encouraged to do at St. John’s,” with “my technical exposure from Brooklyn Tech.” Zlotoff also attributes a good part of Mac’s character to his father—“certainly the Swiss Army Knife.” Currently Zlotoff is in discussions with several publishers for his book, The MacGyver Method. MacGyver walks its pages, sharing Zlotoff’s step-by-step method for creating—and living. Zlotoff is also developing a feature film about MacGyver. “I don’t usually quote Yoda,” says Zlotoff, “but Yoda did say, ‘There is do or do not. There is no try.’ You must believe you can do it, that there is no limit to what is possible.” “Whenever I would return from model building, I kept seeing this man hiding behind a tree, watching the main character, who was a young woman.” integral part of the final story. Clearly, something in my subconscious was telling me I needed this figure.” To give voice to his creative method, Zlotoff draws not only on his ability to visualize on a whiteboard; he uses his well-known character, MacGyver, a pragmatic, can-do Boy Scout of a cop who sports a Swiss Army knife and a blonde mullet. Through “Mac,” Zlotoff has found a voice. The fictional MacGyver is rooted in Zlotoff’s own experiences. “He is non-violent, resourceful. MacGyver’s world,” says Zlotoff, “is ‘you take what you got, turn it into what you think you need, not what you want.’ He has a sense of honor, humor, and humility. MacGyver uses a Swiss Army knife for everything.” Zlotoff , whose name means “gold” in Russian, is as enterprising as MacGyver. His flair for business emerged as an undergraduate, living on Maryland Avenue, and running a contracting company with David Huston (A74). He married Rebecca Ann Soloff (A74), his high school sweetheart, 32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 More information: www.macgyvermethod. com and www.macgyverglobal.com. �storytellers Toile Tales Richard Saja’s (sf93) Whimsical Threads A by Paula Novash JOHN EMERSON PHOTOGRAPHY t first glance, the textile art in a wooden frame appears to portray a scene from classical mythology. A cupid sits atop a rearing steed, and a young maiden in a long gown makes an offering to a reclining figure wearing a crown. The group is surrounded by colorful bunches of grapes, lush foliage, and stylized birds, embroidered on a background of pale linen. When you look closer, another layer of complexity appears: the figures are stitched in metallic and glow-in-the-dark threads. The crown is actually a blackand-blue Mohawk, the witnesses include a rabbit, and the fluffy-haired maiden is holding not wine or sacred fruit, but a box that looks a little like a birthday cake, emanating spiky rays. Its title? “Behold: ELECTRICITY!” Richard Saja (SF93) savors irreverent twists in a modern retelling of traditional stories. This creation is typical of textile artist Richard Saja (SF93), who gives centuriesold fabric patterns a modern sensibility by infusing them with fanciful style, a touch of mystery, and most of all, a sense of humor. Saja embellishes traditional toile fabrics (think Colonial Williamsburg) with whimsical embroidery, creating delightfully offbeat stories that celebrate the quirkiness of everyday living while exploring themes such as tolerance and acceptance. “Toile is similar to a coloring book in that it’s begging to be enhanced,” Saja explains. “What I do is draw out a story with my embroidery, embellishing so you can see yet another narrative.” It’s reminiscent of what a fool or joker in medieval times might do, revealing a greater truth within a cheeky, irreverent presentation. The word “toile” means cloth, and the fabric most often replicates traditional French designs that depict pastoral scenes in a repeating pattern, using a single color on a light background. What Saja does with his needle, he says, is create a sort of “playful subversion to toile’s traditional role, where everything blends and has equal weight. By giving attention to some element and making it special and individual, I’m taking something old and making it relevant again.” Saja grew up in the Jersey Shore town of Point Pleasant, where he felt out of step with many of his peers. Navigating “summer crowds and deserted boardwalk in winter,” he was “kind of a weird and imaginative kid,” Saja says. “I was constantly making things, like dioramas of haunted houses and superhero costumes.” He was also an avid reader, whose favorite books featured kids who had “to fend for themselves, like My Side of the Mountain or From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 33 �storytellers COURTESY RICHARD SAJA “It’s not my intention to tell someone what to think about it. People see my art all at once, like a painting, but then it can unfold more like a book or film, depending on the viewer. My work appeals to many types of people because it can be interpreted on many different levels.” At that time, there was little “awareness about tolerance and acceptance, or the impact of bullying,” he continues. “So I came to identify with the marginalized, misunderstood monster types from old movies and comic books.” In Saja’s works, unusual characters often interact seamlessly with conventional ones; in “Scenes from a Marriage,” for example, an alluring masked woman in a ball gown holds the hand of a gentle green, fur-covered creature as they dance the minuet. “A monstrosity is added to something bucolic, and it can co-exist and be accepted within that framework,” Saja explains. “It celebrates difference; the freaks are recognized, accepted, and affirmed.” Saja moved to New Mexico after high school and created ceramic art before enrolling at St. John’s Santa Fe campus. After completing his degree, he worked as an art director in a Madison Avenue advertising agency. Then, laid off during the dot-com bust, he started a decorative arts business with fellow Johnnie Martha Alexander. While working on a design project for cushions, Saja recalls, he woke from a dream picturing Maori facial tattoos embroidered onto figures in toile. A self-taught artist, he soon realized that embroidery was “a natural outlet for my overall fastidiousness, and I fortunately have some innate talent for it.” Saja says an endless number of tales exist within every toile; his interpretation is only one among many. “I usually have some general idea in mind when I begin a piece. For example, I liked the idea of using candy colors, which then became “Dionysos in Candyland.” 34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 (See it at http://historically-inaccurate. blogspot.com.) “But then it evolves organically,” he continues, “It’s not my intention to tell someone what to think about it. People see my art all at once, like a painting, but then it can unfold more like a book or film, depending on the viewer. My work appeals to many types of people because it can be interpreted on many different levels.” In a hard-edged, high-tech world, people seem to appreciate the time and energy that goes into his creations. “There are no shortcuts; these are labor-intensive projects that need care and love to bring them to life,” Saja says. “I will probably never have copycats because it takes too long to do this kind of work well.” Creating his art is contemplative, even meditative, says Saja. He often embroiders to documentaries, which serve as a sort of “white noise” to his creative process. “I’ll turn on something about apes or Egypt— it’s learning while doing.” Saja’s art constantly surprises him. “There’s a magic that comes through in some pieces that I couldn’t possibly plan for, where the stitching is imbued with emotion,” he explains. “When I was young, I was different. That was oppressive. Now being different has become a positive for me, with external affirmation coming from many quarters. My design vocabulary is conveying a message of acceptance and hope, and I love that emotion can be conveyed through my embroidery and shared and felt by the viewer.” Saja’s art has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times and Vogue. It is displayed in museum and private collections around the world. He has partnered with designers that include Mother of Pearl, Opening Ceremony, Keds, and Christian Lacroix. Examples of his art are currently on display at the SnydermanWorks Gallery in Philadelphia. SEEKING WOMEN IN FILM If you are a Johnnie, a female, and working in the film industry, please share your stories with The College. �storytellers Swerve: Walk on the Wild Side From Sci-fi Animation to Live-action Drama and a Rocker Documentary, Geoff Marslett (sf96) Hops By Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) I LAUREN MODERY, SWERVE PICTURES “ like delving into things, at least for a little while, and storing them for later on,” says indie filmmaker Geoff Marslett (SF96). This intellectual restlessness drives his art: he has written, produced, and directed short films both animated and liveaction, including the first video for cartoonist/musician James Kochalka’s epic ditty, “Monkey vs. Robot” (sadly, no longer available to watch online). His production company, Swerve Pictures (yes, it’s a Lucretius reference), has made two very different feature films, Mars (2010) and Loves Her Gun (2013). Lately, he has directed trailers and even acted in a few films—he enjoys providing just a little of other people’s stories. Off-camera, he teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, having earned an MFA in film production there in December 2000. Mars is an animated sci-fi romantic comedy that Marslett wrote and directed. He also had a hand in editing and producing, as well as leading the arduous process of animation. For the film’s unique look, Marslett wrote a computer program that reduced images of actors in front of a green screen to between 16 and 64 colors, then into vectors—scalable graphics defined not by the position of pixels but by the mathematical curves that make up the image. Marslett’s math background came in handy; while at St. John’s, he studied theoretical physics and differential equations on the side, and pursued an associate’s degree in math during a few summers. Processed through this program, Marslett explains, footage acquires “weird, drifty color palettes” similar to traditional rotoscoping, where an animator draws over film footage. Marslett and his team used this technique for features like eyes and mouths that they wanted to look more polished. All the backgrounds were CGI-generated. Creating these composite images took years to accomplish, with five animators working nearly nonstop in a kind of artistic delirium. In 2007 and 2008, the terabytes of space required to store the images were “expensive and ridiculous,” says Marslett. Now a four-terabyte drive is $150 on Amazon. Techne moves ever more rapidly. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 35 �storytellers LAUREN MODERY, SWERVE PICTURES Independent Film Festival, along with many others. Loves Her Gun has won accolades from the Los Angeles Review of Books and Indiewire. Marslett thinks Mars will have more longevity, despite the film world’s snobbery about animated films. Marslett estimates that making an animated film takes roughly ten times as much work as a live-action movie, yet the festival circuit often takes an “aw, it’s almost like you made a real film” attitude toward them. As a filmmaker outside the New York-Los Angeles axis, he’s happy with modest success, with “doing something because I like doing it,” even if it doesn’t pay well—yet. Marslett’s new feature project is, as one would expect, entirely different from those that preceded it: a documentary on “costume rockers,” bands with a shtick to their outfits or songs that occupy a “strange place between music and theater.” The final result of all this labor is stunning. Part dream, part comic book, part solid reality, it’s a perfect visual complement to a story of space exploration and romance, two human endeavors that Marslett feels have much in common. “As soon as you talk to [a person who catches your eye], you change her, she changes you—neither of you is really the same as what you saw across the room. That’s always completely unattainable.” Exploring a new country is the same, he says: “The minute you get there, you’re slightly different, the country’s slightly different. Going to Mars is the same way.” Marslett is always looking for different ways to tell stories. “I’m gonna call it a strength,” he asserts. “Some people call it a problem.” So where Mars was “very much about construct, very controlled,” Loves Her Gun takes a nearly opposite approach. A liveaction drama shot on location in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and Austin, it’s the story of a woman who flees the city after being mugged and finds herself caught up in Texas gun culture, struggling to find an emotional middle ground between safety and paranoia. Marslett and his co-writers, Laura Modery and Geoff Lerer, 36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 above left: Geoff Marslett (SF96) talks barbeque and film at an Austin eatery. above: Frames from Marslett’s animated film, Mars. scripted the action of every scene tightly, but wrote no dialogue. The actors improvised every word, which was “probably terrifying,” says Marslett, but results in a naturalistic rhythm not often found in film. Hesitations, misspoken words, and filler syllables are all intact. This approach to storytelling—obviously far from the constraint of the multi-step animation in Mars—adds to the tale’s gritty, bleak nature. Even in the trailer, it’s eerie and effective. Both movies have had some success at film festivals like Austin’s own SXSW. Loves Her Gun won the Louis Black Lone Star award in 2013, an unexpected achievement. (Marslett almost skipped the award ceremony.) In addition, Mars has shown at BAMCinemaFest in Brooklyn, the BFI London Film Festival, and the San Francisco Marslett’s new feature project is, as one would expect, entirely different from those that preceded it: a documentary on “costume rockers,” bands with a shtick to their outfits or songs that occupy a “strange place between music and theater.” He knows that place well, since he plays accordion in a band that performs songs inspired by The Karate Kid, while wearing prosthetic arms and legs frozen in permanent crane-kick position. (One of the bands on his radar is The Pizza Underground, a Velvet Underground cover band that sings songs like “I’m Beginning to Eat the Slice” and “Papa John Says”; it consists of four of his friends and Macaulay Culkin. Really.) There is no firm date for the documentary’s completion, but it’s sure to be quirky and thoughtful, like Marslett himself. Learn more about Geoff Marslett’s (SF96) filmmaking: www.swervepictures.com �storytellers Pursuing a Dream Nashville’s Music Row Sets the Stage for Mike Lacy (a12) B by Gregory Shook It’s such a moment that motivates Lacy to pursue his longtime dream of a career in film. After graduating from St. John’s in 2012, he moved to Nashville to be part of what he calls the city’s “developing industry with a thriving freelance community.” A year later, he launched his own freelance company, Prometheoid Films, creating music videos, short films, and multi-media projects. At age 24, he can practically do it all—act, direct, produce, and edit. Lacy’s industrious nature is the main ingredient for his success. “I spent a lot of last week uploading 160 hours of footage for a Jimi Hendrix documentary,” he says. “On the weekend, I was second camera on a music video shoot. We shot overnight in this motorcycle shop from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. It’s nerve-wracking to think about making a creative life for myself, but it’s something I’ve been passionate about since I was about 12 years old.” Lacy’s first music video with his company is for the 2013 single “Not So Much Anymore” by David Berg, an acclaimed songwriter who has worked with country music luminaries Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, and Keith Urban, and has penned chart-topping hit songs for Reba McEntire and others. The video centers on a young woman in anguish over a troubled romantic relationship, who finds comfort in her circle of friends. “I had a vision for the video, but I wasn’t making a good elevator pitch,” says Lacy, who says that the project almost didn’t happen. “I finally “A hard thing for me, as someone who likes storytelling, is that music videos are not about telling a story as such.” said [to Berg], ‘Look, I don’t know how to explain my [idea], but this [video] is something that is really important to me.’” Music has always been close to Lacy’s heart. In high school, he played guitar and keyboards with his band, The Shel Silversteins, and absorbed a steady diet of MTV and VH1. Today, he admits that making a music video is among his greatest challenges. “A hard thing for me, as someone who likes storytelling, is that music videos are not about telling a story as such,” says Lacy. “There may be a beginning, middle, and end, but it’s not always clear whether there’s a protagonist and a clearly stated conflict.” Being a Johnnie, Lacy views ambiguity as an opportunity to explore, learn, and be creative. In a music video, he wants to elevate the song, using images to elicit emotion and bring out fresh, sometimes unexpected elements of the music. “A good video conveys something that cannot, or maybe should not, be put into words,” says Lacy, who typically avoids literal visual interpretations of a song. “If the lyrics are about the Los Angeles skyline, you don’t want to show images of JOSH ANDERSON arely a decade after making his first film, Mike Lacy’s (A12) work appeared on the silver screen—and took him by surprise. Alone at the movies, Lacy watched in amazement as the 2011 PSA for the Tennessee Department of Mental Health, in which he had acted and helped to produce, rolled with the commercials. He announced to everyone in the theater, “I made that. That was me playing the drug dealer.” the L.A. skyline.” During his sophomore year at St. John’s, Lacy experienced an existential dilemma that ultimately led to a fateful discovery. “I was conflicted because here I was learning ancient Greek and astronomy,” says Lacy. “I thought, ‘What am I doing with my life? Is this really my passion?’” He found his answer in books by renowned film editor Walter Murch, whose résumé includes The Godfather, The English Patient, Cold Mountain, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Lacy discovered that classical literature is woven into Murch’s work; he once edited a film scene inspired by a canto from Dante and used Kepler’s harmonic theory to figure out how to interplay music with edits. The summer before his junior year, Lacy sought out the film editor at his San Francisco home. “I looked him up on the Internet and wrote him an e-mail,” says Lacy. A few weeks later, he was in Murch’s kitchen, where the like-minded souls talked for hours about the role of music in the lives of human beings and the ways that classical thought can be applied in modern films. “We sometimes draw a line between classical learning and modern day, making them seem at odds,” says Lacy. “But there are people like Murch, who are in love with creating things for modern audiences and don’t think it’s such a harsh dichotomy. I find that inspiring.” Learn more about Mike Lacy (A12): prometheoidspeaks.wordpress.com The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 37 �A Vision Becomes a View by Sus3an Borden (A87) 38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 �For 50 years, students and tutors in Santa Fe have been inspired by the view of neighboring mountain Atalaya and the tantalizing snow on the Santa Fe Ski Basin as they read, write, meet, study, and socialize in the campus coffee shop. This vista, it turns out, is not a lucky accident, according to Charles “Chuck” Nelson (Class of 1945), a former member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. It is part of the earliest vision of the campus. Nelson recalls a day in 1962 when John Gaw Meem drove him and other board members to the site of what would be the Santa Fe campus: The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 39 �“He showed us where he thought the main buildings would be put and I remember him describing to us where the dining hall would be [and saying that] there would be large windows with panoramic views of the mountains while you’re sitting there having your lunch.... That, of course, all came out as he indicated it would.” This experience of a vision realized is a theme often repeated when people talk about the founding and history of the Santa Fe campus. It’s a theme that tutor Claudia Hauer is capturing and preserving as she works on an oral history project in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Santa Fe campus. Hauer had just returned from a leave of absence in October 2012 when Santa Fe Vice President Victoria Mora mentioned that she was planWilliam Darkey (Class of 1942) ning to start an oral history project interviewing Santa Fe’s founders. Hauer, who has a long-standing “He [Weigle] was passionate about interest in creative nonfiction, told Mora to sign her liberal education in the St. John’s up for the project. way and he just thought it should Hauer began the project that December with interbe offered to more people. When views of the people who we couldn’t accommodate as many were present at the founding, including Nelson and students as wanted to come in [Annapolis], that’s when he wanted to former board member Bud Kelly (H02). She then spoke come out and start this new college.” with all of the living former deans and presidents, — Tom Slakey, tutor emeritus and former dean, Annapolis along with tutors who were either present at the campus’s opening in 1964 or came to the campus in the following three years. She expanded the project to include board members, campus benefactors, the current dean and president, and a few alumni. “What we’ve got is a treasure trove of memories and reflections,” says Hauer. “The goal for the 50th anniversary is to disseminate these recordings as much as we can. But the database will stay with the college after the celebration as an archive we can use to remember our history.” The treasures she has collected include tutor Clementine Peterson (H88) Roger Peterson (H94) and former buildings and grounds journeyman Johnny Zamora reflecting on the campus’s early culture of pranks, tutor Ray Davis discussing the summer senior program, 40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 and tutor and former assistant dean Don Cook (H97) talking about riding his horse to and from the campus: “I can remember times I would ride home after seminar. It was a nine-mile ride each way, and I would go out and saddle my horse and go home in the complete dark down the arroyo behind school. That was before any houses were back there. I remember the sense of solitude, and it made me think about the west and how people were alone for long periods of time. I remember the ice cracking under the horse’s hooves, just that one sound going down the arroyo. I remember feeling the isolation and how welcoming it was to come up over the hill about three or four miles down and see lights and [thinking about] what that must have meant to people who were out here in places like Arizona and New Mexico, to be weeks by themselves and then to come upon a campfire or some other sign of human life. I got quite a bit out of those rides back and forth to school.” Richard Weigle’s vision is another common theme in the oral histories. It reveals itself in the campus’s history through the visionary endeavors of those who sought not to recreate the Annapolis campus out west, but to create a St. John’s College of their own. Hauer describes the work of the founders and early tutors: “That core group brought incredible passion to building this campus. They felt that the more they put into it, the more they could get out of it. The founding faculty in Santa Fe drew their inspiration from Dick Weigle’s vision of multiple campuses of St. John’s.” Tom Slakey (H94), tutor emeritus and former dean of the Annapolis campus, recalls Weigle’s commitment to the Program: “He was passionate about liberal education in the St. John’s way, and he just thought it should be offered to more people. When we couldn’t accommodate as many students as wanted to come in [Annapolis], that’s when he wanted to come out and start this new college.” �Hauer’s interviews capture this passion and include stories of how Santa Fe tutors reworked junior math, developed the biology and chemistry sequences in lab, and had the Evans Science Laboratory built with private lab spaces for students to pursue independent research. Stories from later years show how the Santa Fe faculty continued to innovate, creating the Graduate Institute and later its Eastern Classics program, Summer Classics for the community, and the art program that was on the curriculum from 1990 to 2003. In his interview, Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952) and founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, draws Hauer’s attention to the carvings in the beams in the new Winiarski Center, which “I can remember times I would ride home after seminar. It was a nine-mile ride each way and I would go out and saddle my horse and go home in the complete dark down the arroyo behind school….I remember the ice cracking under the horse’s hooves....the sense of solitude...and how welcoming it was to come up over the hill about three or four miles down and see the lights….” — Don Cook (H97), tutor and former assistant dean CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Richard Weigle, president and founder of the Santa Fe campus, realizes his vision (photo circa 1961). The finial, detailed with books, placed atop Weigle Hall (opened in 1971 and named for Weigle in 1973). In the early years of the campus, some students rode horses to seminar. depict animals that undergo a metamorphosis: frogs from tadpoles, butterflies from moths, dragonflies from larvae. While the carvings reflect the transformative effects of a St. John’s education, Hauer notes that the view from the Center, like the view from the dining hall, also matches the transformative spirit of the Santa Fe founders. “The view is meant to show the skyline and the hills behind, which is an aspirational vision that you see with that background of hills reaching up and pointing toward heaven,” Warren explains. “It’s a kind of American Indian vision, which I believe is meant to suggest reaching upward beyond yourself to what is above and beyond.” Alumni are invited to participate in the oral history project; please contact: SantaFe.alumni@sjc.edu). The College magazine will celebrate Santa Fe’s 50th in the next issue; if you are from one of the early classes (1960s-70s) and wish to share a story please email: TheCollegeMagazine@sjc.edu. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 41 �bibliofile Johanna Omelia (SFGI03) Michael Waldock (SFGI03): Come Fly With Us! Celebrating a decade since its original date of publication, Come Fly With Us! A Global History of the Airline Hostess: Tenth Anniversary Edition (Ailemo Books, 2013) provides a colorful history of the airline hostess in “an industry started by a woman for women,” according to its authors Johanna Omelia (SFGI03) and Michael Waldock (SFGI03). Beautifully illustrated with more than 200 images of commercial airline advertisements and archival photos, this expanded edition documents the industry’s 83-year history, during which flight attendants have been the face of the airline companies. The book explores the social, economic, and political trends that have affected the role of the airline hostess as well as the public’s ever changing perception of sky travel. In addition, the book features flight attendants’ stories about the early days of aviation. Come Fly With Us! traces the profession’s origin to 1930, when a young Iowan named Ellen Church convinced an airline executive to hire her, thus becoming the world’s first airline hostess. In the 1930s, Church and seven other stewardesses—known as the Original Eight— represented United Airlines and established the foundation of passenger care and safety standards. They were registered nurses whose duties included repairing loose seats, loading baggage, soothing nervous passengers, and even touching up paint on planes. For the next two decades, flight attendants were cabin safety professionals, thoroughly trained in safety procedures. In the 1950s, they were viewed as the “perfect wife,” celebrated in the media for being “as adept at warming a baby’s bottle as mixing a martini.” The Swinging Sixties and Groovy Seventies saw flight attendants as sex symbols, marketed to lure passengers aloft. Come Fly With 42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Us! shows how uniforms played an integral part in this image, incorporating stylish and innovative elements that reflected high fashion as well as evolving social mores. This expanded edition highlights “even more coverage of the 1960s, when, astoundingly, women wore hot pants and short (flammable) paper dresses,” says Omelia. Waldock’s interest in flight attendants began in this decade, when he first came to California from England. “When he changed planes, the stewardess kissed him,” says Omelia. “I was never kissed by a flight attendant, but I think the history of working women around the Boeing’s 747 elevated the status of air travel; passengers could book tables for dinner, view in-flight movies, and gather around a piano for a song or two—in Coach! world over the decades is fascinating.” As the book points out, the advent of the first “jumbo jet,” Boeing’s 747, elevated the status of air travel; passengers could book tables for dinner, view in-flight movies, and gather around a piano for a song or two—in Coach! However, in 1978 the airline industry was deregulated, resulting in an influx of new carriers, furious competition, the collapse of some established companies, and, ultimately, decreased legroom and in-flight amenities that remains the standard today. In January 2014, Omelia and Waldock launched the online publication, Come Fly With Us Magazine. The premier issue features articles on 1970s Hawaiian Airlines fashion, travel in Iceland, and more. Read the magazine at www.comeflywithusmagazine.com. —Gregory Shook �bibliofile Anne Leonard (A89) and John C. Wright (A84): Storytelling and Sensawunda When it comes to storytelling that involves princes, dragons, and sorcery, “avoiding stereotypes is a challenge,” says Anne Leonard (A89), a lawyer-turned-writer who lives in Northern California. To keep it fresh, Leonard infuses her debut novel Moth and Spark (Viking Books, 2014), with colorful details from her life. “The book has an entire chapter that takes place at a ball, which is influenced by St. John’s waltz parties in Annapolis,” says Leonard. Fantasy devotees and readers beyond her intended demographic can appreciate the novel’s nuanced characters and panoramic prose. “[Moth and Spark] was written as a love story for a niche audience: teenage girls and young women,” says Leonard. “But I’ve been thrilled and amazed by the response from middle-aged guys!” In her book, a young prince, Corin, and Tam, a doctor’s daughter, are torn between Corin’s quest to free dragons from an evil “I get my ideas from the subconscious mind, the persistence, the work—and the muse Sensawunda.” Science fiction author John C. Wright’s (A84) highly-anticipated Judge of Ages (Tor Books, 2014) is a space opera for the ages. In this third volume in his Count to the Eschaton Sequence, Wright says that science fiction’s hallmarks of “the gigantic, the over-the-top, with extreme villains and lots of action” are abundant. “The term space opera is a little tongue-in-cheek. Being a St. John’s graduate, I write philosophy, deep thought, and other abstract theory into my stories. But entertainment is the first priority. I want to beguile on an idle afternoon.” Set in the year AD 10,515, the novel centers on two adversaries who endeavor—each in their own different ways—to thwart an alien threat, the Hyadas Armada, headed to Earth to assess humanity’s value as slaves. In Judge of Ages, opposing leaders Ximen del Azarchel and Menelaus Montrose ultimately converge in a climactic battle, replete with hi-tech weaponry and cliometric calculus, for the Empire and their mission to save their country on the brink of battle. Leonard embraces fantasy’s most compelling elements: intrigue, magic, war, and forbidden romance. “Conventions put a [story] structure in place,” says Leonard, an avid reader of fantasy fiction. She also looks beyond fantasy for inspiration, observing authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and W. B. Yeats to create archetypal and distinctive characters. “I try to put my own twist on the fantasy genre,” says Leonard, who models her novel’s heroine on Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice. Leonard also gives a nod to contemporary best-selling works such as The Hunger Games and the Twilight saga; there is a heated romantic tension between Prince Corin and Tam, Moth and Spark’s dual protagonists. “I wrote this book for my 15-year-old self,” says Leonard. “I always liked making up characters.” fate of the planet and its human inhabitants. At its core, the story is conventional science fiction, riffing from legendary authors such as Isaac Asimov, widely regarded as a master of science-fiction storytelling. “On some level, though, my attitude and personality come through,” says Wright. “I get my ideas from the subconscious mind, the persistence, the work—and the muse Sensawunda.” Sensawunda, or “sense of wonder,” is one of science fiction’s defining characteristics. “The sense of wonder of science fiction differs from other natural wonders or personal miracles in a man’s life— the wonders of first love, or childbirth, and so on,” says Wright. “Science fiction concerns only those specific wonders that are not eternal and not known to all men.” —Gregory Shook The College || st.john’s college || spring 2014 | The College st. john’s college summer 2013 43 �bibliofile Bliss By Hilary Fields (SF97) Redhook Orbit (Hachette Book Group), 2013 Santa Fe-based writer Hilary Fields (SF97) wrote her first novel at age 16 and later penned three historical romances under another name; today she continues the bliss of reading and wordplay. A voracious reader since childhood, Fields cites Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as her all-time favorites. Set in the City Different, her new novel, Bliss, centers on Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic By Nora Gallagher (SF70) Alfred A. Knopf, 2013 Anyone who has experienced a baffling illness or struggled to have a health condition diagnosed may well empathize with Nora Gallagher’s (SF70) journey recounted in her new memoir, Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic. A preacher-in-residence at Trinity Episcopal Church in her hometown of Santa Barbara, California, Gallagher begins her quest in 2009, when a routine eye exam reveals an inflamed optic nerve, a mysterious condition called optic neuritis. The cause is unknown, and if left untreated, it can lead to total vision loss. Plato’s Laws: Force and Truth in Politics Edited by Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday Indiana University Press, 2013 For this collection of 14 interpretive essays by as many authors, editors Gregory Recco, an Annapolis tutor, and Eric Sanday, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Kentucky, organized a team of scholars. Due to its length and density, this work of Plato’s is not as well studied as the others. This volume looks at all the individual books of the dialogue and reflects on the work as a whole. Rather than provide interpretation of every 44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Serafina Wilde, a pastry chef whose seemingly perfect life begins to unravel. Her eccentric Aunt Pauline comes to the rescue when she offers to let her take over the family business, “Pauline’s House of Passion,” and turn it into a bakery, so long as she retains the shop’s “adult store” in the back room. Throughout the novel, Fields makes clear her love of baking; the book is chock-full of sumptuous descriptions of gooey pastries and other delectable baked goods. But food is secondary to the novel’s exploration into matters of the heart: finding courage, friendship, family, and self-discovery. Gallagher set off on a yearlong search to find a diagnosis and treatment for her mysterious condition. A meditation on faith, spirituality, and vulnerability, the memoir is structured in three sections—“Drowning,” “Limbo,” and “Recalled to Life”—each chronicling significant phases of her pilgrimage. Devoid of sentimentality, she candidly describes her encounters with the marvels and madness of the modern medical system and illuminates the sometimes dark path that ultimately leads her to the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, a place built for those seeking answers and cures. “It’s the nature of things to be vulnerable,” says Gallagher. “The disorder is imagining we are not.” detail, the contributing authors explore the facets of the text that they found to be most interesting and rich. In addition, they read drafts of each other’s essays and, in some cases, included responses to other essays within their own compositions. Although its contributors come from different backgrounds and concentrations, this collection has a sense of connectedness throughout. Both newcomers and veterans of the Laws can discover fresh and valuable insight into Plato’s work, reminding us of its relevance today. —Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) �alumni notes 1946 Peter J. Davies, Class of 1948, writes, “Peter Weiss (A) was honored on April 2, 2014, at a reception following a forum on Law’s Imperative: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons, which examined the current state of the law on nuclear weapons and what needs to be done to bring the obligation to fruition. The event recognized Weiss’s contribution to nuclear disarmament and the rule of law, and raised funds for the future work of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP), which he co-founded in 1981. He retired in 2013 as president, having served in that position since its founding. Weiss and LCNP played a key role in the 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice at the Hague, which held unanimously that ‘there exists an obligation to negotiate in good faith for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.’” 1952 A Contemplative Life Pierre Grimes (A) reflects: “In 1948, my freshman year, I discovered in Plato’s Parmenides the roots of a profound metaphysics. In his Republic, I found the primary role of dreams, dialectic, and contemplation. Clearly, with the Dark Ages we lost that legacy.” In 1961, while earning his PhD from the University of the Pacific’s graduate school, the American Academy of Asian Studies, Grimes studied the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, and, with Zen, contemplation. The publication of Grimes’s 1961 study of the Alcibiades dialogue in Yale Journal, QJSA, marked the beginning of his “philosophical counseling,” says Grimes, “as philosophical midwifery. Later, as the founder of the international philosophical movement, American Philosophical Practitioners Association, I have given more than 20 demonstrations and papers at international conferences held at the University of Liverpool, Oxford University, the University of Athens, the University of Vancouver, and the University of Ontario. In 1978, I founded the Noetic Society, Inc., for the Study of Dialogue and Dialectic, and directed its Philosophical Midwifery Program, which included dream study. In 1983, I joined with Chong-An S’nim of the Korean Chogye Ch’an Sect to form the Opening Mind Academy, which joined the Platonic tradition with Buddhism. Chong-An sealed me as Hui-An, his Dharma Successor and master dharma teacher. In his autobiography, In My Own Way, Alan Watts described me as a Jnana Yogi who ‘comes to an authentic realization, or satori, by an intellectual rather than an emotional or physical discipline.’” 1966 1967 Julia du Prey (née Busser) (A) writes, “I now have four grandchildren who keep me feeling young. Last October, I was in Bhutan on a special tour, hiking to remote monasteries and temples in this very Buddhist country. My cousin, Ian Baker, was the tour leader, a Buddhist scholar and mountaineer. Otherwise, my life has continued more or less predictably. I still sing and play the flute, do some writing, and participate in a philosophy study group.” Sandra Hoben’s (A) volume of poetry, The Letter C, will be published by the Ash Tree Poetry Series in 2014. 1969 Lee McKusick (SF) writes, “My partial (three years) St. John’s education continues to fiercely interact with my Cal State Los Angeles American Studies education. I am in my third career as a paraeducator working with children. One of the language problems I have run into (with a nod to Wittgenstein) is how to describe a young person without The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 45 �alumni notes 1975 Class of 1969 Memory Book Celebrates 45 Years To celebrate their 45th class reunion, members of the Class of 1969 are invited to share their memories for an online memory book. Joseph Baratta (A) will assemble the book, which will be shared with alumni at Homecoming 2014 in Annapolis from September 12 to 14. Alumni may submit text as well as a photo or two. He suggests you answer questions such as: How has the college influenced your life? What memories of the years in college particularly stand out in your mind? Where have your travels taken you? Send your responses to: Joseph P. Baratta 32 Hilltop Circle Worcester, MA 01609 508-756-6015 josephbaratta@mac.com using the painfully closed phrase, ‘severely mentally disabled.’ Every day I bring both a scientific and emotional attentiveness to my work with individual special-education children. I am often puzzling over the learning pathways. For these children, learning is a physical process. While most of what I do is simply caring for kids and keeping them safe, I get to see learning as an interaction between brain, memory, senses, and muscles. I have been studying human motor-skill development to provide words and ideas to clarify what I observe in my students. A side puzzle: Where and how do disabled and slightly disabled children show up in the great books and other classical literature? Where are portrayals of children with cerebral palsy, non-verbal conditions, and autistic behaviors? What are some of the books that explore how the classical Athenian Greek culture reckoned with the Spartan Greek infant practices? Separately, I recently ran for a local elected office [in San Mateo County, Calif.], and had the fascinating experience of knocking on doors and establishing face-to-face political understanding with hundreds of voters. Others running for the same position outspent me by an enormous margin. While I did not win, I drew a fair number of community votes.” 1971 Victoria Manchester Garrison (SF) completed reading All On Fire, the inspiring biography of the abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, her ancestor by marriage. She is frequently in Taos doing grandmother volunteering at the Waldorf School. 46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 “Stone Boat’s” Personal Best Annapolis Alumni Director Leo Pickens (A78) writes, “Kudos to Mike ‘Stone Boat’ Van Beuren (A) on his personal best performance at the Head of the Charles Regatta held on October 19, 2013. Stone Boat finished sixth in a field of more than 50 competitors in the Men’s Veteran I & II Single Sculls with a P.R. [Personal Record] of 20 minutes and 5 seconds.” Commenting on the photo from the race, Van Beuren says, “I had just made a move to the inside of the long turn at mile two here. The wake of the boat in front is visible to the right. I was by him 300 meters later.” 1973 1978 Since June 2013, Constance McClellan (SF) has been serving a two-year term in Moldova with the Peace Corps. She is working with Moldovan teacher partners as an English teacher for grades 5 - 12 in a village of 7,000 outside of the capitol city of Chi in u. Although Moldova may be Europe’s poorest country, Connie enjoys the Internet, hot water, Western toilets, and excellent Eastern European food, including homemade wine. After almost a year and much language training, she is finally beginning to understand conversations in Romanian, and to be more or less understood when speaking about concrete things (or about matters with lots of English cognates). Read her blog at cdmcclellan. wordpress.com. The 35th class reunion also capped off 30 years of international living and banking work for Chris Olson (A), and 12 years of evaluation work at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, England. (The curious can read his study of “EBRD’s Response to the 2008-09 Financial Crisis” at www.ebrd.com/downloads/ about/evaluation/1011.pdf.) In the evenings, he practices as a trainee psychotherapist with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists (IGAP.org), in the classical tradition of Carl Gustav Jung, who discovered psychological types (familiar as Myers-Briggs typology) and the collective unconscious. He hopes to complete the training within four years and to practice analytical psychology at his home in Rotherhithe, London. �alumni notes 1982 Rob Crutchfield (A) has started an online fundraising effort to help Ruth Johnston (A85), who has a debilitating illness. For more information, visit www.gofundme.com/ help-ruth-johnston. 1988 1983 Désirée Zamorano (SF) writes that her novel, The Amado Women, a family drama, will be published in summer 2014. 1984 1979 To Greece and Back Karen Bohrer (Anderson) (A) writes, “After 12 years living and working in Greece, first at the American College of Thessaloniki and then at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, I have repatriated. I am now the collections assessment and development librarian at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. It’s a big change in ever so many respects, but I’m jumping in with both feet, knowing it’s never the same river. Before I left Greece, I had a wonderful experience related to the college. A friend in the U.S. had advised a young acquaintance who was traveling through Europe to look me up when she got to Athens, and she came to see me at the library of ASCSA, expressing a particular interest in the ancient authors. When I asked why, Zara Amdur (SF11) revealed the name of her alma mater. Neither of us was aware until that moment that we were both alumnae. Despite our circumstantial differences, age being not the least among them, the shared experience of St. John’s enabled us to immediately connect on the human and intellectual levels that matter. E-mail is probably the best way to reach me for anyone who’d like to. My addresses are karenbohrer@ yahoo.com or kmbohrer@wpi.edu.” Bryan Cave, focusing on international and domestic litigation, arbitration, and regulatory disputes. Ryan will serve as the Miami office’s managing and hiring partner, and I will serve as co-leader of the firm’s international dispute resolution practice (together with Rod Page).” Pedro J. Martinez-Fraga (A) writes, “I am pleased to announce that, effective March 17, 2014, C. Ryan Reetz and I have opened a Miami office for the law firm of Bryan Cave LLP, a leading international law firm with offices across the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia. The firm’s commitment to its ‘one firm’ culture has resulted in a strong track record of collaboration and cooperation across the firm, with obvious benefits for clients that have endured since its founding 141 years ago. We will be continuing our existing practice at Tobias Maxwell’s (A) fifth book, 1977: The Year of Leaving Monsieur, was published in March 2014. 1993 Inspired from her own experience, Rachel Blistein (A) launched her hair-care business, Original Moxie, in 2009. She credits her ability to teach herself basic chemistry and to formulate complex hair-care products to her St. John’s education. “The process of reading original texts on subjects from ancient Greek to advanced physics gives you the tools to learn anything,” says Blistein. “It also breaks down the fear of tackling a totally foreign subject from scratch and without intermediaries. Once you get over that fear, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.” Visit the company’s online store at www.originalmoxie.com. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 47 �alumni notes Correction: Richard Field (SFGI) writes, “I received my PhD in 1993 from the University of New Mexico in health, physical education, and recreation, not history and philosophy as stated in the fall 2006 issue of The College.” 1999 1997 1998 In addition to running her bee farm (www.ziaqueenbees.com) and having her second child a couple of years ago, Melanie Kirby (SF) served as the president of the Western Apicultural Society of North America in 2013. Currently she is the editor for an online beekeeping newsletter with more than 30,000 subscribers (www.kelleybees.com). She started the Rocky Mountain Survivor Queenbee Cooperative, which is an educational service organization helping to build capacity for local pollinator preservation, promotion, and production. She shared their efforts at the 2013 Apimondia World Beekeeping Conference in Kiev, Ukraine. This spring she organized the 2014 North to South New Mexico Pollinator Benefit Lecture series, bringing pollinator scholars to the Land of Enchantment. St. John’s hosted a lecture by Dr. Thomas Seeley, a worldrenowned conservation biologist from Cornell, on May 3, 2014. More information: www.survivorqueenbees.org. Kirby is buzzed to be sharing her apicultural academia with her beloved alma mater. In fall 2013, Santa Fe Advancement Services Director Nick Giacona (SFGI) returned as guest lecturer to a Native American music class at the University of Oklahoma. He discussed the mythology behind some of the ceremonial music and dance the class was studying. He led the class in a comparative mythology exercise by examining the local differences and universal similarities between the Native American Corn Maiden myths and the Classical Greek myths of Demeter and Persephone. On the home front, Nick’s daughter, Sarah, graduated from New Mexico State University last spring with a degree in fashion design. She begins an internship with the Walt Disney Company in January. His son, Kyle, has been accepted to the University of Hawaii for the spring semester; he plans to major in food science and human nutrition, with an emphasis in sports and wellness. Nick and his wife, Keiko, are looking forward to becoming “empty-nesters.” (Don’t tell Sarah and Kyle.) 48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 On October 1, 2013, at Camp Pendleton, Major Benjamin I. Closs, USMC (A) received a medal for outstanding meritorious service while serving as the Executive Senior Briefer, Intelligence Department, Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2013. Mike Soejoto (A) and Abby Soejoto (A) write, “We had another baby—Peter Dominic, born March 6—who slots in at the bottom of the totem pole after Lucy (10), John (8), Cecilia (6), James (4), and Beatrice (2), but ahead of McDuff the dog. Abby continues to homeschool the kids. Mike is partner at Pircher, Nichols, & Meeks in Century City and is head of the firm’s tax department. The older kids are playing club soccer, which keeps us busy and on the road most weekends. We are excited to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary this summer. Feel free to drop us a line, especially if you will be in Los Angeles: asoejoto@gmail.com and msoejoto@gmail.com.” Dana (Ostrander) Warford (A) and her husband, Mark, welcomed their daughter, Peyton Avery, into the world on July 30, 2013. 2001 Paige Maguire (A), who still lives in Austin, Texas, has remarried. In December 2012, she and Kevin M. Schneider, a composer and producer, welcomed a son, Asa Wilder, who joins his older brother, Daschel Auden Maguire, now 11. Paige is senior strategist at Springbox Digital Partners in downtown Austin. She is also @fluxistrad on Twitter. Cosmina Popa (A) is managing director at Conscious Venture Lab (CVLab), a new impact-focused Mike and Abby Soejoto (A99) are homeschooling their family. �alumni notes business accelerator being created in conjunction with the Howard County Economic Development Authority and the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship. Their goal is to create new businesses that operate at the intersection of profit and purpose, using the power of capitalism to create a more joyful, just, and equitable society. For more information, visit www.consciousventurelab.com. 2002 Ronald Osborn’s (AGI) new book, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, was published in February. Shelley Saxen (née Walker, SFGI, EC03) and her husband, Doug Saxen (EC03), are starting their third and final year living in Peru. Shelley covers human rights and social conflicts as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State. Doug continues his love of writing and has been dedicated to his new digital illuminated manuscript project. They hope to be back in Santa Fe later this year for a visit and always joyfully welcome Johnnie visitors to Peru. Thanks to that fateful debut in Rigoletto, she fell into the arms of a British baritone. His role in Act I was to grab her as she was about to deck the reprobate Duke across the face with a right hook—and drag her, kicking and flailing, off stage right. Helluva first meeting. The baritone, an Oxford man, is a chorister and a Catholic. Ms. Buker would like to take a moment to thank Mr. Tomarchio for his Thomas Aquinas preceptorial, since the sacred, the profane, and the reason lying underneath come up quite a bit with her fancy man. Who knows, she may have to move to London yet .. . and nay, even confess? Next up, Santa Fe tutor Jacques Duvoisin and she have been compiling an anthology about St. John’s College, with a working title, The Selected Life. It’ll be chock full of essays from tutors, alums, current students, and others with an abiding relationship with St. John’s. The project was the positive outcome of various Facebook interactions in which dissatisfied alums were offering no active solutions to telling the “story” of SJC. “If there’s one thing I learned CELEBRATE Homecoming 2014 Annapolis September 12–14 410-626-2531 Santa Fe September 19–21 505-984-6103 alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Lauren Shofer (A) is living in Aalst, Belgium, where she is a chiropractic physician and mother of four: Amelie (5), Julien (4), Emile (2), and Celestine (7 months). Her husband, Baldwyn Bourgois, is also a chiropractic physician. 2005 On February 18, Samantha Buker (A) got a request from the director of Lyric Opera Baltimore: “Are you interested in being a lissome Hebrew maiden in Nabucco?” Given her wonderful first time onstage last year in the Belle Époque house, how could she resist a reprise? left: Samantha Buker (A05) shines in the 2013 production of Rigoletto at Baltimore’s Lyric Opera. above: Celebrating at the Nabucco cast party. from seminar, it’s that saying what something is NOT, is not the same as saying positively what it IS,” says Buker. Incidentally, her nine-to- five financial publishing gig still goes gangbusters, and she’s on the board of PostClassical Ensemble, the D.C.-based orchestra, which is enjoying its 10th-anniversary season. She’s pleased to announce her involvement in the newest thing in so-called “classical” music: Future Symphony Institute. This “think tank” for music provides innovative research and new initiatives whose impact reverberates from her Mt. Vernon neighborhood around the world. Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau.... In what time might be called spare, Samantha runs a portrait studio (photography, drawings, paintings) and can be reached for sittings via 7veilsstudio@gmail.com. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 49 �alumni profile Generous Leadership by Chelsea Batten (A07) Jamaal Barnes (A10) shines as mentor, musician, and advocate Those who graduated with Jamaal “THE THING THAT CONNECTS MY LIFE’S ACTIVITIES IS A FIRM COMMITMENT TO SUPPORTING THE HOLISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH FROM ALL ENVIRONMENTS.” Barnes (A10) will remember a highlight of his junior year: he was summoned to the office of President Nelson and informed that he had won the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, commonly viewed as the Rhodes of public service. “It was funny,” he chuckles, remembering the “hurrahing” of his friends when they found out about it. Looking back, he imparts credit for this accomplishment to those who celebrated with him. “The community at St. John’s is a huge part of why I’m passionate about public service.” Barnes’s passion for public service has taken him to various parts of the world, as well as deeper into the relationships he has been cultivating since high school. He made progress on his longterm goals by earning an EdM degree 50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 2014 in 2011 at Harvard; he is currently an admissions officer at Harvard Graduate School of Education and proctor at Harvard College. In addition, he serves on the Alumni Advisory Board for the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, and as a trustee of the Touchstones Discussion Project (founded by tutors Howard Zeiderman and Nicholas Maistrellis). “I’d say that the thing that connects my life’s activities is a firm commitment to supporting the holistic development of children and youth from all environments,” Barnes reflects. That key word— environment—gives Barnes’s work in public service a character unique to his field. His insight that personal development is heightened by responding to a given environment’s opportunities and challenges was fostered by his experience with St. John’s College. The setup for Barnes’s story reads like the opening act of a highbrow comedy. You take a first-generation college applicant with energy, vision, and a 12year plan to pilot his life. You give him one of the country’s most competitive scholarships, and send him off to an “East Coast” school, launching him on his promising future. What happens then? This goaloriented, energetic activist finds himself in the midst of about 500 philosopherpoets who spend hours pondering the question, “What is virtue?” Of course, Barnes’s story is not extreme. But his choice to attend St. John’s, and the day-to-day experience of life and study at the college, was somewhat lost in translation when he described it to family and friends. “It’s one thing to be a first-generation college student in a traditional sense; it’s a completely different thing to be a first-generation college student and go to St. John’s,” he says. �Despite the challenges and his expectations of how he would function in the college community, Barnes quickly came to appreciate the opportunity presented by the contemplative framework of learning. “The ability to listen to each other carefully, to take what we’ve learned and cooperate effectively, was something I learned to refine over the next few years. The most wonderful deliverable that came out of it was the Epigenesis project.” In December 2007, Barnes joined forces with three other Johnnies in creating a leadership and mentoring program for low-income youth in Annapolis. For 10 weeks the following summer, Epigenesis led workshops based on the cornerstone texts of the St. John’s Program, to help participants identify their community’s most urgent needs, and consider what it meant for them to be good citizens. “It’s hard for me to talk about justice and equality,” Barnes says, “and not think about what goes on at Clay Street. I tried to play that out by being actively engaged in the St. John’s community, as well as being actively engaged in the Annapolis communities.” Following the success of Epigenesis, Barnes devoted his energies to Crossroads for Kids. As the director of their outdoor youth leadership program, Barnes was repeatedly confronted with a gadfly-like question: “How do you measure growth in leadership behaviors?” In the midst of the rigors of junior year, he was led to answers through several formative influences. One was Michel de Montaigne, whom Barnes calls—laughing but with perfect sincerity—his “self-help guide” in what it means to be socially responsible. Another was tutor Chester Burke, who offered to reread several Platonic dialogues with Barnes as graduation approached. “We read the Apology, the Crito, and three or four other texts, and really struggled with what does it mean to be a person of society? To be good, both to yourself and to others?” Those discussions, Barnes says, exemplified for him the kind of generous leadership he was striving to grasp. He also cites former staff members Maggie Melson and Bronte Jones as profound influences. “It’s one thing to be a firstgeneration college student in a traditional sense; it’s a completely different thing to be a first-generation college student and go to St. John’s.” Barnes says that singing with the college choral group, Primum Mobile, brought him back to the human element of living in community. “One of the most beautiful things about music—in particular, when there are multiple people singing in polyphony—is a moment of unity that’s created. Music can create the ideal community.” He brings up the example of singing “Sicut Cervus” in Freshman Chorus. “These voices coming together, weaving their ways. You take any line by itself and it’s an individual, but when you tie it all together, it’s this beautiful community, and the remarkable thing is that you don’t have to be great singers. Freshman chorus singing ‘Sicut Cervus’ is just as beautiful as Primum Mobile.” He pauses and adds this amendment: “The tenors can be a little iffy sometimes.” He pauses again, and when he continues speaking, his voice is choked with emotion. “The fact that music can make me feel like I’m in community with someone, that it can bring about emotions that I can’t articulate in words...I don’t get that sensation with anything else. My hands are actually shaking right now.” Barnes was also struck by the impact of, as he puts it, “that quiet person in class, [who] opens their mouth one time, and really changes the way thoughts are built in seminar.” It showed him that everyone is able to play a valuable role in shaping a community, whether their strengths are in speaking, doing, listening, or simply waiting for the right moment. To those students who, like himself, are burning to take their education beyond the conversation and into the greater community, Barnes says that St. John’s provides an important opportunity to generate self-momentum. “If I didn’t go to St. John’s, I wouldn’t have won the Truman, I wouldn’t have won the Reynolds Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship from Harvard University. If you learn through taking action, the ability to be independent and entrepreneurial in terms of creating opportunities to be active in your community is powerful.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 2013 51 �alumni notes 2008 AMANDA RITTER Aerospace Award Wint Huskey (SFGI10) is a writer based in Philadelphia. Toby Burress (A) and Alena Sinacola (A) welcomed their daughter, Jane Woolf Burress, on December 4, 2013, in Cambridge, Mass. Named in honor of Jane Goodall and Virginia Woolf, baby Jane is a delight. Their dogs Charlie and Maggie have accepted the new human into their pack with grace and understanding. In other news, after seven years in the Boston area, they have recently moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. Toby is enjoying his new job as a systems administrator with Google in Manhattan, and both Jane and Alena are having a wonderful time being a baby and a mama, respectively. They’d love to meet up with other Johnnies in the area: alenasinacola@gmail.com. 2006 Aran Donovan (SF) was featured in the annual anthology, Best New Poets 2013: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers, edited by Brenda Shaughnessy. Equally exciting, she is now living in New Orleans, where several other ’06 and ’07 Johnnies have also congregated. Let her know if you’re passing through the Big Easy! 2007 Maia (Huff-Owen) Nahele (SF) writes, “I now live in Paris, where I have a research and teaching position in the Department of Philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris IV). In the whirlwind of the last few years, I’ve regrettably lost touch with many of you, and welcome the chance to reconnect. I also welcome visitors and passersthrough! I am looking to sublet my lovely, quiet, light-filled, onebedroom apartment in the fourth arrondissement for July and/or August of this year. If there are any Johnnies (students, alumni, faculty, or staff) who would be interested in landing in Paris for the summer and need a fantastic home-base, please drop me a line at mnahele@gmail.com, and I’ll send more information.” 2010 Wint Huskey’s (SFGI) first novel, Blowin’ It, is scheduled to be published in August. 52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Trystan Popish (SF08) and Carol Mohling at the 2014 NSTA Teacher Awards Gala in Boston, Mass. Trystan Popish (SF) was selected by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Awards and Recognitions Committee as the recipient for the 2014 Wendell G. Mohling Outstanding Aerospace Award for her exemplary work with informal aerospace science. Popish, an Aviation Learning Center educator at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Wash., was presented with the award at the NSTA Teacher Awards Gala during the association’s national conference held in Boston, Mass., from April 3 to 6. 2012 A New Course Alexander Schmid (AGI) has joined the faculty at Escondido Charter High School (ECHS), one of the American Heritage family of charter schools based in Escondido, Calif. Schmid teaches freshman logic and rhetoric—a new course that he developed—and a law and debate elective for juniors and seniors. Shawn Roner, the ECHS Traditional Classroom program director, says that Schmid is a valuable addition to the faculty “because we are focusing more attention on developing student thinking skills in the freshman year.” Schmid says, “I was delighted to have the opportunity to teach a subject which I both love and live. When I was offered the position, I knew I had to take it.” �alumni profile Mentoring Women in Business by Gregory Shook Elizabeth Powers (A89) Reveals Hidden Bias in the Workplace As a senior principal at the New Yorkbased IMS Consulting Group (IMSCG), serving clients that include four of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies, Elizabeth Powers (A89) has followed a career trajectory full of twists and bends. At one point, her plans were nearly derailed altogether. “I had a daughter early in my career at Booz & Company (formerly Booz Allen Hamilton),” says Powers, who spent nearly 13 years with the company, working her way up from associate to vice president and partner. “When I came back [to work], there weren’t that many options for alternative schedules.” Powers soon learned how hidden biases, or unconscious bias—an implicit preference for certain types of people based on their upbringing, gender, race, experience, and values—can influence important decisions, such as hiring, promotions, assignments, performance reviews, and dismissals. For the next six months, Powers shuttled back and forth between New York and Chicago “on a team that wasn’t particularly family friendly.” With the pressure to succeed at her job at the expense of spending considerable time apart from her husband and newborn daughter, Powers says that she nearly imploded. When she was on the brink of leaving the company, a colleague came to her support as both a mentor and a champion. Recognizing that Powers had been put in an unfair situation based on her circumstances as a new mother rather than her talent and ability, “he convinced the firm to keep me and for me to stay on parttime,” says Powers, who continued to work part-time with the company for the next five years. “That never would’ve happened without that particular champion.” That experience helped Powers become aware of hidden biases and their potential impact on a person’s career. “Integrity and equality are always at the forefront of my mind,” says Powers. “Both men and women carry around unconscious bias which says that women don’t belong in the workplace. It’s quite acceptable now to be a woman as an entry-level associate or a mid-level manager, but it’s still very hard [for women] to rise to the top ranks.” To thwart the trend, Powers is coordinating a women’s initiative at IMSCG to empower future business leaders to become champions of their own careers and to raise awareness of unconscious bias in the workplace. “I’m in a client service field, and I love what I do,” says Powers, whose work on unconscious bias is a topic at the forefront of many large businesses today. A Wall Street Journal article (January 9, 2014) reports that as many as 20 percent of large U.S. employers who offer diversity training programs now provide unconscious-bias training. Powers looks at what “Integrity and equality other companies are doing in terms of are always at the shedding light on hidden biases in the forefront of my mind.” workplace—in particular, understanding communication style. “It can be challenging to coach others to hit the right level of assertiveness without being too assertive,” she says. “There’s a different solution for everybody.” Inspired by Robert Greenleaf’s book, Servant Leadership, Powers advocates mentorship and the idea of a servant actually being a leader. “That’s at the core of how I operate,” she says. “I wish I could do that a lot better with my family, but when I manage to do it, I’m always successful.” A graduate of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, she mentors Wharton students and alumnae but is “even happier to mentor Johnnies. [Mentoring] is absolutely a way of paying back into the karma bank,” says Powers. “And it’s just fun.” Whether with her family, at the workplace, or at her Brooklyn dojang (Powers is a red belt in hapkido), Powers says that being successful means “living up to my commitments. I was given many gifts, both in terms of talent and in terms of people who have cared for me. It’s all about how I can live up to those gifts.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 53 �transitions A Good Conversation Is Hard to Find LAUREL FISCHER (A11) By Chelsea Batten (A07) “It’s hard to find a good conversation, after St. John’s.” This was the warning delivered by Dr. Bernard Davidoff (A69)— or, as classmates of his daughter knew him, Bernie. He would say it while casting a long glance around the perimeter of the quad, part resigned, part wistful, and part something else that I never could define. It’s only now, seven years out from the college, that I realize what he meant. First, there’s the deflated anticipation that follows most Johnnies after attending their first Homecoming or croquet match as alumni. There are new kids sitting on your bench, living in your dorm room, occupying your spot on the basketball court or the FSK stage. The tutors will talk to you, of course, but even that’s not the same. Much as you love their appreciation of your life, their undying enthusiasm for whatever you’ve chosen to do (or your efforts to make a choice), what you really want to talk about with them is what you used to talk about: Great Books. Many Johnnies experience this, postgraduation. If you don’t live within proximity of an alumni group, or can’t make it back to your campus for alumni events, you’re stuck in that wistful malaise that Bernie was talking about: A good conversation is hard to find. Two years ago, two alumni, Harry Zolkower (A82) and Nicole Levy (SF92) decided to do something about this. In collaboration with Annapolis Alumni Director Leo Pickens (A78), they created a virtual format for homesick Johnnies to engage with tutors and with each other. An online seminar? According to Mr. Pickens, it was a hard sell to many tutors. It’s difficult to recreate the magic of seminar by dint of screenshots and earbuds. In addition, says Mr. Pickens, some members of the faculty feel that having different groups of alumni, led each time by different tutors, isn’t as pure as the undergraduate experience, the thematic unity achieved by one group that spends a year in discussion together. But perhaps alumni hunger for a good conversation merits a leap into the digital age. Many first-time participants came to the online seminar I attended with skepticism. “It doesn’t surprise me anymore,” says Mr. Pickens, chuckling. “But every online seminar I’ve participated in has that feeling of a genuine St. John’s seminar!” “If you can’t get out of the house and cross an easy distance to a room where people are gathered, this is the next best thing. There’s a hunger out there for this kind of conversation.” One tutor, Michael Dink (A75), who gave a seminar in March, reported to other faculty members that the reason it felt genuine to him was “because everybody in the seminar is seasoned in this form of conversation.” Admittedly, Mr. Pickens says, nothing can equal the synergy of 12 to 20 minds in a room—despite the technical hiccups: broken audio feeds, the tendency for participants to look at their own faces while talking. (Mr. Pickens chuckles again as he recounts these hiccups.) 54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 “That said,” he continues, “folks are getting together and having a St. John’sstyle conversation—a serious conversation about a difficult reading—in a way that feels genuine to what we try to do in our community. If you can’t get out of the house and cross an easy distance to a room where people are gathered, this is the next best thing. There’s a hunger out there for this kind of conversation.” The online seminars have attracted alumni as far apart as Karen Immler (AGI07), who lives in Slovenia, and Sunny Hills (SF78), who lives in Maui. In the online seminar I attended from Phoenix, Arizona, nine other participants from around the U.S. gathered together with Mr. Pickens and tutor Michael Dink. Mr. Dink chose the book of Jonah as the reading. It was, I thought, a perfect selection—short enough that it was easy to read at the last minute (which, it turns out, is even easier to do when you’re not a full-time student), but full of opportunities for contention, thoughtful silence, and questions following upon the one with which Mr. Dink opened: “Why is Jonah angry?” What followed was, in fact, a powerful rewind to freshman seminar, with all its exaggerated tropes. There were the stock participants: the over-talker, the chronically silent one, the one who consistently brings everyone back to the opening question. There were the outside references, the stalled silences, the odd autobiographical analogy, and the followup question that starts as a statement, devolves into a ramble, and ends with a confession that the asker has forgotten the question he intended to ask. Also true to freshman seminar fashion is the kindly tolerance with which the tutor views the seminar’s foibles. Mr. Dink seemed satisfied, even mildly surprised, by the discussion. The online format, he allowed, did lend itself to serial speechmaking. “I believe it’s important that people be able to interrupt one another in seminar.” But, he adds, he’s sanguine that online conversations have all the potential �in memoriam provided opening and closing remarks. Santa Fe tutors Janet Dougherty, Philip LeCuyer, Michael Ehrmantraut, and Gregory Schneider, along with alumnus Adam Visher (SF11), shared testimonials in honor of their colleague and friend. The following are some remembrances and excerpts from remarks at the service: “Laurence taught me many things as a teacher, but one thing stands out. He always tried to figure out what made a student care and what things a student cared about. Laurence could also make you laugh, a gift that I appreciate more and more every day. His skill with the quick remark and the friendly jab were to be envied. In some ways, he was one of the best conversationalists that I have ever met.” – Gregory Schneider, Santa Fe tutor Laurence Nee August 5, 2013 Tutor, Santa Fe In 2005, Laurence Nee (1970-2013) joined the faculty in Santa Fe, where he was treasured for his sense of humor, thoughtful insights, and gift for conversation. The community gathered for a memorial held on November 2, 2013, in the Junior Common Room. Santa Fe President Mike Peters “Through his efforts as a tutor, my appreciation for a much beloved novel awakened, and my understanding and appreciation continually grows. I will never re-read Pride and Prejudice without reflecting upon Mr. Nee’s love and respect for the work. I am eternally grateful.” – Lealia Nelson (SFGI11) “I had the great pleasure of having freshman summer seminar with Mr. Nee. His presence was felt strongly at every session and his sense of humor—especially his tolerance of what I tried to pass as humor—is something I shall never forget.” – Nareg Seferian (SF11) During the five years that he taught at the college and the years that followed, Nee made a remarkable impact on the community as a teacher, colleague, and friend. He is remembered for his extraordinary character and service to the college. “Personally, I have seen in him a kind of answer to a question I consider significant, that I first heard posed several decades ago: ‘Can a Christian be a great-souled man?’ says Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling. “Laurence’s character is, for me, evidence in favor of such a possibility. Be that as it may, what one heard from his colleagues at the memorial was that he possessed an extraordinary range of virtues of character, as well as of intellect, a combination as beautiful as it is rare. He made us a better college.” The College magazine is grateful to Laurence Nee for his article, “The Greatness of Shakespeare’s Plays,” in the summer 2012 issue. www.sjc.edu/news-and-media A Good Conversation (continued from p. 50) of those that take place in the classroom, if cultivated the same way: “I thought with practice, and experience, participants could get pretty good at it.” It’s still a young endeavor, and alumni are still being attracted to it. I imagine that as these seminars go on, they will be like the learning curve within a St. John’s class, in which students become stronger, more generous, and honest conversants with each other. I recognize now that the look on my friend’s father’s face was determination. I’ve found that life after St. John’s requires such resolve, if you’re not going to spend it in perpetual mourning for four irrecoverable years of community and culture, all intense and endearingly weird, threaded together by a love of deep conversation. In some ways, I’m loath to rejoin the online seminar. Like going back for Croquet or Homecoming, it was hard to revisit that environment without it being exactly the same as I remember. On the other hand, I’m not ready to resign conversation to the past. Like the books themselves, great conversation is a daunting endeavor, especially when displaced by culture and time; nevertheless, it’s worth pursuing. The next virtual seminar will be in September. For more information: leopickens@sjc.edu CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE Alumni online community: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Agora career mentoring network: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Click on “Career Services” Alumni offices: annapolis.alumni@sjc.edu santafe.alumni@sjc.edu Facebook: facebook.com/stjohnscollege The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 55 �in memorium John Dendahl (H87) November 9, 2013 Martha B. Jordan (SFGI86) October 24, 2013 Martha Black Jordan (1932-2013), alumna and member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, died at her son’s home in Coronado, Calif. She was 80. Jordan was born in Mexico City and educated in the United States. She first visited Santa Fe in the summer of 1980 and fell in love with the city. As a student at St. John’s, her favorite readings were the Russians, especially Dostoevsky. “I like Dostoevsky’s view of how the world could be changed, and not necessarily through revolution,” she recalled. Known for her generosity, quiet grace, and inquisitive mind, Jordan was also a gifted poet and translator. She was a founder of the Tramontane Poets of Mexico City, a collective dedicated to being a bridge between the poetry worlds of Mexico and North America. Jordan read her own work, as well as translations, on The Poet and the Poem, National Public Radio in Washington, D.C.; at the Society of the Americas and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City; in Mexico City at La Casa del Poeta and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; in San Miguel de Allende at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes; and at St. John’s in Santa Fe. Jordan committed herself to a long but fulfilling journey when she decided to pursue ordination in the Episcopal Church of Mexico. She enrolled in a graduate pastoral theology program at St. Mary of the Woods College in Indiana. In John Dendahl (1938-2013), former Board of Visitors and Governors chair, former Santa Fe treasurer, and one of the founders of the St. John’s College, Santa Fe campus, passed away in Colorado. He was 75. Born in Santa Fe, Dendahl attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he earned degrees in electrical engineering and business administration. During that time, he won two NCAA titles with the university’s ski team and was a member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic ski team. He was inducted into the University of Colorado Athletic Hall of Fame and the New Mexico Ski Hall of Fame. In the 1960s, Dendahl worked as an engineer for the Eberline Instrument Corporation (now a subsidiary of the Thermo Electron Corporation) and later became CEO. Later that decade, during an extended absence from the company, he served as chief financial officer for the new St. John’s College, Santa Fe campus. From 1985 to 1987, Dendahl served as chair of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Transitioning to a career in politics, Dendahl was appointed to the State Investment Council and later served as secretary of New Mexico’s Economic Development and Tourism Department. In 1994, he ran unsuccessfully for governor. However, that same year he was elected as state Republican Party chairman, a position he held until 2003. Several years later, Dendahl and his wife moved to Colorado, where he continued his interest in politics and wrote columns and letters to the editor of The New Mexican. He is survived by his wife, Jackie, and his five daughters: Debra Hadley, Ellie Thurston, Katherine, Karen, and Lisa West. 2006 she was ordained a priest at Christ Church in Mexico City, the church where she was baptized and married. That same year, Jordan and her husband established the Jordan Tutorship on the Santa Fe campus, which has been used to support the director of the Graduate Institute. She is survived by her husband of more than 50 years, Purdy; three children, Stephanie, Colebrooke, and Robert; and four grandchildren, Cecelia, Daniel, Nicholas, and David. 56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Jules O. Pagano Class of 1948 July 14, 2013 Jules Pagano (1925-2013), who helped launch President John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps program, passed away at his home in Jamesville, N.Y., surrounded by family members. He was two days shy of his 88th birthday. Pagano helped to formulate Peace Corps policies in training and education of volunteers for overseas assignments, and established the first Peace Corps Training Centers. After the passage of the Higher Education Act in 1965, he was named the first director of the Adult Education Division at the U.S. Office of Education, and began a long career in higher education. Pagano served as dean and associate vice president of Florida International University, during which time he earned his MPA and DPA from Nova University. In 1979, he was recruited by Bard College to serve as vice president and provost of Simon’s Rock. He later served as president of the Saybrook Institute, a graduate school and research center. Pagano and his elder brother, Lee, attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, where Pagano’s lifelong love affair with education was cemented. He authored dozens of articles on higher education, as well as vocational and adult education. Pagano served as director of the St. John’s College Alumni Board from 1984-1988. He is survived by his wife, Kathy; brother Mo; son Ed; daughters Debbie and Penny; grandchildren Joy, Erin, Elise, Tiffany, and Jack; great-granddaughters Rylee, Ellie, and Arianna; and stepchildren Angela, Jimmy, and Karen. Robert Stewart (A09) December 5, 2013 Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., Robert Stewart (1977-2013) found his home at St. John’s, where he explored his many interests and met others who shared and appreciated those interests. “His dream job was to be a tutor at St. John’s,” says his mother, Brenda Stewart. The community gathered for a memorial held on March 15, 2014, in the Great Hall. “The room was full of laughter and joy, as we all remembered the sting of his wit, the depths of his wisdom, and the warm, all encompassing feeling �in memorium Also Deceased: Ernest Dominguez, SF95 August 24, 2013 Harry O’Neill, SFGI79 December 10, 2013 Joseph Ablow, Class of 1950 November 14, 2012 Paul Ehrlich, Class of 1942 October 26, 2013 LeRoy Pagano, Class of 1948 February 6, 2013 Rachel Abrams, A72 June 7, 2013 Arthur Fort IV, SF91 December 20, 2012 Milton Perlman, Class of 1943 February 18, 2014 George Ackerman, A74 January 3, 2014 Douglas Fraser, AGI90 February 15, 2014 Emanuel Pushkin, Class of 1940 October 24, 2013 Lewis Alexander, Class of 1941 May 9, 2013 Charles Gentile, Class of 1950 July 24, 2013 Richard Rickard, SFGI72 October 24, 2013 Rodney Arthur, AGI88 November 7, 2013 Josef Gilboa, Class of 1962 December 4, 2013 Caroline Saddy, SF81 March 31, 2013 Lydia Aston, Class of 1955 December 26, 2013 Raymond Haas, Class of 1958 September 1, 2012 Roberto Salinas-Price, Class of 1959 August 13, 2012 Roland Bailey, Class of 1935 April 22, 2014 Darrell Henry, Class of 1961 August 16, 2013 Louis Shuman, Class of 1938 August 3, 2013 Eugene Blank, Class of 1945 July 15, 2013 Joseph D. Hines, SFGI70 December 27, 2013 John E. Siemens, Class of 1956 November 5, 2013 February 19, 2014 Rosalie Levine Boosin, Class of 1960 November 1, 2013 Constance “Connie” Weigle Mann, (1947-2014), daughter of Richard D. Weigle—president of St. John’s College in Annapolis for 31 years, and founder and president of the Santa Fe campus—died at age 67 in Winston-Salem, N.C. A graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, she had an affinity for the “Land of Enchantment” and cherished her time and the many friends she made there. After graduating, she attended Yale Divinity School, where she met her husband, Tom. She also held a master’s degree from Rutgers University and worked as a sales representative for an organizational management company. Known for her kindness, generosity, and loving spirit, Connie had a special concern for hunger, and served as a volunteer at the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, where she was a Volunteer of the Year in 2013. She is survived by her husband of 45 years, Tom; her daughter, Mary Liz; her sister, Marta; and countless other family members and friends. Henry DeMuth Jawish, Class of 1952 October 21, 2013 Warren Skidmore, Class of 1947 December 21, 2013 William S. Bradfield, SFGI79 January 16, 1998 George W. John, Class of 1949 March 27, 2014 Robert Snower, Class of 1944 July 2, 2013 Wayne Brandow, Class of 1966 September 14, 2013 Beverly Kincaid, SFGI72 February 11, 2014 John M. Sommer, SFGI90 May 18, 2013 Gerald Buchen, SF72 July 31, 2013 Thomas D. Lyne, Class of 1946 May 20, 2008 Edward Paul Thomson, A80 October 10, 2013 Catherine Ann Caffrey, A69 February 12, 2014 Patrick Ramsey Magee, SF16 July 12, 2013 Judith S. White, Class of 1964 May 23, 2013 Richard B. Carter, Class of 1954 October 19, 2013 Stephen Mainella, Class of 1954 March 4, 2014 Cary Wilcomb, SF79 March 17, 1987 Lindsay Clendaniel, Class of 1944 March 10, 2014 Richard T. Mallon, Class of 1943 June 9, 2013 Peter Clogher, Class of 1947 June 28, 2013 John Mark Mason, A75 April 10, 2014 Norma Eleanor Williams, Class of 1967 March 19, 2014 Cornelia Corson-Reese, Class of 1957 August 9, 2013 Richard Matteson, Class of 1948 February 13, 2014 Paul G. Cree, Jr., Class of 1952 April 8, 2014 Wilbur Matz, Class of 1940 March 29, 2014 Cyril K. Crume, SF81 September 28, 2013 David McMorran, SF75 February 24, 2014 Ellen Nancy Davis, Class of 1960 July 15, 2013 Grace McNeley, SFGI75 July 25, 2013 Anna Dietz, AGI80 February 20, 2013 Harry Neumann, Class of 1952 March 31, 2014 of his friendship,” says Elizabeth Burlington (A08). To read remembrances about Robert Stewart, visit www.sjc.edu/ news-and-media Constance Weigle Mann (SF68) Everett Wilson, Class of 1956 October 22, 2013 Bernard E. Wolsky, AGI91 November 8, 2013 Kevin C. Young, A78 June 5, 2013 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 57 �philanthropy The Philanthropy of Memory by Sus3an Borden (A87) James McClintock was a member of the Class of 1965 who excelled in mathematics. William O’Grady was a tutor with a strong commitment to helping students in times of need. Kitty Kinzer was a library director on the Annapolis campus who cared for the college community as much as she cared about its collection of books. Tom McDonald was a tutor who enthralled students with his enigmatic but brilliant analyses of poetry. All four were beloved while they lived and all share something in common after their deaths: Each was honored by a memorial endowment fund established by loved ones, contributed to by friends and family, and appropriate to preserve the memory of the way they lived. Endowment funds are perpetual; they serve as a solid foundation for the college, which spends about five percent annually on the purposes set out by those who establish each fund. The principal remains intact and can grow through market performance or additional gifts to the fund. For McClintock, who had won both the geometry and the analytical mathematics prizes as a student, the James R. McClintock (1965) Memorial Prize Fund was established to permanently endow the prize for analytical mathematics. For Kinzer, the Kitty Kinzer Library Fund was established to support all aspects of the library’s mission. For O’Grady, the William O’Grady Fund was established to continue his work helping students stay in school when financial concerns put their continued attendance in jeopardy. And for Tom McDonald, a scholarship endowment established in his name means need-based aid for students who could not otherwise afford tuition. These are just four of more than 400 funds that make up the college’s endowment, and they are among the roughly 10 percent that are memorial funds. These funds serve both as tributes to the people they memorialize and a way for their survivors to channel their grief and ensure that a silver lining accompanies what is usually a very dark cloud. Dinesh and Jyotsna Pai chose to create such a fund when their daughter Anjali (SFGI08) died in a traffic accident “Anjali believed in paying it forward. She felt that knowledge was to be shared, love was to be shared, affection was to be shared.” in March 2008, just a few months after she finished her studies at the Graduate Institute. Anjali was teaching in the AVID program with the Santa Fe Public Schools and preparing to move to Japan to teach English. Her parents decided that the fund should be used to support financial aid for Graduate Institute students who plan to become teachers. Her mother explains the decision: “It’s not a profession that will make anybody rich, it’s a profession of the heart. And Anjali was all about heart.” Lisa Boughter Saporta also chose to create an endowment fund to honor her husband, Larry Saporta (A91), a professor of art history at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania. A few months after Larry’s death in September 2011, Bryan Dorland (A92) contacted her to suggest that they create an endowment fund in Larry’s memory. “I responded without hesitation that it was a great idea,” she recalls. “It was a concrete way to keep Larry’s spirit alive at an institution he cared deeply about. I knew it was 58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 one of the things we could do for Larry that would be truly meaningful for him.” It turned out to be truly meaningful for Lisa as well, playing what she describes as a tremendous role in processing her grief. She decided that the fund would support scholarships for students who, like Larry, intend to pursue a PhD after graduating from St. John’s. After establishing the fund, Lisa created a website for it (www. lawrencelsaportaphd.org/memorial_ scholarship.php). The Pais have also found that establishing the fund has helped them in their sorrow. “Grieving is one thing, but keeping Anjali’s memory alive is even more important,” says Dinesh. Thanks to the permanence of endowment funds, every year, in perpetuity, one student in Annapolis will be named the Lawrence Saporta Scholar, and one student in Santa Fe will be named the Anjali Pai Scholar. Lisa hopes that future Saporta scholars will share Larry’s enthusiasm for St. John’s College and his love of learning: The Pais hope that Anjali’s values will be transmitted along with the scholarship that bears her name: “Anjali believed in paying it forward. She felt that knowledge was to be shared, love was to be shared, affection was to be shared.” �Lecture Fund in Memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen (AGI00) Erik S. Kristensen (AGI00) June 28, 2005 An alumnus of the St. John’s College Graduate Institute in Liberal Education and the United States Naval Academy, Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen died on June 28, 2005, while he led a daring mission in Afghanistan to rescue a four-man SEAL reconnaissance squad engaged in a firefight with Taliban forces. LCDR Kristensen, seven other SEALs, and eight Army aviators were killed when their helicopter was shot down. Four soldiers fought courageously, though only one survived. The 2007 book and 2013 film Lone Survivor tell the story. In 2013, Michael A. Zampella (A92), a Navy Reserve Lieutenant, founded a lecture series, jointly sponsored by St. John’s College and the U.S. Naval Academy, to be held annually at St. John’s in Annapolis to honor LCDR Class of 1963 Honors Curtis A. Wilson with Endowment Fund traditional for the 50th anniversary of a class to make some contribution to the college to mark our passage there,” note Class of 1963 alumni Robert Thomas and Miriam Duhan in a letter to their classmates. “One that everyone felt we could rally around would be some memorial or tribute to [Curtis], whom almost all of us knew and respected.” Curtis A. Wilson August 24, 2012 Tutor and dean, Annapolis Inspired by his many contributions to St. John’s, and to scholarship in the history of science, members of the Class of 1963 established a fund to honor the memory of Curtis Alan Wilson. Wilson was a world-renowned historian of astronomy who twice served as dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis. “It has been The endowment will provide funding for the prize awarded at Kristensen’s memory. Known for his great love of the arts and literature, Kristensen spoke French and was selected as an Olmsted Foundation Scholar. He planned to attend the Institute of Political Studies in Paris after his tour in Afghanistan. Kristensen is survived by his father, Edward K. Kristensen, RADM, USN (Ret.), and his mother, Suzanne Carrico Samsel Kristensen, of Washington, D.C. To make a gift to the Kristensen Lecture Fund, send a check to the college, or use the online giving form for the Annapolis campus at www.sjc.edu. (Select “other” and designate the Kristensen Lecture Fund.) Commencement to the student who carries out a fine laboratory project. Members of the Class of 1963 thought offering the prize would recognize Wilson’s devotion to the college and his example of scholarship in the sciences. To read more about Curtis Wilson, visit www.sjc.edu/news/ memoriam-wilson.shtml. To make a gift to the Curtis Wilson Scholarship Fund, send a check to the college, or use the online giving form for the Annapolis campus at www.sjc.edu. (Select “other” and designate the Curtis Wilson Endowment Fund.) About the St. John’s College Endowments The college has three separate endowments that are composed of more than 400 individual funds: one that benefits the Annapolis campus, one that benefits the Santa Fe campus, and a common endowment that benefits both. The total value of the funds as of June 30, 2013, was about $145 million. Managed by the Board’s Investment Committee, the endowment is invested in diversified products, from equities to bonds to real estate; some alternative and hedge fund investments are also included in the mix. For more information on the funds, please contact Barbara Goyette (A73) at barbara.goyette@sjc.edu in Annapolis and Victoria Mora at victoria.mora@sjc.edu in Santa Fe. Milestone Senior Gifts The 2014 senior classes in Annapolis and Santa Fe are each leaving behind recordhigh class gifts, thanks to their strong philanthropic spirit and support from college staff and alumni. The Class of 1984 offered a $2,014 tribute gift when senior classes from both campuses as a whole reached 84% participation. Board of Visitors and Governors member Claiborne Booker (A84) says, “When students both in Annapolis and Santa Fe said they wanted to raise money for student scholarships, [several of us from the Class of 1984] had a thought: What if we could do a little something in tribute to them, some of whom are, in fact, our progeny? At the very least, we share that final digit ‘4’ with them, which means we’ll see them at Homecomings to come.” Annapolis seniors raised $13,792, which will be used to create the Class of 2014 Scholarship Endowment Fund. Santa Fe seniors raised more than $7,100 for financial aid and scholarships. Although 100% participation has been reached before in Santa Fe (Class of 2002), this was the first time that 100% participation was reached without a single caution deposit gift or pledge. Staff on both campuses also offered generous matching gifts. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 59 �alumni news s av e t h e d a t e Homecoming 2014 Annapolis September 12-14 Santa Fe September 19-21 Alumni Mentors Change Lives Annapolis Career Services Director Jaime Dunn with Hodson interns. Homecoming 2014 is gearing up to be a fantastic weekend for alumni. In addition to the annual Homecoming festivities— seminars, banquets, dancing, student/alumni networking events, and more—both campuses are commemorating special occasions this year that will make your return to St. John’s even more fun and memorable. Be a part of celebrating 200 years of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in Annapolis and 50 years of great books in Santa Fe! Please join us and your classmates as we celebrate and support St. John’s College. Online registration will open in early June. A special rate is offered to recent alumni. Reserve your lodging accommodations early. Sarah Palacios and Leo Pickens, directors of Alumni Relations For more information: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “Homecoming” Annapolis Alumni Office 410-626-2531 Annapolis.Alumni@sjc.edu Santa Fe Alumni Office 505-984-6103 SantaFe.Alumni@sjc.edu 60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 Many alumni who provide internships for St. John’s students find the experience so rewarding that it becomes a lifelong mentorship opportunity. The Hodson Internship Program in Annapolis and the Ariel Internship Program in Santa Fe provide alumni with such opportunities. Each program offers stipends ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 and encourages students to gain practical experience while exploring potential career fields. Alumni-sponsored Ariel opportunities include working with Adam Braus (SF08) at his new computer entrepreneurial venture, 100State, in Madison, Wisconsin and establishing a self-sustaining community garden at Fresno State University with Christina Raines (A12). Thirty-seven Hodson Internship Program grants were awarded for summer 2014, the most in the Hodson program’s 14-year history; students accepted 31 of the awards. Hodson sites include the National Prison Project with the ACLU in Washington, D.C.; the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in Philadelphia; the Hainan Provincial Cultural Heritage Research Association in China; and Center Stage in Baltimore. This summer, four Hodson interns will work with two alumnae: Dr. Rachel Dudik (A02) at the U.S. Naval Observatory and Elisabeth McClure (A08) at Georgetown University’s Department of Psychology in its Culture and Emotions lab. Dudik, who has hosted four Hodson interns over the last few years, and McClure, who has hosted three, still keep in touch with past interns. McClure meets every few weeks with Robert Malka (A15) via Skype to analyze data for the survey study he designed while in her lab; they are hoping to present the data as a conference poster sometime in the next year. McClure says that another former Hodson intern, Liyu Jiang (A12), stayed in her lab for nearly a full year as a volunteer before returning to China. “She remains the standard by which we judge research assistants,” says McClure. “We often say, ‘For this task, we would need a Liyu!’” TEXAS SUPPORTS SUMMER ACADEMY The Austin/San Antonio alumni chapter, in an initiative led by Kelly Bradford (SF79), Larry Davis (SFGI87), and Paul Martin (SF80), raised scholarship funds for six high school students from the East Central Independent School District to attend this year’s Summer Academy at St. John’s. The chapter also plans to present a complete 54-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World to one or more underclassmen from the Austin/San Antonio area. Does your alumni chapter have a story to share? Please send your stories to: thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu �alumni news Alumni Association Board President Phelosha Collaros (SF00) Truth by the Glass “Alumni are passionate about making sure current students have advantages they didn’t have in the past by providing networking and mentorship opportunities. Alumni volunteers also benefit by building their leadership and coaching skills, the ability to recruit for their organization or industry, and the satisfaction of helping someone achieve their goals.” Piraeus 2014 Piraeus is offered several times each year on each campus. In Santa Fe on August 3-8, Santa Fe tutors Jim Carey (Class of 1967) and Marsaura Shukla (A93) will lead five seminars on selected Greek and Roman Lives by Plutarch. Tuition: $575 for seminars; $250 for on-campus housing and meals. Recent alumni (graduates of the classes of 2003 and later) receive a 50% discount on tuition. Register online: https:// community.stjohnscollege.edu/ piraeus2014-august CROQUET GOES GREEN Kudos to the Annapolis Alumni Office, the student Environmental Club, and Ted Canto, general manager of Bon Appétit Dining Services in Annapolis! They took the initiative to make the annual Croquet match an example of sustainability. “Our event sponsor, Waste Neutral, set up several recycle stations around the front campus,” says Canto. “By the end of the day, we recycled 4,000 pounds, about two tons, of products.” During Homecoming 2013 in Annapolis, Ruth A. Johnston (A85), Michael Berger (A78), and Jan Lisa Huttner (A73) signed copies of their recent publications. Berger’s Writing Well in School and Beyond and Thoreau’s Late Career and the Dispersion of Seeds; Huttner’s Penny’s Picks: 50 Movies by Women Filmmakers 2002-2011; and Johnston’s A Companion to Beowulf and Excavating English, are available at the Bookstore. GARY PIERPOINT HOMECOMING BOOK SIGNING “Red wine is in the realm of Apollo, white wine is in the realm of Dionysus,” says August Deimel (SF04) of Keuka Spring Vineyard, New York, one of several alumni winemakers at the second annual Judgment of Annapolis at In Vino Veritas on April 25. Representing wineries from California to New York, the event also featured former tutor Abe Schoener (A82) of The Scholium Project; Dan Speck (A96) and Paul Speck (A89) of Henry of Pelham; Christina Turley, daughter of Helen Turley, Class of 1967, and John Wetlaufer, Class of 1967, of Turley Wine Cellars; Rory Williams (A07) of Calder Wine Company; and Zach Rasmuson (A95) of Goldeneye. The group joined a discussion on “Transparency, Truth, and Terroir” and explored the virtue of various grapes, soils, and vines, as participants tasted their wines. “A good wine translates time and space,” says David White, founder and editor of the website, Terroirist.com; he moderated the discussion. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 61 �johnnie traditions History-Making Match by Gregory Shook For all its beloved nostalgia, the annual St. John’sU.S. Naval Academy Croquet Match on April 12 broke a few barriers this year: Navy walked off with the Annapolis Cup for the second year in a row. Spectators donned hats as large and colorful as parade floats. Leader of Togas “As I thought about competition and what it means at St. John’s, I became more concerned with making sure that everyone just has a good time,” says Imperial Wicket Sam Collins (A15) a junior from Fallsington, Pennsylvania. He admits that “it was “intense to play such a close match again this year.” Collins and Hector Mendoza (SF14) wowed the crowd with a comeback shot that won the only match in the Johnnies favor. Secret Weapon from Santa Fe Certain Johnnie traditions still reigned: alumni reunited with friends and faculty, alumni from the Class of 1984 and Class of 2009 hosted friends in courtside tents, the Freshmen Chorus sang a spirited rendition of “St. John’s Forever,” and the crowd of more than 4,000 spectators in festive attire—top hats, seersucker, feathers, and pearls— gathered for champagne picnics and swing dancing. Imperial Wicket and St. John’s junior Samuel Collins (A15) led the charge against Navy after the Johnnies revealed their uniforms: Greek togas. Bursting through the doors of Barr Buchanan, with mallets hoisted in the air, the Johnnies greeted the cheering crowd. “I wanted something that would make a statement,” says Collins. “The togas are a return to our roots.” For nearly eight hours, the Johnnies and Midshipmen jousted for the Annapolis Cup, the longest match since the rivalry first began. As the sun set, the Johnnies lost 4-1, though conviviality won the day. Photos by Anyi Guo (A14) 62 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 “Let’s make history!” says Hector Mendoza (SF14), a senior from Tucson, Arizona, who flew more than 1,600 miles to play with the St. John’s croquet team. He played an amazing game (he calls it “risky”) and helped win the first match of the day. “During my junior year in Annapolis, I joined the team, along with this year’s Imperial Wicket Sam Collins (A15), and fell in love with the sport. I flew in the night before, so I could help prepare the lawn on the morning of the match. Croquet is the best event at St. John’s.” �Know Thy Neighbor Navy Team Captain Midshipmen 1st Class Ryan Lluy and Imperial Wicket Sam Collins (A15) are comrades. “We played a match or two against each other last year, so we’re friendly,” says Collins. “He is a great competitor and a good guy.” Freshmen Have Spirit, Too! A newcomer to the team, Stephanie Hurn (A17) (left) from Darien, Connecticut, made the spirit-spot video for this year’s croquet match. “It was a really great collaboration and a lot of fun to make,” says Hurn. “We were a bit nervous because we were doing it a week before croquet, but we pulled it together.” Visit: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QlcVVQKiBc8 Design Champion Daniela Lobo Dias (A13) was this year’s winner of the annual 2014 Croquet postcard/t-shirt design contest. “I wanted to include the platypus, the unofficial mascot at the Annapolis campus, as its uniqueness and combination of many species suits St. John’s students quite well,” says Lobo Dias, who plans to attend the New York Film Academy this fall. Lt. Bobby Schmidt, 28th Company officer, happily accepts a t-shirt gift. Navy’s Secret Weapon Surprise! Navy alumnus, Dr. Ed O’Loughlin from Hunt Valley, Maryland, has recently begun mentoring both the Navy and the St. John’s croquet teams. “St. John’s students are a phenomenal group of men and women who really get the idea of the sport—the style, tactics, and play,” says O’Laughlin, who invites the Johnnies several times a year to play at his home croquet court. “It’s been a wonderful thing to be involved with them.” Feminine Touch “Croquet is such a unique aspect of the St. John’s life,” says Catherine Moon (A14) a senior from Wolcott, Connecticut and one of three women on the team of twelve. “We just had a wonderful team dynamic this year. We’re all close friends and like doing things together outside of croquet.” Mallet Man Gary Dunkelberger, laboratory technician in Annapolis and this year’s Prime Mover (who has the honor of opening the game with the first shot), handcrafts the St. John’s team’s mallets. “I built nine mallets last year and eight this year,” says Dunkelberger. “I give the students their choice of woods, weights, and sizes, although all of the handles are made of one wood (ash) and of a standard pattern. A couple of players provided wood from home, of familial/sentimental nature. Those who purchase them treat them as souvenirs of their St. John’s experience, as much as sporting implements.” The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 | 63 �st. john’s forever Simian Souls What are Annapolis tutors Peter Kalkavage, Eva Brann (H89), and Eric Salem (A77) telling us? “The occasion was the publication of our very first Plato translation, the Sophist, in 1996 by Focus [Philosophical Library],” says Kalkavage. “We were supposed to do a ‘straight’ photo op by the [original] Liberty Tree, but decided to ham it up instead. There are three pictures, with each of us taking turns being one of the monkeys. Several years ago, I had them framed for us.” 64 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2014 The trio of tutors collaborated on translations of two of Plato’s other masterpieces, each of which was published by Focus Philosophical Library. In 2003, Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem translated Phaedo, the great dialogue of Socrates talking about death, dying, and the soul due to his impending execution. In 2012, they translated Plato’s Statesman, including an introduction, glossary of key terms, and essay. �eidos “I never had a plan to be a photographer. I am just an amateur. My punk friend in middle school was into filming skateboarding and encouraged me to get a film camera because they were better cameras for less money. I liked the feel of film and stuck with it. I learned from the books of Ansel Adams. I have photography to thank for nourishing my love of science and laboratories. I developed a deep connection with the darkroom at the college and actually cried pretty hard when I left it. I think its presence in my life is evident in my work—the strange loneliness I felt while reading those difficult books, and the real struggle to seek after things beautiful . . . . I am a photographer rather than a painter or a sculptor because I love light and chemistry....Photographers are, at least in some way, operators of machinery. I think photographers push the boundaries of tools just like other artists. For a photographer like me, luck is a big part of the task: you cannot plan to stumble upon something odd or intriguing. Since reading War and Peace and some of the senior laboratory readings, I have come to appreciate things that are beyond my own control.” PHOTOS: From Etude for Freedom by Adam Maraschky (A13). He developed them in the college darkroom, then self-published the digital scans as a book. To raise funds, Maraschky “jumped on the Kickstarter bandwagon” and is “grateful to all those who donated to or encouraged the project and hope they find joy in the images.” In the Annapolis Admissions office, there is a copy of the book inscribed by Maraschky: “To the prospective students of St. John’s, may this book excite your imaginations about the College.” www.maraschkyphoto.com/ st-johns-college.html �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, md Permit N0. 120 Communications Office 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 ANYI GUO (A14) ad d r ess se rv i c e r e qu est e d � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <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. 64 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Summer 2014 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Summer_2014 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 39, Issue 1 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Summer 2014. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/58259f4dda4961cb5f8ee34caf39df62.pdf 1a886afd997cb600012e9b1ee7738f96 PDF Text Text College The summer 2013 • S t. J o h n ’ s C o l l e g e • Annapolis • S a n ta F e Copernicus Imagination & Discovery �from the editor The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@sjca.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Editor Patricia Dempsey patricia.dempsey@sjca.edu Contributing Editor Gabe Gomez Associate Editor Gregory Shook Art Director Jennifer Behrens Contributors Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Chelsea Batten (A07) J.H. Beall Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02) Jennifer Levin Robert Malka (A15) Paula Novash Greg Recco Henry Robert, Class of 1941 Design Consultant Claude Skelton The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis: 410-626-2539 Santa Fe: 505-984-6104 ii | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 On Copernicus “�... I began to be annoyed that the philosophers, who in other respects had made very careful scrutiny of the least details of the world, had discovered no sure scheme for the movements of the machinery of the world, which has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all.” Copernicus’s Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul iii Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was born in Royal Prussia, a region of Poland. He studied at universities in Poland and Italy and was, among his many pursuits, a mathematician, astronomer, classicist, linguist, and economist. He proposed a groundbreaking idea, in which he upended Ptolemy’s observations with a heliocentric model that placed the sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the universe. Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), was published in Germany during the last year of his life; it was met with controversy and debate, a resistance not so unfamiliar to those who propose revolutionary ideas, even in modern times. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory marked a fundamental shift in assumptions. Although his model was not proven until later, it “supplanted forever the former way of understanding our place in the universe,” notes Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus. As Santa Fe Dean J. Walter Sterling (A93) tells us, “The Copernican revolution became both (partial) cause and icon for Modernity and for the intellectual and spiritual revolutions that propel it,...” In this issue, faculty consider Copernicus and Ptolemy and how, at St. John’s, the sequence of study requires of students “a combination of reasoning and imagination employed in a different way than they are used to....” notes Dean Kraus. Do such leaps of scientific insight rely on the imagination? Annapolis tutor Jim Beall considers Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’s work in his essay, “Imagination and Creativity,” noting that “for all its vividness and limitations, imagination seems to go hand in hand with creativity.” The alumni profiled in the feature “Seeing Stars” would agree. They seek a “delicate balance,” as U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer Rachel Dudik (A02) says, with analysis and observation, instrumentation and imagination. Not surprisingly, the technology at their fingertips is sophisticated. Yet aspects of their work exploring the cosmos have not changed since Copernicus’s time: the deep curiosity to know more, the challenge of unanswered questions. Can a black hole hurl across galaxies? Erin Bonning (A97) contributed research to the discovery of such a gargantuan “runaway.” At NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Kevin Parker (A79) creates futuristic simulations that allow communications with satellites. Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) flies most evenings on the “Clipper Lindbergh,” the largest airborne observatory in the world. For Donna Contractor (SF82), celestial observations are woven into tapestries. Copernicus had not only tremendous powers of observation and the imagination and intellect to articulate his ideas, but also the courage to be committed to them. This commitment, along with “resiliency and a strong set of analytical skills,” says Harold Hughes (A84), senior managing director at Alliance Bernstein and St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors member, is among the qualities lauded in this issue by visionary entrepreneurs. In his essay, “Shadow of War,” Henry Robert (Class of 1941) recalls a different kind of commitment: a fight for democracy and freedom. He describes how the conflict in Europe was brought to campus. At the other end of the generational spectrum, Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02) invites recent graduates to candidly share—as she does in this issue—their journeys: life after St. John’s. Thank you to all those who have contributed their time, talent, and insights to this issue. Thank you, dear readers, for your letters and stories! We heard from many of you, young and old, who applaud The College’s new design (it debuted with the Shakespeare issue) and stories that celebrate St. John’s through the voices of alumni, students, and faculty. Please let us know how we are doing. I look forward to hearing from you. —PD The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 1 �su m me r 2 013 volume 38, issue 1 feat u res page 16�� james kegley Greenfield Library archives NASA, esa Donna Contractor, Tunnel Vision (detail) From the thought experiments of Huygens or Einstein to Copernicus’s model of nested circles with the sun at the center, the very nature of thinking through a scientific challenge involves the imagination. —Greg Schneider, tutor departments p a ge 2 4�� page 3 4�� Imagination and Creativity Seeing Stars Shadow of War Faculty members consider Copernicus and a revolution that required “bold, imaginative insight.” Images from the Hubble Space Telescope illuminate the universe. Five alumni explore the cosmos, whether observing the birth of a star, detecting phenomena in deep space, coding satellites, even weaving wool thread to illustrate a theorem. Symbols on a brick wall during the 1940s spoke louder than words. The traces of a prank remain visible today. ��From Our Readers Bibliophile 42 �Alumni Notes 4 38 �Gary Borjesson, tutor, dissects the art 46 �Profile: Mimi Nguyen (A09) riffs C � opernicus Stories �Letters From the Bell Towers 6 E � ntrepreneurs: The Value of Ideas Harold Hughes (A84) Dominic Crapuchettes (A97) Jac Holzman (Class of 1952) 7 Visionaries: Robert Malka (A15) 8 � Judgment of Annapolis 9 �Polity Radio: Jessica Kjellberg (A14) 10 �� onversations with the Chair C 11 Starry Nights 12 �Ariel Intern: Bilsana Bibic (SF13) � 13 � Ancients Google Earth 14 � Investing in Banking: Gordon Seltz (A14) H � odson House Welcomes Alumni on the cover: Copernicus illustration by Gary Kelley 2 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 al u mni 15 �Mike McQuarrie: New Athletic Director � Sarah Palacios: New Alumni Director of friendship and the role of authority in Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters. 39 �Thomas Simpson (Class of 1950), tutor emeritus, illuminates connections among three thinkers in Newton Maxwell Marx. on identity and high fashion in the blogosphere. 50 �Profile: David Drury (SFGI09) deciphers Tocqueville in a mobile classroom. 51 �In Memoriam 40 ��Ellen Dornan’s (SF93) Forgotten Tales of New Mexico celebrates the rich heritage of the Land of Enchantment. �Tutors Eva Brann (HA89), Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem’s (A77) Statesman, the latest installment in their series of Plato translations. � Richard McCombs on the irrationalism of Søren Kierkegaard. 54 �Philanthropy: Hallie Leighton (SF92) and Michael Chiantella (A97) 55 Transitions: Charlotte Latham (SF02) 56 �Almuni News: Homecoming 2013 Johnnie Traditions 58 �Croquet: Johnnies Lost in Wonderland 60 � t. John’s Forever S Eidos 61 Ebby Malmgren (AGI88) above: Rachel Dudik (A02) at the U.S. Naval Observatory. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 3 �from our readers Magical Moment Explaining St. John’s is tricky, whether to the world outside (“great basketball team?”), to our inner circle (“great books?”), even—perhaps especially—to ourselves (“what do we mean by great?”). For me, it is Copernicus , or rather, the way we read him, that embodies the Program’s essence. us, that Earth is not the center of the universe. That the Earth is just another planet and that all of us are moving around the sun. And though it was but a few years before the start of the third millennium, with space shuttles in orbit and a flag planted on the moon, the suggestions came to us as nothing short of a shock. “�We shake our heads in disbelief that Copernicus’ book was for centuries banned by the Vatican, or that Galileo was brought to trial for upholding similar ideas. (“E pure muove, he muttered as ” he trudged defeated out of court).” Jennifer A. Donnelly (A96) The sophomore reading list is celestial, from Genesis to the Almagest. In Santa Fe, where I spent that year, the expansive sky seemed to bring the heavens even closer. As the summer became fall, our mathematics tutorial resumed the work on Ptolemy begun in freshman year. Under the goodhumored guidance of our tutor Mr. Pesic (who, rumor had it, had discovered an element), we picked painstakingly through the classic model—Earth standing stock still, sun, moon, and stars spinning around it. Chalk dust drifted from the blackboard and ink-stained fingertips as all through winter we drew circle after circle backing this up. The premise was contrary to the received wisdom of our day, the geometrical manipulations were long and complex—but they worked. Then spring rolled around, bringing warm sun and De Revolutionibus. The title, already, was suspect; and the contents between the cover were revolutionary indeed: consider, Copernicus asked In our day, the solar system is a truth taught to schoolchildren. We shake our heads in disbelief that Copernicus’ book was for centuries banned by the Vatican, or that Galileo was brought to trial for upholding similar ideas. (“E pure muove,” he muttered as he trudged defeated out of court). But after the journey through Ptolemy’s equants and epicycles, the St. John’s scholar comes to feel how a now commonly accepted fact was once earth-shattering. Soon enough, the effect wears off and Copernican ideas become acceptable—as they did, eventually, to the Vatican. But this return to our familiar notions never completely eclipses that magical, fleeting moment when we saw our world in a way contrary to the ways we always believed it to be. T.S. Eliot has written: “the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time.” What better way to sum up St. John’s? —Jennifer A. Donnelly (A96) 4 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 copernicus haiku not at some center. more over here. with us guys. now. how bad is that? Charles Jones (A79) Double Dactyl This is the first double dactyl I ever wrote. Inspired may be too strong a word, but after all that study of Ptolemy I was impressed by the superior economy of the Copernican hypothesis. Tollemie, shmollemie. Heliocentricists, Sun down to sun up they Reckon aright, Save the appearances With an hypothesis Counterintuitiive, Earth in its flight. —Robert Main (A71) Courage of Copernicus I remember being fascinated in sophomore math class by the nerve (read “courage”) of Copernicus. I also remember reading his description of motion, during which he cites a passage from the Aeneid that we had only just read for seminar. Coincidence? I think not. But a couple of years earlier, I had had the pleasure of visiting the home town of the man himself—Torun, in the north of Poland. They have his house, and a monument to him at a central square that bears the inscription, “Nicolaus Copernicus Thorunensis, terrae motor, solis caelique stator,” meaning, “Nicolaus Copernicus of Toruń, mover of the Earth, stopper of the Sun and heavens,” or so Wikipedia tells me today. I myself remember reading back then, “Nicholas Copernicus: he stopped the sun with one hand, and moved the Earth with the other.” Don’t ask me whether or not I made that up. All I know is that Copernicus got to hold the universe on his fingertips in a way that our smartphone-abundant age cannot quite match. —Nareg Seferian (SF11) heather wilde (a09) Readers Share from our readers Critical Thinking in Warsaw I just returned from Warsaw, Poland, setting up a new satellite office, and went on a tour that started at the Copernicus statue.... I’d never been anywhere in the Eastern block, and I was surprised by the people there. They had a pragmatism that I associate with their Russian neighbors; they were able to explain the good and bad of Communism without any hint of shame. It was my own American guilt that I had to drop at the door when speaking to these phenomenal people. Whenever I travel anywhere, the way that I speak and phrase my thoughts makes it hard for people to immediately believe that I’m an American. I’m able to argue any point. ... People are amazed at the seemingly unbounded knowledge I have. I always point out that you do not need to know about a topic ahead of time to be able to discuss it thoughtfully. I teach critical thinking to everyone I can. That’s what St. John’s means to me, and that’s what I do for a living. —Heather Wilde (A09) allowed you to insert a location and a date, so one of the things Mr. Beall did was to input Alexandria, Egypt around Ptolemy’s lifetime, showing us what the stars could have looked like at that time. But the best part was that after resetting the date to the then modern time, he asked the audience to pick the location. My immediate response (I can’t remember if I was the first to speak—I want to say I was) was to ask for the sun. That was awesome: most planetariums that I’ve been to were geocentric, and I remember a few students commenting how useful that’d be when you got to Copernicus, because you could switch back and forth between having Earth and the sun at the center. Another popular request was Pluto, giving you the ultimate outsider’s look into our solar system (Man, are we so tiny from that perspective). If I remember right, there was even a request to go onto an asteroid—I can’t remember if we did that one. —Babak Zarin (A11) Good, Gooey Gravy The best parts of lab at St. John’s were the first year basics and then our biology labs. First year had all the magic and creativity of the best learning experiences; genuinely at work with material which evoked ideas about both the universe of “stuff” around us and the principles inherent in all this good, gooey gravey. Secondly, Biology and the wonderful world of dissecting frogs and pigeons— plus the funky fruit flies—opened up a whole world of awareness. It profoundly deepened one’s sense of the designs at work in nature. As Melville wrote, one came faceto-face with a “dull blankness full of meaning”; nature’s unceasing change and infinite variety, an order one had to learn to obey in order to command. Unforgettable. Great stuff. Thank you! —John Dean (A70) Letters An Exemplary Tutor The new issue of The College [Summer 2012] landed in my mailbox. . . I like the new format very much. In his Shakespeare story on page 4, John Dean refers to Mr. McGraw. I am certain that he talking about Hugh McGrath, whose name is pronounced “McGraw.” Mr. McGrath was indeed an exemplary tutor with a special gift for languages and literature. After nearly 40 years, I remember many of the things he said in my junior-year language tutorial. He deserves to be remembered under his real name. Jessica Weissman (A73) A Minor Wonder Before I put it in the recycling bag, I wanted to send you this belated note of thanks for the Summer 2012 issue. I appreciate not only the color photos and illustrations, but the quality of the articles. The increased focus on alumni who are doing outstanding and/or unusual things will make the magazine a better promotional tool for the college. . . . Considering that St. John’s is a small college and many of its alumni, like myself, either “march to different drummers” or fall out of step and do not achieve material affluence, The College is a minor wonder. —Kevin Snapp (SF72) Praise Deserved Congratulations on a very fine Summer 2012 issue.... And thank you, Mr. Kowalski (SF84) for your class note (1994) on the acclaim bestowed on your 1999 novel, Eddie’s Bastard. The book was read; it deserves the praise on the cover and The Guardian’s citation. —H.A. Hammond, Class of 1947 Choosing the Sun Mr. Beall opened the planetarium for students to see a demonstration of the new planetarium software that had just been installed. Seeing as how I had missed going in my freshmen and sophomore years, I jumped at the chance . . . . The show was fantastic. The new software The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 5 �“�It’s amazing what happens when the world understands that you are committed to something.” Gary Pierpoint A group of aspiring Johnnie entrepreneurs packed a forum during Homecoming in Annapolis to talk with three visionary alumni: Harold Hughes (A84), senior managing director at Alliance Bernstein, an investment management company, and Board of Visitors and Governors member; Jac Holzman (Class of 1952), record executive and founder of Elektra Records; and Dominic Crapuchettes (A97), founder and copresident of North Star Games. Harold Hughes (A84), Dominic Crapuchettes (A97), and Jac Holzman (Class of 1952) mentor students. What are the skills and qualities needed to be a successful entrepreneur? HH: You need to be relentless and willing to take calculated risks. We often read stories about entrepreneurs who took ridiculously stupid risks [that] somehow work out well. What we don’t hear about are [endeavors] that failed. Resiliency, a strong set of analytical skills, and the ability to take calculated risks are so important. JH: Most important for me is understanding what commitment is and making it—not only to a project, but also to every minute aspect of an idea. In the early ’70s, for example, I was given a finished tape of the band Queen’s first album to demonstrate a London studio’s [capabilities]. The band was going to sign a deal with Columbia [Records], but they had only committed verbally. I pursued them relentlessly for three and a half months, waiting for Columbia to drop the ball. Ultimately, I was able to swoop in and sign Queen to Elektra. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to have a strong belief in yourself. Part of commitment is saying, “I’m going to pretend I’m right and see how it turns out.” It’s amazing what happens when the world understands that you are committed to something. DC: Being a Johnnie, when considering an idea, I look to Plato and Aristotle and ask myself: What is the good? How am I serving the community? With any pursuit, it’s important to understand how to bring value to the community and determine efficient ways to do [it]. To be an entrepreneur requires commitment to an idea, [which] usually takes considerable 6 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 by Robert Malka (A15) interpreter who has just bailed from his scheduled appointment, or a prospective investor has important questions about our company’s financials. Suddenly, everyone (including me) forgets I am a student as I rush out the door. Jac Holzman, Class of 1952, founder, Elektra Records time—sometimes 10 to 15 years—to come to fruition. Fundamental skills such as understanding finance, accounting, and marketing are also essential. Why do Johnnies excel as entrepreneurs? HH: In order to be a good entrepreneur, a person needs to have the ability to make decisions sometimes without having all the data. Johnnies have a strong set of analytical skills based on their deep understanding of truth and ethics, not just right and wrong, but the laws of nature. Business school offers one equation and one variable. Entrepreneurs need to make decisions using multiple variables. Johnnies are adept at making [such] decisions. I’ve been in my career for 29 years, but I know that in another 29 years, my job may not exist. I’ve trusted my decisions to stay [in a position] or move on. JH: Listening is something Johnnies typically do quite well. It took me a long time to learn how to listen because I have so many ideas, but it has been so important to me. My St. John’s experience was the perfect incubator. I did a lot of listening [because my] class had a number of seasoned [World War II] veterans who had seen a lot of life. I’ll never forget the opening question at the first seminar: Do you think Achilles wanted to die to achieve immortality on the battlefield? One of the veterans started talking about [his experience at] war, and I learned to respect the real-life grounding they had. I had grown up [in New York City] in a protected environment, so for me, being a Johnnie was about shedding that and connecting with the world. Connecting with the world is the seed of our entrepreneurship. DC: Johnnies are really good at learning how to solve problems and to work through them in order to determine a best course of action. For someone interested in a start-up venture, success is dependent on one’s ability to work well with other people. For example, my business partner and I partnered with a company that went bankrupt, and they owned the rights to all our games. I maxed out three credit cards to win back our inventory. That was a huge risk, but I felt I could declare bankruptcy and start over if I had to. Fortunately, sales went very well, and our leap of faith paid off. Anyi Guo (A14) Entrepreneurs: The Value of Ideas (Trying) to Live the Great Books What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs? HH: At a time when so many people emphasize service to society, there is a feeling that making money is evidence of a lack of service. But that’s not always the case. While Frederick Smith was a student at Yale, he wrote a paper that became his business plan for Federal Express. He received a low grade on that paper, but he persevered and found something that serves society’s need. JH: An important aspect of entrepreneurship is knowing when to let go. Follow your instincts. Trust yourself and don’t be afraid. Pursue an idea because you love it, and hope that others will see its value. You may inspire others to accomplish things. You never know how it’s going to turn out. [At the forum,] I was impressed by the student interest. The idea to put the plaque up between the two dorm rooms I had at St. John’s was great. DC: I’m an advocate for finding your passion. In business, it may take three to five years to develop a brand and work out the kinks. If you lack passion for what you’re doing, you’ll run out of steam and likely give up. Focus on adding value to others. Any good business is serving the community, which Johnnies do well. Determine what the community needs, and provide value in the most efficient way possible. Read more: www.stjohnscollege.edu/admin/ AN/careers – Gregory Shook My first don rag included a warning to fix an early bad habit: I kept walking out of class to take phone calls. I had to be in class, I was told, if I wanted to learn something. Since then I have rarely, if ever, left class to answer a phone call. So it goes. Now I am a sophomore, and I still run a telecommunications company that I co-founded with my mom and a fellow Johnnie, Zeke Schumacher (A15). I work full-time. (The immediate relevance of those calls speaks for itself.) Our company, Malka Communications Group, Inc., provides a number of communications solutions for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, such as mobile-phone data plans and interpretation services. For example, an office with a Deaf employee or client can download our app onto an iPad, which allows him to dial one of our interpreters, who mediates between both parties remotely while both clients are in the same room. We are also an international consulting firm that cooperates with several countries to implement communications services for their Deaf populations. This business venture was a natural choice for me, a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA). In addition to learning sign language, I grew up in and Of all the issues I must face, maintaining my role as a serious, committed student is the hardest. It can be jarring to jump from the quiet solitude of reading Chaucer to lobbying European Union Representatives via Skype. around Deaf culture, my first home. I am protective of that culture. I have also been interested in business since childhood; when I was twelve, I tried to create a card game company and almost made it. At seventeen, I was on the way to founding a non-profit to help provide legal services to the disenfranchised, but lacked the infrastructure and experience. Juggling my business and St. John’s can be overwhelming, especially since headquarters are located in my hometown of Los Angeles. I often wake up early to catch up on work from the evening before, wolf down lunch, and have a “morning” meeting by noon. Several times, I have been in the fray of a great discussion in the coffee shop when my phone buzzes. An employee asks me what to do about an Of all the issues I must face, maintaining my role and image as a serious, committed student is the hardest. It can be jarring to switch gears from negotiating contracts with vendors to allocating money as a student on the Delegate Council, or to jump from the quiet solitude of reading Chaucer to lobbying European Union Representatives via Skype. Why do I stay at St. John’s? Because running a company requires understanding people and motivating them toward a fleshed-out vision. To do so, I must know how to listen, articulate, and think critically. St. John’s has taught me these skills very well. “But,” says my inner Devil’s Advocate, “valuable skills or not, you seem to be missing the point of St. John’s. Why are you running a company when you are supposed to contemplate, and be otherwise immersed in the Johnnie bubble?” Good question, Devil-Friend. On one level, this is my income, and on another, it’s my life. But more than that, I seek to live the Great Books. For me, that means more than just discussing and thinking about them; it means doing Good in the world. Why wait, if I can do my best to live them now? I love the learning that we do together at the College, but I cannot do it without also giving back to the community.My education feels incomplete without it. Although eventually I want to move on to other ventures, this business niche has a special place in my heart, and the experience will continue to change me for as long as I pursue it. I think I can say the same thing about St. John’s, itself a niche venture with a special place in my heart. To reach Robert Malka: (818) 943-7350 or rjmalka@gmail.com The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 7 �from the bell towers from the bell towers New Pathways briefly quoted In Your Dreams Recently, the St. John’s alumni Facebook page was buzzing with comments from Johnnies who have all had the same reoccurring dream: they are in the basement of McDowell Hall, unable to open their mailbox. “Glad to know I’m not the only Johnnie with that dream. The schedule, the mailroom...and the tutor who is disappointed because you haven’t been to class in months.” —Edward Conway (SF00) “�OMG, I have the same mailbox/class schedule dream too! That and the one where I show up on the last day of math class and haven’t done the readings all year.” —Hillary Fields (SF97) Carroll Barrister’s School Spirit Considering that the Annapolis campus was the site of a Civil War camp and hospital, it is no surprise that for decades, students and staff have reported seeing ghosts, including soldiers and a shadowy cloaked figure, on campus and inside the historic buildings. On June 14, Carroll Barrister reopened its doors as home to Admissions. How do the spirits feel about the renovation? They declined to be interviewed. Dr. James Schamus (a81), CEO of Focus Features and professor of professional practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, 2013 Commencement speaker, Annapolis The Judgment of Annapolis You’re traveling through another dimension—a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop: Polity Radio! © Mary Ella Jourdak/maryellajourdak.com “� am highly entertained that I’m not the only I one with this dream! What’s really funny is that I almost never dream about the dorms, dining hall, boathouse, classrooms, etc. But that MAILBOX gets me constantly!” —Cindy Lutz-Spidle (A98) Read more at: www.facebook.com/stjohnscollegealumni What is Chris Nelson (SF70), Annapolis president, reading to Cady, the college dog? Let us know: thecollegemagazine@sjca.edu Polity Radio Breaks New Ground Gregory Shook o f f t h e wa l l “For if you’re just out there blindly and instinctively reacting to stuff, you’re definitely not free; you’re an automaton or a mere animal . . . . whether or not the world will always be able to make use of you, the world needs you—thinker-doers, doer-thinkers, genuinely free human beings.” Johnnie winemakers gathered on April 5 for the third annual In Vino Veritas wine event, organized by The Friends of St. John’s. From left: August Deimel (SF04) of Keuka Spring Vineyards in Penn Yan, New York; Zach Rasmuson (A95) of Goldeneye Winery in Philo, California; Abe Schoener (A82) of The Scholium Project in Fairfield, California; Sue Bishop (AGI03) of Bistro Freres Wines in Arnold, Maryland; Alex Kongsgaard (SF05) of Kongsgaard Wine in Napa, California; Christina Turley, daughter of Helen Turley (Class of 1967) and John Wetlaufer (Class of 1967) of Turley Wine Cellars in Templeton, California. Evan Frazier (SF04) of Kongsgaard Wine is not pictured. 8 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 The two-day event led with the Judgment of Annapolis, a reimagining of the Paris Tasting of 1976 that put Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars (founded by Warren Winiarski, Class of 1952) in Napa Valley—and California wines—on the map. A wine-paired reception, with a dinner created by renowned Baltimore chef Jerry Pelligrino, followed at the home of President Nelson. Johnnies kept the wine and conversation flowing the next day in the Francis Scott Key Lobby, where alumni and other noted winemakers talked about their craft, and poured and discussed nearly 100 wines and craft-brewed beers arranged by country of origin. With the launch of the premiere episode last May, which featured a dramatic reading of “The TellTale Heart,” on-campus music and bands, and a radio serial starring a St. John’s vigilante superhero, Johnnies have entered new terrain. And the response has been “overwhelmingly positive,” says Jessica Kjellberg (A14), producer and co-founder of the college’s first-ever online radio program. She also serves as the program’s creative director, bringing together segments that reflect the diversity of the students who submit them. Other segments include readings of essays and poetry, music, student-written radio dramas, and more drawn from the college community. The fall 2012 episode featured a candid interview with Annapolis President Christopher Nelson. “Some students just walk in and do something spontaneous,” says Kjellberg. “Others help by lending their ears and offering opinions. We want to be mindful of the listener.” “� wanted to create I a forum that is fun and entertaining but would foster greater communication between students, tutors, and staff.” Jessica Kjellberg (A14), producer and co-founder of Polity Radio Kjellberg, who is considering a possible career in journalism, has discovered hidden talent of her own through Polity Radio. “I learned how to edit on the first episode,” she says. That D.I.Y. spirit is at the core of the radio program and its group of dedicated student organizers. “We set up the equipment ourselves and do a lot of problem solving,” says Kjellberg, undaunted by teaching herself new skills and figuring things out as she goes. “Being Johnnies, we’re pretty comfortable working with systems that are unfamiliar.” The idea for Polity Radio came to Kjellberg while working as an admissions tour guide at the Annapolis campus during summer break. “It was the first time I really took notice that there was a much larger community here beyond the students and tutors,” says Kjellberg, who approached fellow classmate and Polity Radio co-founder Robert Malka (A15) with her idea. “I wanted to create a forum that is fun and entertaining but would foster greater communication between students, tutors, and staff,” she says. Kjellberg hopes that the radio program will continue to grow after she graduates. “I don’t see it as an end in itself,” she says. She envisions the program someday developing into a live, on-air radio station, but for now, she’s focused on the program’s primary mission. “Polity Radio is valuable and needed. It’s indicative of ideas of the polity as a whole,” says Kjellberg. “Everyone is encouraged to be part of the conversation.” Listen to Polity Radio at polityradio.wordpress.com. –Gregory Shook An award from the new Pathways Fellowship will help Adam Maraschky (A13) decide which branch of chemistry he wants to pursue after he graduates from St. John’s. “The Pathways Fellowship provides funding and enables rising St. John’s juniors and seniors and graduating seniors from both campuses to transition into graduate study or careers that call for special or prerequisite work,” says Jaime Dunn, director of Career Services at the Annapolis campus. Maraschky will use his award to study organic chemistry courses at the University of Maryland in College Park. In the summer of 2012, Maraschky received a Hodson Trust internship grant and spent three months studying plasmonic solar cell technology at the University of Maryland. “In my case, organic chemistry was a bit of a dream,” says Maraschky, who took AP chemistry courses in high school. “I wanted to take the course before attending St. John’s because I like thinking about the shapes of molecules and the energetics of reactions.” With a Pathways Fellowship, students can spend their summers gaining specific prerequisites and knowledge, and immerse themselves in their St. John’s education during the academic year. “My plan for now is to spend two years doing more undergraduate course work while researching and working, then apply for a master’s program in materials engineering,” says Maraschky. —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) briefly quoted “I am quite sure that everything we do—consciously or unconsciously—makes a difference. Every act of kindness and every act of cowardice. There are always consequences. It has been said that if anything matters, then everything matters.” Jill Cooper Udall, member, St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors, 2013 Commencement speaker, Santa Fe The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 9 �from the bell towers Hello, dear friends. I am never too old for games. This year, the night before Croquet, there was a “thunder-battle.” The term comes from chapter IX of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and nothing better describes the explosive downpour that hung in Annapolis until the late hours of the night. It was ominous, a warning that it would be a long battle for the Cup with an unhappy end. Nevertheless, Croquet Saturday dawned with clear skies. at St. John’s College AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE for High School Students More than 145 students from around the world immersed themselves in Summer Academy 2013 in Santa Fe and Annapolis. Learn more: www.stjohnscollege.edu Starry Nights Conversations with the Chair “She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself, ‘It’s the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.’” -Alice, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Do you know a student who belongs at St. John’s? Let us know. annapolis : admissions@sjca.edu or 410-626-2522 santa fe : admissions@sjcsf.edu or 505-984-6060 10 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 That morning I was called upon to aid in seminars on Alice in Wonderland (chapter VII, “The Mad Tea Party” and chapter VIII, “The Queen’s Croquet Field”). I listened to chair sitters ponder Alice’s journey and her interactions with the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, the Queen, the King, and the Cheshire Cat who after Alice is my personal favorite character. Admittedly, this could be because I, like so many others, identify with Alice: the dizzy journey Alice takes, a tumble in which language seems almost nonsensical, the logic puzzling, but where the games are fun in their intricacy. Indeed, my own journey has been filled by the characters of my sitters, quite a few of whom that day were already in their Gatsby-esque seersucker (something I confess I wish to see more of: the Jazz Age was closer to the fashion of my childhood). By noon, the Croquet match popped open like champagne. Unlike Alice’s match, there were no warring hedgehogs, no flamingo mallets that flew away, no human-card arches, and no complaints that people were not attending to the rules of the field. And unlike the Chesire cat, Cady (the college dog) was well behaved. Sadly, the thunderous omen of the night before came true: the match went on and on and on, a great “thunder battle” between the Imperial Wickets. You know the rest. Within moments, my wall on Facebook was filled with anguished cries –“sobs” and “scowls” and “will wonders never cease”– followed by jokes that the loss required a new drinking policy and athletic director. Thankfully, no one followed the example of the Queen of Hearts in calling for beheadings. I must admit a kind of quiet welcome of the fact: there is no shame in the Naval Academy winning a round once a decade; the match becomes more interesting when the result isn’t a predetermined given. After all, look at Alice and her adventures. —JC (www.facebook.com/johnnie. chair) On clear evenings after seminar, Johnnies experience firsthand the deep fascination that humans across the centuries have had with the night sky. From Ptolemy to Newton and Copernicus to Kepler, the stars and planets have played an important role in the study of not only astronomy but physics and theology. “Astronomy addresses the question of the Whole,” says Margaret Matthews (A14), archon of the Astronomy Club on the Annapolis campus, “which are implications for everything else we learn in the world.” The Astronomy Club conducts not only stargazing but also planetarium shows for classes and community members who are interested in learning more about the motion of the heavenly bodies. “Anybody NASA, esa, hubble space telescope—Taken Under the “Wing” of the Small Magellanic Cloud Summer Academy 2013 from the bell towers “�Astronomy addresses the question of the Whole, which are implications for everything else we learn in the world.” Margaret Matthews (A14), astronomy archon who wants to come and look at the stars is welcome,” says Matthews. “We invite all guests to join us.” By witnessing and understanding the laws that govern the motion of the stars, we can better comprehend the laws that govern everything from the orbits of a planet to the path of a falling stone. The planetarium shows offered by the Astronomy Club provide students with the opportunity to observe these phenomena directly, seeing what Ptolemy saw in the night sky over Ancient Greece. “By placing Earth at the center, Ptolemy is thinking of the heavenly bodies themselves as they appear to an observer on Earth,” says tutor Nicholas Maistrellis. During planetarium shows, archons guide students through various motions of the stars, replicating many of the observations that early astronomers made in their studies. They host special shows for freshmen when they begin to study astronomy in their second semester. Students are introduced to the motions of the stars that Ptolemy uses as references so they can grasp the line of reasoning he pursued in developing such ideas as epicycles and eccentric motion. Stargazing hosted by the Astronomy Club is open to all members of the community. “In the winter, we saw the Andromeda Galaxy. In the spring, we see Saturn, Mars, and a bit of Venus,” says Matthews. Archons are always present to help visitors learn how to use and operate the telescope. “It takes a lot of practice and patience to become familiar with the various stars and constellations, but it helps to be curious and have a sense of wonder.” briefly quoted “We must have intellectual bravery, that is, the courage to push forward, to continue seeking truth even in the face of doubts about its very existence.... St. John’s has given me the tools: the ability to listen, think, speak, write, and ultimately act.” Grace Tyson (ao13), speech to The Caritas Society, April 2013 —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) To learn more visit: www.stjohnscollege.edu/ admin/AN/observatory The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 11 �from the bell towers from the bell towers Bilsana Bibic (SF13): Ariel Internship at the United Nations How the Ancients Googled Earth Bilsana Bibic (SF13) One of the more unique structures on both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses is the Ptolemy stone, an ancient Greek tool used to measure changes in the motion of the sun at apogee. “Ptolemy is one of the very earliest to take something that seems very complicated and reduce it to rational and comprehensible ideas,” says tutor Nicholas Maistrellis. “The Ptolemy Stone has only one function: it allows you to measure how high the sun rises at noon. By doing so, we can measure how quickly or slowly the sun orbits around the Earth.” gabe gomez Inspired by her life experience and activities at St. John’s, Bilsana Bibic (SF13), a senior from Montenegro, has chosen a career in international relations and development, focusing on immigrant and refugee rights. “My country was very involved with refugees during the war in Kosovo,” says Bibic. “Refugees especially have problems with traveling documents and basic necessities for life. There is also the issue of education, to prepare students to face the world with a necessary set of skills.” In addition, she hopes to fight unemployment in her country and internationally. Bibic became interested in international relations and conflict resolution as a high school student at the United World College in Costa Rica, where she lived with people from 80 different countries. At St. John’s, she served on the Student Review Board, building upon her skills by participating in mediation. That experience helped prepare Bibic to address opposing views and face challenging questions “without being paralyzed by fear,” she says. “You’re not just an observer. You learn that you can’t know everything on your own, that you need a community to see the openings for improvement.” To prepare for her career, Bibic took on Rousing production of Kiss Me, Kate Artist-in-Residence Roy Rogosin (SFGI09) directed Santa Fe campus students, alumni, and staff in a rousing, fully-staged production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate in the Great Hall last December. The Tony Award-winning musical involves the often amusing difficulties encountered by a troupe of players performing a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. At the center of the conflict is Fred Graham, the director, producer, and star, played by Sidney Velasquez (SFGI14), and his leading lady and ex-wife, Lilli Vanessi, played by Elizabeth Hyde (SF16). Pictured are members of the company. Back Row: Sidney Velasquez, Elizabeth Hyde, Joseph Muse (SF16), Cody Winning (SF12), Hania Stocker (SF12), Dana Relue (SF15), Ruochen Bo (SF14), and staff member Susan Kaplan. Front row: Yue Gong (SFGI13), John Panagiotidis (SFGI14), Hope Lang (SF15), Roy Rogosin, and Melissa Balch (SFGI14). two significant projects last summer that also allowed her to work on current, pressing problems. During her Ariel internship at the United Nations in New York, she worked one-on-one with the Ambassador of Montenegro on his mission and agenda. “I really got to see what it means to represent my country and how we represent ourselves to the world—what our priorities are, what we’re looking to gain from the international community. Since we became independent from Serbia, we’ve had to learn how to develop a country based on democracy. A true republic, I suppose.” Using the pass that came with her internship to attend many U.N. meetings, Bibic gained a broad perspective on the needs and interactions of many nations. Before heading to New York, Bibic joined three other Johnnies in the Republic of Georgia to work on a Project for Peace with high school students who were affected by Georgia’s civil war, a conflict that remains unresolved. The Johnnies held seminars for the participants as a prelude to a political conference where the teens discussed new ways of looking at the civil conflict with refugees and representa- 12 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 tives from government and NGOs. In seminars, they read and discussed the Oresteia, focusing on questions of war. They also studied history, took conflict resolution training, and visited refugee camps to see what it was like to live under such conditions, witness the consequences of war, and learn from the refugees’ stories. These experiences opened the teenagers’ eyes. “At the political conference,” says Bibic, “the adults were a bit hostile because they didn’t think the kids had the right to ask them questions about the conflict. A proud moment for our team” occurred, she says, when one girl explained “they’d been learning about conflict resolution and the importance of listening, and it really hurt them that the adults weren’t giving an example of that. A lot of Georgians still blame Russia for what happened during the civil war, and the kids asked if the conflict could be resolved without Russia. I think the people there were very impressed with their approach.” —Jennifer Levin “It’s very important for studying Ptolemy,” says Nino Benashvili (A16). “It’s what we use to measure the angle of the sun relative to the Earth.” Ptolemy states in the Almagest that the sun’s highest point in the sky changes during the year due to its angular orbit around the sun. This slanted revolution is what causes the differences in length of daylight and determines the seasons. Freshmen in math tutorials in Annapolis can study a smaller version of this phenomenon through a twelveinch wooden model called the armillary sphere. Built by St. John’s College craftsman Gary Dunkelberger, the model uses a set of rings to illustrate the differences in the revolutions of bodies around the Earth. The lateral ring represents the motion of the heavenly spheres; an angular ring represents the motion of the sun. “Ptolemy’s universe can be very hard to imagine, so the armillary sphere gives you a three-dimensional model of the whole thing,” says Maistrellis. “You can actually use the Ptolemy Stone in correlation with the armillary sphere and information from the Almagest to find your location on the Earth.” – Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) talk of the tow ers This spring, four longtime tutors at the Annapolis campus, Deborah Axelrod, Nancy Buchenauer, Nicholas Maistrellis, and Jonathan Tuck, have formally retired. Students, faculty, and staff gathered on April 24 in the Great Hall for a ceremony to honor their combined 150 years of dedicated service to the college. Two new tutors have joined the faculty at the Santa Fe campus. Marsaura Shukla (A93) joins the college from the University of Chicago where she received her PhD in theology. Raoni Padui comes to the college from Villanova University where he received his PhD in philosophy. In Annapolis, four new tutors have joined the faculty. Sarah Stickney (A04) joins the college from Johns Hopkins SAIS Center in Bologna, Italy, where she was also a Fulbright Scholar. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of New Hampshire. Brendan Boyle comes to the college from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where he taught classics. He received his PhD from the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago. Leah Lasell (SFGI04), who received her BA in mathematics from the University of Chicago and her PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas, taught mathematics at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H. Christine Lee joins the college from the University of Bristol. She received her PhD in political science from Duke University. Terry McGuire (HA12), assistant to the dean and a 44-year staff member at the college, was named an honorary alumna. briefly quoted “At St. John’s, we acquire the skill of interacting with other people’s minds. By not restricting ourselves to like minds, we discover what’s weak about our minds and what’s really strong about them.” Hannah Crepps (SF13), interview with The Santa Fe New Mexican, May 17, 2013 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 13 �from the bell towers Michael McQuarrie: Gordon Seltz (A14) credits his interest in business and economics to his experience with the math tutorials during his freshman and sophomore years. “For math, we have this logic-based system that we use to explore and explain the world,” says Seltz. “Economics is simply taking that a step further by applying it to human behavior. By doing so, we can see how business and finance affects us in very real ways.” Seltz, who plans to pursue an investment-banking career, was awarded funding by the Hodson Trust and interned last summer at George K. Baum and Company, a middle-market sized investmentbanking firm in Denver. “Economics is an amalgamation of political factors, environmental factors, and business factors,” says Seltz. “It’s an abstraction of everything working together, similar to the liberal arts program at St. John’s where we see all the subjects as being interconnected. Economics is a field where that mentality is carried on.” “I was responsible for research, taking aggregate data, analyzing it, and putting it in a logical and comprehensible format,” says Seltz. “I was also in charge of monitoring the market and updating various databases. There was a lot of opportunity for learning by osmosis.” Seltz recalls how, as an intern, he was asked to do calculations to update the database for the firm. “The executive vice president asked me to consult an analyst about how to do them. The analyst wasn’t there. So I found the document where the calculations were already done and sort of reverse-engineered it to find the formula. It is similar to what we have to do in a St. John’s math tutorial: we have to figure “�Economics is... an abstraction of everything working together, similar to the liberal arts program at St. John’s where we see all the subjects as being interconnected.” The Hodson House-Carroll Barrister House project was funded by gifts from the Hodson Trust and by a grant from the State of Maryland. Extensive new landscaping, including four gardens and new seating areas, are also featured in the space between Chase Stone, Pinkney, and the new building. out how one gets from a general question to a specific answer. My St. John’s education helped me adapt to this completely foreign and new environment.” This summer, 34 students received funding through the Hodson Trust Internship Program. They will work at organizations such as the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Library of Congress, and the University of Chicago’s Institute for Mind & Biology. Gary Pierpoint Hodson Intern Investing in Banking Representatives from the Hodson Trust and the Board of Visitors and Governors, along with Annapolis faculty and staff, gathered to dedicate the new Hodson House on June 21. Its modern, urban design blends seamlessly with its historic surroundings. The building houses the Advancement Office and the new Alumni Center. Featuring a seminar/ meeting room as well as administrative and faculty offices, the Hodson House served as a temporary space for the college’s Admissions staff, which moved out of the Carroll-Barrister House while it underwent a full renovation that was completed in June. The Carroll-Barrister House, originally constructed in 1722 and located on Main Street in Annapolis, was moved to campus in the 1950s. This major renovation is the first since then. The newly refurbished Admissions Office will provide a welcoming first stop on the campus for the college’s visitors and prospective students. – Nutchapol Boonparlit (A14) 14 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Hodson House, home to the new Alumni Center New Athletic Director in Annapolis Lauds Amateurs Among many pleasant surprises since joining the St. John’s faculty, new Annapolis Athletic Director Michael McQuarrie discovered a collection of old photos and records of the college’s sports history. In the 1880s, when St. John’s had more intercollegiate teams, the college played basketball and football against McQuarrie’s alma mater. “I was going through all these old records, and I saw photos of Elon University. I thought, ‘St. John’s College really played Elon? How long ago was that?’” programs, thinking that students need that push. At St. John’s, students don’t require that push quite as much, if at all.” Previously McQuarrie was the director of recreation at the New School in New York City. At this university containing seven different colleges, “much of my job entailed marketing and advertising, simply making sure the college community knew what was happening in the athletics program,” he says. Dedicated to creating and continuing programs centered on students’ needs, McQuarrie essentially built the New School’s athletic program from scratch; he focused primarily on the intramural program and clubs as opposed to competition with other schools. It prepared him well for St. John’s. “When I first started, I said to one of the gym assistants, Eric Shlifer (A13), that I love “�I’ve worked and been a student at schools that claim to be student-centered, but that term takes on new meaning at St. John’s.” gary pierpoint Katie Matlack Hodson House Opens Its Doors Since his arrival last summer, McQuarrie has grown increasingly appreciative of the student-centered athletics program at St. John’s. The fact that Johnnies are often proactive in their education—from tennis to Tchaikovsky to Tocqueville—has been a refreshing but not entirely surprising discovery. McQuarrie, who grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, was drawn to St. John’s largely because of how athletics are taught here. “I’ve worked and been a student at schools that claim to be student-centered, but that term takes on new meaning at St. John’s,” he says. “At other colleges and universities, administrators, faculty, and staff usually manage amateur athletics,” says McQuarrie. “He replied, ‘Well, you’re going to love it here!’ My role is to be here for the students and to be able to, as best I can, produce the [results] they want.” As an athletic director, McQuarrie best serves the college community by being “flexible, understanding, and above all, an educator. Anyone who works at a college is an educator,” he says. Not surprisingly, mentors have played an important role in his athletic and intellectual development. “When I was a kid, my mom was my baseball coach for three years,” says McQuarrie. “During college, I had two sociology professors, one at Elon University and one at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who taught me how to teach and how to help students learn.” —Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) and Gregory Shook New Alumni Director in Santa Fe is a Johnnie at Heart Anne Staveley from the bell towers Sarah Palacios, the new director of Alumni Relations at the Santa Fe campus, has a Johnnie-like spirit. This winter she participated in Piraeus in Santa Fe, where the focus was on Dante’s Inferno. Aside from loving the reading and the discussion, Palacios was thrilled to receive feedback from an alumna who stated that if she had not known Palacios wasn’t a Johnnie, she never would have guessed. An avid reader who cites Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy among her favorite authors, she also looks forward to re-reading works such as Oedipus Rex. Originally from Pojoaque, New Mexico, Palacios previously served in alumni relations at her alma mater, Stanford University, where she worked with young alumni as well as in student development. Palacios recognizes the importance of reaching out to what might be referred to as the “future alumni” population. “In alumni relations, we have four years to help current students create a love for and connection to the St. John’s community,” says Palacios. “You’re an alum for far longer than you were ever a student. You’re an alum for the rest of your life.” Palacios welcomes the opportunity to be working for a small, private college. “Private colleges have more unified communities,” she says. Seminars and alumni events, such as Piraeus and the alumni-student ski day, have helped her get to know the St. John’s alumni community. “I can learn so much from alumni,” says Palacios. “I invite everyone to reach out to me, even if I haven’t had the chance to reach out to them yet. Send me an e-mail, or call, or drop by the office. My door is open.” Palacios earned her bachelor’s degree in cultural psychology with an emphasis on American Indian identity; she also has an MBA from the University of New Mexico. She hopes that her research on the challenges encountered by first-generation college students, specifically minority students, can benefit St. John’s. Her background will also be useful in understanding the varying needs of alumni. Palacios says, “I get the sense that no matter how long it’s been since alumni have been to St. John’s for a visit, they step on campus and it feels like home.” —Jennifer Levin The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 15 �tutor views Imagination and Creativity by J. H. Beall Imagination and creativity seem at first gloss to be positive things that hold high sway in the court of modernity. They are said to be responsible for much of the good in our lives and the source of the relative comfort in which the majority of us can live. These claims are, to my mind, true. Given the high regard in which these terms are held, it is of interest to investigate them in some detail. Exploring the Cosmos: Faculty members consider Copernicus and a revolution that, to be understood, requires “careful observation, study and reflection and bold, imaginative insight,” notes Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus. opposite: A barred spiral galaxy was captured in spectacular detail in this image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Superimposed over the photo is Copernicus’ diagram from 1543 of the movement of the planets around the sun—a page from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, published the same year. photos: courtesy nasa, esa, the hubble space telescope. 16 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 As the word suggests, imagination seems to be associated with an image that one can hold in the mind, like the “picture” of a cat or a unicorn. But the idea of imagination can be extended beyond that of a simple picture. In Psychology: The Briefer Course, William James talks about the different kinds of imagination. For example, he catalogs an “auditory imagination” that can be as delightful as “Fingal’s Cave” or some terrible tune that keeps reprising itself in one’s head, mewling like a hungry cat, but for no good reason. My favorite example in James’s work is the kinesthetic imagination. Anyone who has ever seen a friend (or especially one’s child) fall down and felt the shock of it for themselves has had the experience of the kinesthetic imagination. There is also a species of imagination that James doesn’t directly address. Most of us have felt it when we are alone, walking at night. It’s that strange feeling that makes us afraid to turn around and look behind us, dreading what we suppose to be there. The vividness of this experience is much like a kinesthetic occurrence. It can be quite arresting—and not particularly positive. James is quick to point out that the imagination is of different degrees for different people. In some individuals, it is remarkably vivid, and in others, it is barely a capacity. To illustrate this, imagine three “dots,” like dots on a piece of paper. Now imagine four dots. Now imagine five. Now imagine seven. Now imagine thirteen. At some point for most of us, the image gets fuzzy. Yet it is easy to think about the number seven or a million or 106. This by way of analysis. It is not my intention to cast aspersions on the imagination or to say that it is not powerful in some ways. To say the least of it, imagination is a complex subject. Eva Brann’s wonderful book, The World The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 17 �Q&A tutor views imagination and creativity Q&A The introduction of Copernicus, which follows, presents another kind of imaginative challenge, to return to the familiar assumption that the sun is the center. Students have to revolutionize their thinking twice, then, once to register the appearances and imagine them accounted for through Ptolemy—this is an undoing of a former opinion; and then, again, to take stock of the revolution through Copernicus. They are in an optimum position to appreciate and even appropriate the fuller meaning and consequence of the Copernican revolution—that to understand the appearances, or our experience, however fundamental, requires careful observation, study and reflection, and bold, imaginative insight. How do we encounter Copernicus in the program of study at St. John’s? This study of Ptolemy continues into the fall semester of the sophomore mathematics tutorial, as his account becomes more complex in order to address the various positions of the planets, which do not appear to travel in an uninterrupted circle around the earth. We focus on the motions of Venus. After that study we turn to Copernicus, whose account revolutionizes astronomy, since it replaces the geocentric with a heliocentric model. Although the account was not finally proven until later, after the telescope was invented and certain measurements could be taken, it supplanted forever the former way of understanding our place in the universe. This is an important sequence for our students. The astronomy sequence in these years first restores the appearances, that is to say, our experience, to a kind of primacy; and then students begin to appreciate Ptolemy’s achievement, how he combined the observed regularities of the heavenly bodies, representing them and accounting for their movements through geometry. This requires in our students a combination of reasoning and imagination employed in a different way than they are used to. Ptolemy then proceeds to turn the world upside down. He applies his mathematical knowledge to the motions of the heavens, a region between the Earth and the divine. of the Imagination: Sum and Substance, is an intensive consideration of the topic. Imagination for all its vividness and limitations seems to go hand in hand with creativity. This was brought to mind recently when my niece, an accomplished photographer, posted an image of a deer track on Facebook with the footprint oriented upside down. That is, the inverted deer track—filled with water in the soft earth—looked “heart-shaped.” She posted the image on Valentine’s Day with an appropriate caption. This simple re-orientation of an existing image now had a new aspect, a new meaning for someone looking at the picture. This bears on the question of what creativity actually is. In certain glosses, the word can suggest creation “ex nihilo,” which in the Latin means literally “out of nothing.” One can think of the Prime Mover in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, or the Lord’s “Let there be light” from the Old Testament. In Aristotle’s case, the example clearly shows that the essential source of motion has no antecedent cause. And clearly, God has no cause beside itself. But this interpretation of the word “creativity” might be too strict. In the case of the photograph of the deer’s footprint turned upsidedown, the new aspect that is revealed brings together a particular image with a particular day and a particular set of associations. It connects an image with an understanding. This is essential for coming up with something new. 18 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’s work are particularly fine examples of this more general idea of creativity. In Ptolemy’s case, as students at the college discover in the second semester of the freshman year, there is a metaphysical justification for using mathematics to discover the regularity behind the flux of experience. Ptolemy begins with Aristotle’s division of the “theoretical [sciences] into three immediate genera: the physical, the mathematical, and the theological.” Ptolemy despairs of finding the regularity behind physical things, those below the lunar sphere, since they are too changing and complex. In addition, he believes theological science is too high, too transcendent for us, being related as it is to Gods or Prime Movers. Yet the mathematical is within our grasp, and Ptolemy has Euclid’s Elements to show the truth of that. Yet there is little or no motion in Euclid’s Elements. Ptolemy, however, proceeds in a way worth quoting whole cloth: And therefore meditating that the other two genera of the theoretical would be expounded in terms of conjecture rather than in terms of scientific understanding [emphasis mine]: the theological because it is in no way phenomenal and attainable, but the physical because its matter is unstable and obscure, so that for this reason philosophers could never hope to agree on them; and meditating that only the mathematical, if approached enquiringly, would give its practi- −Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean The Heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy The freshman mathematics tutorial spends much of the academic year studying Euclid’s Elements, going through many of the propositions in its twelve books. In the spring semester, the tutorial turns attention to Ptolemy’s Almagest, the work that assumes that the earth is at the center, and ends the year by introducing Ptolemy’s geometrical account, concentrating on his account of the sun. tioners certain and trustworthy knowledge with demonstration both arithmetic and geometric. . . . [W]e were led to cultivate most particularly . . . this theoretical discipline” (Almagest, trans. by R. C. Taliaferro, University of Chicago Press: Great Books edition, 1952. Ptolemy then proceeds to turn the world upside down. He applies his mathematical knowledge to the motions of the heavens, a region between the Earth and the divine. This bears on his fascination with circles, since the most manifest motion of the sky is the rising of the Sun in the east and its setting in the west. More properly, there are also the uniform circular motions of the “fixed” stars that Ptolemy uses as his elements to show this underlying order behind the flux of experience. As such, Ptolemy’s Almagest is the forerunner of every modern physical theory. Of course, “saving the appearances” by showing their underlying regularity in spite of manifest variations requires a bit of artifice, and Ptolemy’s theory is a fine example of such amplification. The point here is that he took elements he already knew from Euclid and from his own One of our Socratic hypotheses is that to come to know for oneself, even just to inquire for oneself, presupposes recognition of one’s own ignorance, i.e. our knowing that (or what) we do not know. In many respects, our “knowledge” that the earth revolves around the sun is the paradigm specimen or occasion for breaking open our too easy confidence in what we know. What we think we know is counter-intuitive (it appears that the sun is moving and we and the earth are still). It does not seem to be derived from our everyday experience (or our ways of talking: the sun rises and sets). Furthermore, most of us cannot “replicate” or even narrate the body of theory and evidence and experimentation that have gone into this knowledge. Under cross-examination, it seems that we are trusting in the authority of others: books, scientists. Now, at St. John’s, we do “cross-examine” this knowledge (and we do replicate or narrate its history and development). It turns out to be a long and hard question The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 19 �Q&A tutor views imagination and creativity Q&A as to what would decide the issue between a geocentric and heliocentric “hypothesis” or “theory.” As I understand it, it is not until the nineteenth century (roughly 300 years after the publication of Copernicus’s theory) that some astronomical measurement or observation appears to weigh decisively in favor of the Copernican theory. The comparative study of Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy (and its later development) is one of the most powerful introductions to the hidden questions of the philosophy and history of science. It is probably the most significant and the most telling case of the problems associated with science’s “ascent” from appearance to reality, as well as the most telling case of the problems associated with relating mathematical models to nature and natural phenomena. –J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean The Copernican revolution became both (partial) cause and icon for modernity and for the intellectual and spiritual revolutions that propel it. Kant, very famously, analogized his philosophical revolution in the Critique of Pure Reason to the Copernican revolution. This icon has meant different things for different thinkers: a defiant challenge to received authority, philosophical and theological, in favor of one’s own reason (this may be seen as “political” as well, e.g. with Galileo’s trial and his alleged “And yet it moves”); the displacement of Man from the center of the cosmos (or the loss of a “center”), a displacement that arguably undermines Biblical cosmology, or Providence; the abandonment of “naïve” observation; the movement toward a consistent mathematical physics of matter in motion, freed from religion and metaphysics; the paradigm for the indefinite and open-ended revision of scientific theory. And so on. Spiral Galaxy NGC 3370 Hubble’s Sharpest View of the Orion Nebula The point is not to generate a fixed skepticism among our students or faculty, nor to rehabilitate geocentricism, but rather to bring to the fore, for our conscious study and reflection, a variety of hidden assumptions that lurk behind our everyday knowledge or our tacit acceptance of scientific knowledge. How do we apply mathematical models to “physical” phenomena? How do we “save the appearances”? What kinds of arguments or evidence can persuade us of the truth of a physical model or theory? Can such theories be “proven” at all? The “facts,” or the “appearances,” admit of various interpretations. What criteria are most important in adopting one over the other— predictive power, coherence and consistency, elegance or beauty, theological argument, physical argument, mathematical argument? Did Copernicus change scientific thought? –J. Walter Sterling, Santa Fe dean Copernicus’s inversion from a geocentric to a heliocentric model of the universe still required something other than simple circles, which led him to place an epicycle at the center of the Sun. and others’ observations of the motions of the sky, and brought those together to give us a new understanding of the regularity behind the appearances of the world. Ptolemy’s epicycles are, of course, the key part of the model. One of that model’s complexities is the assumption that Venus’s and Mercury’s epicycles are centered on the Sun. This in turn is necessary because of the observations that Mercury and Venus never exceed certain angular distances from the Sun. For example, when Venus is the “evening star” (that is, when it is in the sky after sunset), it gradually attains a greater and greater distance away from the Sun, a phenomenon especially noticeable because Venus is so bright. The maximum angular distance of Venus from the Sun—Venus’s maximum elongation—is around 20 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 44 degrees, so that when Venus is at maximum elongation after sunset, it is remarkably far from the Sun. Yet immediately after this, it begins to approach the Sun again, eventually moving past the Sun in order to lead it across the sky, thus becoming the “morning star.” Mercury is the only other planet that has this apparent association with the Sun, although Mercury’s maximum elongation is much smaller at 15 degrees of arc. Ptolemy seeks to explain these observations by placing each of the planets on an “epicycle,” a circle upon which the planet moves as the center of the epicycle moves in a perfect circle around the center of the Earth. In the special case of Venus and Mercury, the center of their epicycles is tied to the position of the center of the Sun, as the Sun moves around the Earth. For Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the centers of their epicycles have no spe- cial relation to the Sun. Ptolemy uses his model to explain the special motions of each of the planets, but makes an ad hoc assumption about where Venus and Mercury’s epicycles are centered, albeit an assumption required by observation as it manifests itself in his theory. That is, there is no explanation arising from Ptolemy’s model that explains the special status of Venus and Mercury. It is precisely this sort of complexity that Copernicus seeks to address with his heliocentric or Sun-centered model in his work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. By placing Earth as the third planet after Mercury and Venus, Copernicus gives a natural explanation not only for the maximum elongations of Mercury and Venus, but also for the retrograde motion of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, without resorting to epicycles. Yet Copernicus’s inversion from a geocentric (Earth-centered) to a heliocentric model of the universe, while it solved the problem of the maximum elongation of Venus and Mercury and the retrograde motions of the “outer planets,” still required something other than simple circles, which led Copernicus to place an epicycle at the center of the Sun. Of course, Newton’s interpretation of Kepler’s laws provided a simpler explanation still: an inverse-square force law for the attraction of the planets, and a force directed to the Sun’s center. Newton’s model saved the appearances by placing the regularity in the understanding and not in the imagination. In these examples, creativity and imagination have more modest poses. They help us rearrange the elements given to us by experience (or our predecessors’ observations and theories) into a new understanding of the ever-changing flux of experience before us. At the heart of this fluence are certain “regularities” which we now call physical laws and theories. These relate matter, time, motion, and our experiences with a mathematical regularity that is truly remarkable. And even if the day-to-day world seems like shadows on a cave wall, the regularities we have begun to notice suggest an underlying structure and light from which these shadows are cast. Visit Jim Beall, Annapolis tutor, on Facebook for daily astronomical postings. He presented the first modern account of a unified, systematically arranged planetary system revolving around the sun. The world no longer is what it looks like. There is now a split between being and appearance. Perspective and relative motion enter as major players in physical science. --Peter Kalkavage, tutor Was imagination essential to a scientist such as Copernicus? Absolutely. It is a real challenge to the imagination to think that perhaps this world upon which we are standing is moving! And that the sun is standing still! It takes even more imagination to grasp how what we seem to see can be explained on those grounds. It takes almost as much imagination, however, to think that the world is round, and that the sun is millions of miles away, larger than the earth The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 21 �tutor views But in addition to all this, Copernicus’s system did not make any better predictions than Ptolemy’s, and it was also not primarily based on new evidence. (He was before the telescope: new evidence did not begin to pour in until Galileo.) Perhaps Copernicus’s most important argument is that in his theory, the solar system makes more sense as a whole, as a system: and that argument appeals powerfully to the imagination. Ptolemy’s planets were not related to each other in any satisfying way; he analyzed each separately. It wasn’t even clear which were closer to the sun. In Copernicus, the planets are all locked into one easily imaginable whole. The relative sizes of the orbits and their arrangement is more satisfying to the intellect because it is so graspable by the imagination. --Henry Higuera, tutor Imagination was indeed essential to Copernicus, as it was for all the astronomers who came before him. We cannot stand outside the cosmos to see its scheme. Nor can we perform experiments on it. We can only observe, and based on our observations, formulate hypotheses that are true to what we observe. This is where imagination comes in—as the power of devising hypotheses. --Peter Kalkavage, Annapolis tutor It strikes me that many aspects of science involve imagination. For the sake of argument, let’s define imagination as the faculty or act of forming ideas or conceptions using images beyond what is present to the senses. Though scientists rely on the senses for observations and in experimentation, many of their ideas involve an imaginative act. From the thought experiments of Huygens or Einstein to Copernicus’s model of nested circles with the sun at the center, the very nature of thinking through a scientific challenge involves the imagination. --Greg Schneider, tutor Mathematical astronomy is the most beautiful application of mathematics to the visible world. The heavenly bodies exhibit an unsurpassed regularity in their motions. Chance seems to be either absent or negligible. The heavens are deeply connected with the divine—with theology. — Peter K alkavage, tutor Why is astronomy included in the Program? We don’t do “astronomy” as a subject. To be frank, I think that what we do is string together brilliant excerpts by three or four very great thinkers (Ptolemy, Copernicus, sometimes Kepler, and Newton) who treated astronomy. These works and their authors are worth appreciating on their own and comparing each to each on many levels: geometrical, logical, imaginative, methodological, and even theological. Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Newton each give different answers as to why we study astronomy. As a college, we think that each is worth taking seriously. --Henry Higuera, tutor Mathematical astronomy is the most beautiful application of mathematics to the visible world. The heavenly bodies exhibit an unsurpassed regularity in their motions. Chance seems to be either absent or negligible. The heavens are deeply connected with the divine—with theology. Also, mathematical astronomy, to a greater extent than other sciences, brings to the fore the curious thing we call a hypothesis. It also gives us an opportunity to discuss what it means to “save the appearances.” Ancient thinkers, especially those influenced by Pythagoras, believed that mathematical astronomy was good for our souls. Mathematical astronomy is the effort to think of the visible world in its wholeness. --Peter Kalkavage, tutor You will probably get many different answers to this question. Among the various reasons that occur to me, one is that astronomy was included among the original liberal arts. To be an educated human, you had to know something about the 22 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 cosmos of which we are a part. To the ancients, the heavenly spheres were eternal, so contemplating their motions was a way to reflect upon the eternal. And even the ancients acknowledged that astronomy has practical features for agriculture, for navigation, etc. In the introduction to On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus himself argues: “Unquestionably the summit of the liberal arts and most worthy of a free man, it is supported by almost all the branches of mathematics. Arithmetic, geometry, optics, surveying, mechanics and whatever others there are all contribute to it. Although all the good arts serve to draw man’s mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure.” Also, what are we to make of the sun’s not really being at the center of the earth’s movement? The “center” in Copernicus is a mathematical average of the centers of all the non-concentric planetary orbits. Also, what physical assumptions does Copernicus have to make in order to reject Ptolemy’s arguments against a moving earth, and how secure is the ground for these assumptions? What physically must be going on in a sun-centered cosmos? Is the sun somehow a cause of motion? Why are the planets (and now the earth) moving at all? And why in circles? In our world of atomic clocks and light-obscured night skies, my students and I have less daily contact with the heavens. We tend not to think of the eternal or the gods when we look up at the stars, but looking at the motions of the sun and the planets and the moon raises many fascinating questions about motion, mathematics, and physics, not to mention our place in the order of things. To me, Copernicus occupies this fascinating place between Ptolemy and Kepler. He retains Ptolemy’s reverence for circles while being willing to take the bold step of asserting a sun-centered universe. Why does he insist on circles and spheres in his model? --Greg Schneider, tutor Describe an opening question on Copernicus that still fascinates you. Why is Copernicus not more bothered by his little epicycle, the radius of which in effect reduplicates the eccentricity of the equant? How big a problem is it that the orbit that results from this little epicycle is a circle that has a slight bulge, or, as Copernicus puts it, “differs imperceptibly” from a circle? Another important and persistent question is the following: Has the meaning of “hypothesis,” and of “saving the appearances,” changed in the transition from Ptolemy to Copernicus? --Peter Kalkavage, tutor --Greg Schneider, tutor Is there a certain proposition or mathematical element of Copernicus’s work that amazes or puzzles you? Why? It puzzles me why Copernicus, who boasts of having more systematic unity than Ptolemy, doesn’t say more about the sun’s not being the mathematical center of the system. --Peter Kalkavage, tutor Active Galaxy Centaurus A itself, which Ptolemy already argued for. In this way Ptolemy was also “a scientist such as Copernicus.” tutor views Related to the last question, as a predictive model, Copernicus’s approach turns out to be less accurate than Ptolemy’s. Both rely on circles, but Ptolemy’s arrangement gives remarkable results in predicting the positions of the planets, compared to Copernicus’s model. This fact has always puzzled me. It raises intriguing questions about what makes a scientific model more compelling or powerful, from its predictive features to its agreement with experiment to its more aesthetic features. With regard to a specific proposition, his proof of the immensity of the heavens compared to the size of the earth in Chapter Six for some reason fascinates me. It relies, to some extent, on lines drawn from the center of the earth and from a point on its surface, seeming, at immense distances, either parallel or the same line. The proof anticipates some things that Newton does much later and highlights interesting ways in which our sense experience does or does not coincide with a mathematical portrayal of the same phenomenon. Perhaps Copernicus’s most important argument is that in his theory, the solar system makes more sense as a whole, as a system: and that argument appeals powerfully to the imagination. — Henry Higuera, tutor --Greg Schneider, tutor The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 23 �Seeing Stars Most of us gaze at the night sky with the naked eye or a backyard telescope, yearning to know more. These Johnnies have pursued, with deep curiosity, answers to the mysteries of the cosmos. Using sophisticated instrumentation, they are observing and recording celestial phenomena in far-flung galaxies, communicating with satellites that observe Earth, bringing their Johnnie imaginations to the puzzles of binary black holes, and illustrating mathematical theorems with thread. “�Instrumentation remains ‘a delicate balance’ because you need to know what the question is before constructing a means to an answer.” Charting the Cosmos: Rachel Dudik (a02) is a Star Detector —Rachel Dudik (a02) by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) photos of Rachel Dudik by James Kegley In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates tells a humorous anecdote about Thales of Miletus, often considered the first philosopher proper in the Greek (and hence the Western) tradition. 24 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Thales, he claims, was so focused on looking upward at the stars one night that he fell down a well, prompting a servant girl to laugh at him “because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet.” We have no way of ascertaining how much of this tale is true, of course; it has been suggested that Thales was in the well on purpose, knowing he’d be able to see the stars better through such darkness. The story illustrates how closely philosophy has been linked to astronomy since the beginnings of both—from Aristotle and Ptolemy to Newton and Copernicus. So it’s no surprise that the field of astronomy attracts Johnnies— although it’s not a career that Rachel Dudik (A02) ever expected. Growing up in central Pennsylvania, Dudik “was good at math and science,” she says, “but I really liked art and literature.” Now she’s an astronomer employed by the Department of Defense at the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) in Washington, D.C, surrounded by dyed-in-the-wool stargazers, most who “knew they wanted to be astronomers from the time they were seven,” she says. “So they were out with a telescope looking at the constellations; I was in my room drawing.” During her senior year, Dudik attended a lecture on black holes by Shobita Satyapal, a professor at Virginia’s George Mason University. She was immediately (forgive the pun) sucked in by “the fact that there were these massive things lurking out there in the centers of galaxies and that their presence could only be observed through indirect means. Also, I just like very powerful exploding things.” Dudik’s lab tutor, Jim Beall—also an adjunct professor at GMU at the time—arranged this lifechanging lecture. He describes Dudik today as an “intelligent, resourceful, and accomplished scientist.” In 2002, Beall recommended her for Satyapal’s summer internship at GMU immediately after graduation. When the university began to offer doctorates in astronomy, they actively recruited St. John’s students—an unusual resource for the so-called “hard” sciences. Dudik was one of these initial recruits: “There were two Italians and three Johnnies,” she recalls. In January 2009, she became the first to earn a doctorate from the new program—a PhD in Physical Sciences with a concentration in physics and astronomy. (The program has since changed slightly.) “Going from the Socratic method to advanced coursework in modern physics wasn’t an easy transition,’” she recalls. Although she took a few undergrad astrophysics classes to get up to speed, Dudik attributes her success to the program’s chair, Maria Dworzecka, who was a strong supporter of St. John’s students, and Satyapal, who became The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 25 �Rachel Dudik (A02) is on a quest to increase the precision with which we chart our universe. knowledge of astronomy. Dudik needs to understand some engineering to guide their work, as she must decide what the detector is supposed to do and how to make it happen. Instrumentation remains “a delicate balance,” Dudik says, “because you need to know what the question is before constructing a means to an answer.” Dudik’s advisor. As a graduate of Bryn Mawr, Satyapal understood the liberal arts approach to math and sciences. “She was an amazing advisor for someone with my background,” says Dudik. “It was like I hadn’t left home.” “�You need to catch every single light particle, and not confuse them with According to Dudik, modern astronomy can be roughly subdivided anything else.” into three spheres: observation, theory, and instrumentation. During her graduate studies, which included a fellowship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, she concentrated on observation, using astronomical data to investigate how black holes are formed. A layperson might imagine a figure in a white lab coat, squinting through the eyepiece of a telescope and taking furious notes. Today, however, a camera, spectrometer, or other device far more precise than the human eye plays the role of squinter, and the telescope itself might be in space. Because data is only as good as the instrument that gathers it, ever more sensitive (and expensive) equipment must be built for discoveries to continue. As Dudik began her post-degree career, she moved away from the observational side of astronomy. “I’m the kind of person who likes to study something really hard for about six years and then wants to do something else,” she says. Since May 2008, her work at the USNO has primarily involved instrumentation. Once again, she has benefited from a St. John’s mentor—Bryan Dorland (A92), chief of USNO’s Astrometric Satellite Division, who has allowed her to learn engineering on the job. “His having the background that I did has been very important for me,” says Dudik. “He’s also very supportive of my career, teaching me what I don’t know.” The U.S. Naval Observatory was founded in 1830 as the Depot of Charts and Instruments, caring for the Navy’s nautical charts and chronometers—the means for ships to orient themselves in time as well as space. Both are vital to celestial navigation. Throughout the 19th century, the observatory honed the accuracy of these tools. Systematic observations of heavenly objects led to scientific achievement. In 1877, using the largest refracting telescope in the world, Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars. That telescope is still in use today. Although technology has evolved considerably, the USNO’s mission has changed little; they determine the positions and motions of celestial bodies, the Earth, and precise time; they keep the official time of the United States, now determined by atomic clocks aboard GPS satellites. Those same satellites act as 26 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 high-tech sextants, allowing ships to determine their exact positions. The quest for increased precision in celestial observation—and the expansion of our charted universe—requires constant innovation. Dudik and Dorland work in detector development, seeking ways to improve the informationgathering capabilities of the USNO’s telescopes. These detectors are sensitive to visible light, similar in purpose to those found in any camera phone. Since their extraterrestrial quarry is often too faint to be seen, they are far greater in strength: “When you take a picture with your phone,” explains Dudik, “there’s light everywhere.” Stars, however, can’t be seen without the most expensive detectors. “You need to catch every single light particle, and not confuse them with anything else,” she says. No mean feat in the blackness of space. Each “hybrid” detector has two layers. One layer consists of a material sensitive to a certain wavelength of light—silicon for the visible spectrum, and usually mercury cadmium telluride for an infrared detector. The second layer is an electronic readout; data from both layers is “smashed together” to create a single detector. Additional electronics “send signals to the readout layer on the detector to tell it when to integrate and when to stop integrating,” says Dudik. The detectors are built by engineers in California, who may have little While the USNO’s main mission is practical astrometry, the Navy realizes that its scientists must do research, too. At the end of March, Dudik spent two nights at Palomar Observatory in California, using data from its telescopes to search for planets orbiting different stars. Sometimes ground-based observation isn’t enough for the research Dudik wants to do –she needs an instrument far out in space. NASA’s multi-billion-dollar space telescopes are, of course, in high demand. Detailed proposals must be submitted and reviewed before a project is granted observation time. “You’re competing against hundreds of astronomers across the country who all have really great ideas on science targets to use these particular telescopes,” says Dudik. “You have to look at the science idea from every angle.” Luckily, that is a skill familiar to Johnnies. “An essential part of being a good researcher is reading on your own, coming up with your own ideas, writing really good papers—and being critical of your own ideas,” she says. She has noticed that traditionally trained physicists are often able to solve problems, but less able to think of new ones. The numerous philosopher/astronomers on the St. John’s Program have inspired her. Beyond the usual suspects, she mentions Kant, whose 1755 monograph, Universal History and Theory of the Heavens, was the first work to theorize that nebulae glimpsed through telescopes were actually distant star systems like our own Milky Way, later called “island universes.” Now they are known as galaxies, and we can see farther into the heavens than Kant or Thales ever imagined. seeing stars Searching the Universe: Night Flights with Gabrelle Saurage (ec04) by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) considered herself “done with astronomy” after years as a telescope operator. She was pursuing a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of New Mexico until this past January, when she was offered a chance to fulfill a childhood dream: to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The telescope she drives these days—or rather, these nights—makes its home in the guts of a converted 747 airplane, and casts its infrared eye on celestial objects far and near, recording images at wavelengths that no other telescope can. The project, which has a planned 20-year lifetime, is called the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA for short—an evocative name for any Johnnie. It’s the largest airborne observatory in the world, the result of a partnership between NASA and its German equivalent, the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR). SOFIA’s revamped 747, dubbed the “Clipper Lindbergh” after the pioneering aviator, contains a 17-ton telescope with three internal mirrors, which reflect and focus energy from space through an infrared camera called FORCAST (Faint Object Infrared Camera for the Sofia Telescope). The camera was developed by scientists at Cornell University; its largest mirror is 2.7 meters across. Operating from NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California, SOFIA’s night flights carry anywhere from 14 to 38 people within the gutted and rebuilt interior of the aircraft. Evenings at Dryden begin with a crew briefing where, clad in her khaki flight suit, Saurage joins other members of the team to go over the rules and objectives for that flight, such as what objects they’ll be observing and what specialized instruments will be used. Many sub-groups take part in the mission: the flight crew; the operations crew, which includes Saurage and another telescope operator; and visiting astronomers gathering data on a particular heavenly body or phenomena. All are shepherded by a mission director. In addition, NASA’s public outreach means that media and science educators are often present. Saurage’s role is crucial, as she is responsible for the exacting, computer-driven process of actually moving the telescope, “working with astronomers trying to get observations of different things. Every night it’s something different.” Many objects in space emit their energy at infrared wavelengths, hidden not only Inset photo: Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 27 �from the human eye but from ordinary cameras and telescopes located beneath the earth’s stratospheric clouds. Other objects are obscured by interstellar dust or gases that visible light cannot pass through—but infrared can. SOFIA, then, is able to perceive things previously invisible, such as newborn stars at the hearts of galaxies, exotic molecules never before detected in space, or the vibrant Modern science “wasn’t really tackling the questions I was looking for,” which were Big Questions: “How did this all get started? layers of cloud surrounding the planet Jupiter, with the heat of the planet spilling through. Wavelengths emitted by a given object tell scientists much about the materials it is made of, providing insights into the construction of the universe as well as its turbulent history. And because NASA is a government agency, SOFIA’s awe-inspiring images are freely available to the public: a visit to the project website, sofia. usra.edu, is the best kind of Internet black hole. For Saurage, some of the information that SOFIA collects speaks directly to her intellectual interests: “You tend to lean either macro or micro [in science]. Some people are interested in DNA and genetics, so they might lean toward biology and chemistry, even particle physics,” she says. “I’m interested in galaxy structure and star formation. seeing stars Because of that, the part of physics that always interested me was cosmology, the story of the beginning.” While other Johnnie astronomers followed philosophy with physics, Saurage took the opposite path. She earned a B.S. in physics in 1996 from Southwest Texas State University (which dropped the “Southwest” in 2003). She “drove” telescopes at various observatories: McDonald in west Texas and W. M. Keck in Hawaii—near the summit of Mauna Kea, Keck houses the largest optical telescope on Earth. Although Saurage found the work rewarding, she felt that modern science “wasn’t tackling the questions I was looking for,” which were Big Questions: “How did this all get started? What is all this?” Saurage enrolled in the Eastern Classics program, where her favorite readings were from Indian philosophy, exploring “the relationship of humanity to divinity.” Cosmology stories from the Upanishads continue to influence her work. After receiving her master’s, Saurage put in time at the Apache Point observatory in southern New Mexico, but found herself drawn back to philosophy—until SOFIA came along. Saurage finds that her St. John’s education occasionally confounds the scientists with whom she works. “I’m an oddball—but to me it makes sense, because it fits in the realm of pursuing these ideas. I have always been more oriented toward math and science in the classical Greek way. I don’t see the divisions that we create in the modern American university. If I’m interested in how the universe works, I’m not going to isolate myself in any one of those fields. It’s all up for grabs.” 28 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Intergalactic Wanderers: Erin Wells Bonning (a97) Trails a Nomadic Black Hole by Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) In 1971, British astronomers Donald Lynden-Bell and Martin Rees hypothesized that the center of the Milky Way galaxy contained a black hole—no run-of-the-mill black hole, either, but a gargantuan one now known to be the mass of four million suns. Three years later, a pair of Americans, Bruce Balick and Robert Brown, discovered an enormous source of radio waves in a region of our galaxy called Sagittarius A, now widely accepted as the theorized black hole. In fact, the astronomical community now believes that most, if not all galaxies contain what is termed “supermassive” black holes. How these are formed, however, and their connection with the creation of the galaxies themselves, is still a topic of intense debate and research. Erin Wells Bonning (A97), along with her University of Texas at Austin colleague Greg Shields, recently gained the attention of Science News with a paper that may contribute greatly to our understanding of these giant phenomena. Scientists believe “�You have to go on faith that there is reason and meaning to be found there, and you struggle with it. [Science] is the same process.” rick dahms seeing stars that when galaxies combine, their two central black holes sink to the center, orbiting each other until they eventually merge. Computer simulations, says Bonning, suggest that these pairs “are giving off gravitational radiation, ripples in space-time propagating away from the binary black hole. It’s something that’s predicted in Einstein’s theory, and there are experiments going on right now attempting to detect this phenomenon.” These simulations also imply something perhaps more astounding: that the union of two black holes can release energy so great as to fling the new object entirely out of its home galaxy, sending it flying across the universe until it settles elsewhere. The idea of such a “runaway” black hole remains unproven, however. Researchers like Bonning and Shields have combed through dozens of likely candidates, and now believe they have identified one. In 2012, a team of Dutch astronomers led by Remco van den Bosch discovered an anomalous black hole at the heart of a galaxy called NGC 1277, 250 million light-years from Earth. This black hole is much larger than the galaxy’s size would predict—a staggering 17 billion solar masses. Bonning and Shields’s explanation is that it’s a nomad, having been hurled quintillions of miles over billions of years to reach its position. If true (and in theoretical astrophysics, it’s a long road to certainty), this would be the first definite evidence supporting the “runaway” theory. As such, it is exciting to the scientific community—although difficult for laypeople to wrap their heads around. (Andrew Grant’s Science News article on Bonning and Shields’s paper can be read online at www.sciencenews.org/view/ generic/id/348554/description/ New_home_for_runaway_black_ hole.) Astronomy was always an interest for Bonning, as “a little geek girl [who] read all about black holes and relativity and quantum mechanics, and it was just the coolest stuff I’d ever heard of.” While she devoured “anything and everything” in the space and physics section of the library, her supportive parents nurtured her interest in science, giving her a small telescope, a microscope, and a chemistry set. “One of my fondest childhood memories is of the day when my dad and I played hooky (me from second grade) to go visit the Air and Space Museum in D.C.,” she says. “For the longest time, I thought it was the ‘Erin Space Museum’ because obviously it was built for me!” Like other Johnnie astronomers, Bonning cites Annapolis tutor Jim Beall’s influence in her choice of astronomy as a career: “He was my freshman seminar tutor, and we eventually ended up working together at the Naval Research Lab for a couple of summers while I was an undergrad” in 1996 and 1997. Beall calls Bonning “a young woman of enormous energy, focus, and goodwill.” He is “especially fond” of her postdoctoral discovery of the concurrent radio and gamma ray The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 29 �seeing stars seeing stars variability of an active galaxy—because he discovered the first such concurrent variability years ago. During her junior and senior years at St. John’s, Bonning was invited by USNA professor AnneMarie Novo-Gradac to work in her optics lab. (Novo-Gradac is now a program executive in astrophysics at NASA headquarters.) “She allowed me to audit her class, gave me homework sets. She was just amazing,” Bonning says. “I learned so much from her in the lab, about science and also about the professional reality of being a scientist.” In 2004, Bonning earned a PhD in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. She has since held a Marie Curie Fellowship at Observatoire de Paris à Meudon, “�I was a little geek girl [who] read all about black holes and relativity and quantum mechanics, and it was just the coolest stuff I’d ever heard of.” and was the Debra Fine Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. Currently she is a teaching fellow in physical sciences at Quest University Canada in Squamish, British Columbia. Quest’s educational philosophy is “in some respects very similar to St. John’s,” Bonner says. “It’s very studentcentered, discussion-centered, everyone around a big table.” (The school’s chief academic officer is former Santa Fe tutor Jim Cohn.) As an educator, Bonning believes her job is “not to place knowledge into the mind of the student, but to lead the student through the process of learning.” Bonning divides her time between teaching and research, which for her and other astronomers in Hypatia’s Legacy If Thales of Miletus was the first classical astronomer, Hypatia of Alexandria was the first woman to gain wide renown in the field. Hypatia, who flourished in Roman Egypt during the fourth century C.E., was educated by her father, Theon, and is said to have authored The Astronomical Canon. She also studied and taught mathematics and Neoplatonist philosophy. Apparently she was murdered by a Christian mob, caught up in a conflict between the bishop and the prefect of Alexandria. Although her work is lost, she is immortalized not only in numerous historical novels but in the heavens themselves; her name has been given to an asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, and to a crater on the moon. In the modern era, it remains common to hear concerns that women are under-represented in the hard sciences. Whether this lack of diversity is the result of institutional discrimination, cultural conditioning, or inherent gender differences is an ongoing and controversial discussion. Physics (of which astronomy is considered a sub-discipline) is the most male-dominated of the sciences—but many St. John’s-educated women who have gone on to astronomy careers feel comfortable in their field. Rachel Dudik (A02), an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, and Erin Wells Bonning (A97), a teaching fellow at Quest University in Canada, agree that astronomy has changed drastically in the past 10 to 15 years in terms of gender balance, as a new scientific generation advances. academia involves more computermodeling and data-crunching than direct observation of the heavens. “The vast majority of time is not spent at the telescope,” she says. “You go and take your data, and then bring your data back to your home institution, where you use it to answer whatever questions you’re posing to the universe at that time.” The topics of Bonning’s questions are nigh incomprehensible to the outsider: “Multiwavelength observations and theoretical modeling of active galactic nuclei and relativistic jets. Astrophysics of strongly gravitating systems. 30 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Both are grateful for the example and guidance of older female scientists, like George Mason University’s Shobita Satyapal (Dudik’s post-graduate advisor) or NASA’s Anne-Marie Novo-Gradac, who mentored Bonning in her optics lab at the U.S. Naval Academy. “At the observatory,” Dudik says, “I’m really outnumbered, but I don’t think that’s for lack of effort. We have tried to hire a number of women there, and most of them end up choosing not to come.” She thinks many prefer to go into education. Bonning, too, admits that “you can be the only woman in a room, but we’ve really come a long way. My advisor has experienced overt sexism—professors actually saying, ‘Women do not belong in this class; you’re taking the space of a man.’ I’ve never heard that, and most of my female colleagues have not.” Gabrelle Saurage (EC04) studied physics as an undergraduate at Southwest Texas State University, where she was the only woman in her department, among both students and faculty members. “There was always an awkwardness about that,” she says, “but I was never harassed, just looked over.” The university now has a female professor on staff, who contacted Saurage years after her graduation, just to check up on how her career was progressing. “I thought that was great!” says Saurage. “Because there are so few women, we all need to take care of each other and encourage each other to keep doing what we’re doing.” — Anna Perleberg Andersen (sf02) Electromagnetic signatures of binary black hole mergers and post-merger recoils. Sources of gravitational radiation, binary black holes, numerical relativity.” In less technical terms, these subjects of study seek to learn about the origin, construction, and continuing life of the universe. Asked about which Program readings have most influenced her scientific career, Bonning names not Ptolemy, Newton, or Copernicus (although they certainly helped), but Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. “Not because of any questions it made me ask about astronomy, but because it’s the sort of training we’re given at St. John’s,” she explains. “We’re given a book and we’re asked to read it, and we trust that it makes sense. You have to go on faith that there is reason and meaning to be found there, and you struggle with it. [Science] is the same process. We observe the universe, and there seems to be a system of physical laws that describe what we see, that are knowable through reason.” Although most of her scientific training took place outside St. John’s, Bonner is grateful for an education in “being fearless when presented with something that doesn’t seem to make sense at all.” Donna Loraine Contractor (SF82) at her loom, and one of her tapestries, Involute Curve. Weaving Theorems: Donna Contractor (sf82) Intertwines Art and Science by Gregory Shook Is it possible to express the hundreds of ways to solve the Pythagorean Theorem using only cotton yarn and a loom? For Donna Loraine Contractor (SF82), a mathematicianturned-weaver, this question speaks to the heart of her work. Sharing her love of quadratic equations, elliptical curve theory, irrational root rectangles, and the golden mean, last year Contractor put out a call to scientists and mathematicians to collaborate in creating woven, visual models of intricate and beautiful constructs; an example of which is Apollonian Gasket, a piece from her “Universal Language” series. As a part of her “New Math Plus” series, she may feature a tapestry based on a Copernicus theorem. Contractor has a gift for illustrating complex ideas in ways that are easy to understand. “I meet a lot of adults who think, Math? I hate math!” says Contractor. “And then they look at the piece and start letting go of their mathophobia.” Contractor did not go to art school. In true Johnnie fashion, she learned to weave by reading, observing, and engaging with other artists. Her selftaught approach coupled with a passion for great minds such as Apollonius of Perga, Helge Von Koch, Gerog Cantor, and Copernicus help her create distinctive works of art. “I’m good at finding books, reading them, and pulling in all that information,” says Contractor. “Part of the reason I got into working with mathematical designs was through the process of self-teaching about color and design theory. Throughout the history of art, so much of design and composition were thought out in terms of mathematics. I’m showing those actual concepts in my tapestries. With my designs, I pull the mathematical idea—things like where the horizon line and focal point should be—to the forefront and illustrate that.” Contractor first came to New Mexico in 1977 to attend St. John’s. Arriving in Santa Fe by Greyhound bus, the Midwest transplant from Kenosha, Wisconsin connected with the Southwest spiritually and intellectually. She has called New Mexico home ever since. Planting roots in Albuquerque, Contractor works from home inside a 350-square-foot studio built from a converted garage by her architect husband, Devendra Contractor (SF79). The setting is ideal. “He’s done a wonderful job lighting it, with lots of windows to let in sunlight from all directions,” she says. “�Throughout the history of art, so much of design and composition were thought out in terms of mathematics.” “I put crystals in the window, which cast lovely rainbows.” Having originally set out to pursue interests in math and science, she increasingly found herself wanting to nourish her artistic soul. Contractor discovered weaving by happenstance—a moment that would forever change her life. “I walked into my friend’s house, The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 31 �seeing stars seeing stars Back to the Future: “�We had to basically write our own operating systems. Now it’s more a matter of integration, what we call ‘glueware,’ or putting all of those pieces together.” Kevin Parker (a79) Helps Humans “Talk” to Satellites by Paula Novash and there was a beautiful, six-foot loom with these great baskets full of colorful yarn. That attracted me to weaving right away,” she says. Given her mathematical bent, it is no wonder she was fascinated by the loom, with all its intricate, moving parts. “My primary loom has a dobby mechanism, pneumatic tensioning system, and a worm gear,” says Contractor. “I love the parts!” Contractor enjoys weaving tapestries that teach, tell stories, and express ideas. Though math and science are perhaps the themes closest to her heart, she looks to other weaving traditions such as Old French, Native American, and Oaxacan as well as other artists’ work as sources for ideas. “I have a series of tapestries called ‘The Fractured Square’, which is about looking at artists who I am excited and inspired by, such as Gustav Klimt,” says Contractor. “I like the idea of the seemingly fractured nature of life in this modern world. You try to pull yourself together and make a whole out of all the pieces.” Creating tapestries that celebrate theorems, precision and elegance of geometric forms, formulas and the beauty of color and balance, Contractor finds peace in the fine details of weaving. “You have to love the process and how the loom works.” In the 1985 science fiction film, Back to the Future, teenager Marty McFly is accidentally transported back thirty years using a time-traveling DeLorean automobile. When scientist Emmett Brown proposes returning him to his own era with a plan that involves harnessing electrical energy from a bolt of lightning, Marty is skeptical. “Don’t worry,” Dr. Brown reassures him. “As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely 88 miles per hour the instant the lightning strikes the tower, everything will be fine!” Kevin Parker (A79) may not be a professor of sci-fi lore, but he also juggles precise, high-tech options while trying to predict the future. As a software engineer, he creates satellite simulators at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and is currently working on the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), developing the next generation of polar-orbiting weather satellites. NASA Goddard has several dozen satellites in space, doing a variety of jobs that include gathering information about global climate change. In addition to ensuring a continuation of over 50 years of weather satellite observations, these new JPSS satellites will generate more accurate and timely weather- and climate-related data, ultimately saving lives and property by allowing scientists to monitor catastrophic phenomena like tornadoes and hurricanes more closely than ever before. Parker is creating the Flight Vehicle Test Suite, a high-fidelity simulator that tests ground systems 32 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 for the JPSS project and trains the engineers who run it. Once a satellite is launched, Parker explains, it streams data to these engineers in the control center. They make sense of the data and respond, he says, with “messages that the satellite will understand.” Calling himself a “fake rocket” scientist, Parker makes replica systems— literally “fake rockets”—that allow scientists and engineers to practice this process. “�It is like composing a response that not only makes grammatical sense, but endeavors to sound like [a particular] person.” Parker uses e-mail as a metaphor to help laypeople understand the different types of simulation tools. A low-fidelity simulator, he says, is like a program that can generate “To” and “From” fields, a subject line, and maybe some gibberish for a message. A medium-fidelity simulator could go a bit further and respond to a message in a routine way, by picking out a phrase like “How are you?” and answering “Fine.” But Parker’s sophisticated high-fidelity simulators have the ability to respond to the spacecraft itself. That, he says, is like “having some sort of artificial intelligence parsing an e-mail and composing a response that not only makes grammatical sense, but endeavors to sound like [a particular] person.” Parker provides this example to illustrate the simulators at work: A satellite’s ground system sends a command to fire a thruster that will turn the spacecraft. A low-fidelity simulator would track the command. A medium-fidelity simulator would realize that the thruster is being fired and is now hot. A high-fidelity simulator would do all of these things plus, says Parker, “register the force on the spacecraft, gradually increase the temperature readings from around the thruster, reduce the amount of fuel remaining, and indicate to any device on the spacecraft that looks outward that it’s turning, and that whatever it’s looking at now is different from what it was looking at before.” Parker describes the bricklayer in the traditional story, who says he’s not simply slapping together masonry, but building a cathedral. For instance, during Superstorm Sandy, weather satellites helped forecasters determine that the hurricane, which was expected to shift out to sea, was actually turning back toward the New York/ New Jersey coastline. “Without the weather satellite input, they would never have seen that,” he explains. “So that’s the ‘great cathedral’ part of the work” that Parker’s simulators make possible. more a matter of integration, what we call ‘glueware,’ or putting all of those pieces together. You can actually go out and buy the software that is the core of a spacecraft control center.” Parker has also seen many technologies developed by NASA scientists filter down to the wider public. For instance, charge-coupled devices (CCDs), instrumental to the Hubble’s photographic processes, now are widely used in digital cameras and medical imaging. “The Hubble,” he jokes, “is like a digital camera the size of a bus.” jen behrens Donna Loraine Contractor, Tunnel Vision This integrated view is natural for a Johnnie; a long tradition connects astronomy and the liberal arts—Kepler united theories of astronomy, mathematics, music, and theology in his Harmonices mundi, for example and early Christians recognized astronomy as one of the seven liberal arts as far back as the sixth century AD. Parker thinks the connections between disciplines could be strengthened as society is increasingly shaped by engineering and technology. “Even at St. John’s, which has a decent science program, it’s still very much weighted towards liberal arts and literature and history,” he says. “Both sides really need to talk to each other a lot more.” After graduating from St. John’s, Parker spent several years in Illinois while his wife Tina (A79) was in graduate school; she has an master’s in zoology. When they returned to Maryland, he got a job with a Goddard contractor. During his 30-year tenure there, he has completed two advanced degrees (a computer science master’s from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Astronomy from James Cook University) while contributing to a variety of highprofile projects that include the infrared-optimized James Webb Space Telescope. At NASA Goddard, visitors can peer through huge glass windows to view a dust- and contaminant-free “clean room” where scientists and technicians clad in full-body white suits are working on James Webb. The telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018, will seek out some of the youngest planetary systems and oldest galaxies in the universe. Parker’s contributions included writing scripts to ensure that science instruments work together within the Webb’s framework, so that “all the pieces are talking to each other,” he explains. Parker has also developed simulators and code for the Hubble Space Telescope and the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. Over the years, Parker has observed major shifts in his work due to radical changes in technology. When he started, “We had to basically write our own operating systems,” he recalls. “Now it’s Parker enjoys the creative challenges of his work—“It’s like getting paid to solve puzzles,” he says—but in his day-to-day routine of writing and testing code, he sometimes loses sight of how much he’s contributing to the advancement of science. A good reminder, he says, comes from visitors to NASA Goddard. “It’s really appealing to show someone around, because I see the enthusiasm. I remember [walking past] a bunch of scientists, and on their door it said ‘Origins of the Universe Section.’ And I was like, ‘holy cow.’” For more information on the JPSS project and the James Webb and Hubble Space telescopes, visit www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/ home/index.html. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 33 �Shadow of War by Henry Robert, Class of 1941 Some who attended or worked at St. John’s in Annapolis may have wondered about certain discolorations of the brick on the outer northeast wall of Chase-Stone House (facing King George Street). For a long time, the stains were prominent. They have faded through the decades, but what’s left of them is clearly visible if one looks closely. Their origin may be of some interest. Members of St. John’s College class of 1941 34 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Between the window frames of the first and second stories (above the basement) is a horizontal line of lighter-colored brick a few inches wide, running from front to back. The building had a side porch until its complete renovation in 1963, and the line of lighter brick is where the porch roof was attached to the building wall. Below the porch roofline at a level that would have confronted you Henry Robert, class of 1941 directly if you stood on the porch, The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 35 �When I went to bed, it must have been around two a.m.; nothing seemed amiss. That morning when we got up, lo and behold, staring passersby in the face on the outside brick wall of Chase House’s side porch, were two accurately drawn, neatly painted swastikas. We knew that in all probability, we were moving toward war, even if much of the country’s population wouldn’t face the fact. opposite page: Members of the Class of 1944, St. John’s College 1944 Yearbook, p.30. Photos courtesy of The Greenfield Library archives. Class of 1941 and Henry Robert images: SJC-P-1906; SJC-P-0214. are two squares of similarly lighter-colored brick approximately 30 inches on a side, centered from front to back on the wall, maybe fifteen feet apart. These discolorations arise from a very different cause from the one along the porch roofline, and they make a bit of a story. The relevant incident happened one weekend in the early spring of 1941. The student body of the college, if I remember correctly, then numbered about 125. It was my senior year as a student in the first New Program class, the only class that had students in both programs. There were nine of us New Programmers and my recollection is then in the Old Program. A few words about the campus climate at that time may be appropriate. That period may have been looked upon as part of a “golden age.” It was exciting, to be sure. Apart from the many directions in which this was true at the intellectual level, I believe we as students took a certain devilish satisfaction in thinking of our college as a place where “anything can happen and usually does.” Among the factors that contributed to this atmosphere, the college had been through a period of “civil war” between the Old (elective) Program students on the one hand, and the college administration on the other, supported by the New Program students. For a couple of years, there evidently was a feeling among Old Program students that they were merely tolerated. Through those two years, acts of vandalism, particularly window breaking, were a regular occurrence. These acts most often happened in the wee hours of Sunday mornings, doubtless done by students after drinking. This conflict had subsided by the year 1940-41. The ten or so Old Program students in my class were the only ones left, and by then our small senior group had become one happy brotherhood. Yet much of the student body’s conditioning as to what might be expected on Sunday mornings persisted. The other significant overriding element in campus outlook was that we knew that in all probability, we were moving toward war, even 36 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 if much of the country’s population wouldn’t face the fact. England was deep in it. The continent of Europe was blacked out, cut off from civilization, overrun by Hitler’s Nazis the preceding June. The Navy, in their outpost across the street, well knew that we were already at war in the Atlantic. On the Saturday evening of the weekend of our episode, there was a formal dance in Iglehart Hall. I lived on the top floor of Stone House that year. When I went to bed, it must have been around two a.m.; nothing seemed amiss. That morning when we got up, lo and behold, staring passersby in the face on the outside brick wall of Chase House’s side porch, were two accurately drawn, neatly painted swastikas. These 30-inch squares with arms two or three inches wide, inscribed with green paint, were the emblem of the enemy, the symbol of Hitler’s Nazis! The Navy obviously didn’t think it was funny. An “unconfirmed report” had it that Winkie Barr’s telephone rang promptly at 9:00 a.m. Monday. A voice demanded to speak to him, and instantly barked, “This is the Superintendent’s Office. Get those things off that wall NOW!” At that time, it was easier said than done. Today you could call a power-wash man who does paint removal. He would come with his machine, fitted with an attachment to feed certain chemicals into the spray. Armed with this rig, he would— for a fee of several hundred dollars—quickly wash away all traces of paint. Evidently, that technology did not exist or was not readily available in 1941. A laborer from the college’s Buildings and Grounds force went to work with a pair of heavy-duty rubber gloves, a bucket of acid, and a scrub brush, with which he scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Two days later, the swastika patterns were gone, but in their place on the wall were two thirty-inch squares of brick uniformly stained a conspicuous yellowish-green. And there they stayed! Apparently that was the best anybody knew how to do, leaving the wall for the weather to do what it would—very slowly—through the years to come. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 37 �bibliofile bibliofile Gary Borjesson: Dogs and the Art of Friendship “Dogs have four hundred times the power of sense that humans have.” With a nod to Aristotle, Gary Borjesson, tutor at the Annapolis campus, says that friendship is an art. Like all arts, it requires mindfulness and practice in order to flourish. In his debut book, Willing Dogs & Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs (Paul Dry Books, Inc. 2012), Borjesson uses our relationships with dogs as a way of examining themes central to all friendships, such as spiritedness and the role of authority with those we love and want to love us in return. “I was already interested in dogs, but as a teacher and as a student of philosophy, I was especially interested in friendships, particularly in the moments when one friend has to tell another friend something hard and when we find ourselves judging or holding something against another friend,” says Borjesson. “Those moments are really difficult for human beings to sort out.” As the book’s title suggests, Borjesson is interested in exploring inequalities in friendships, in which one person has some responsibility toward the other. He conducted his research from both scientific and philosophical points of view, refining what he learned by working with his canine companions, Kestra, a mixed-breed of German shepherd and Border collie, and Aktis, a nine-year-old German shepherd. The dogs helped to illustrate the book’s themes and bring them to life. “We often want to keep friendships unconditional,” says Borjesson. “We don’t like the idea of judging our friends, and yet at the same time we are always engaged in keeping score. The point of practicing friendship is to get beyond the inequalities, to develop trust through mutual understanding.” Part of the path to achieving this in our relations with dogs—or children or students, for that matter—is by compassionately using our authority to educate them. Borjesson also points out that with his dog, Aktis, “the best promise for reaching a kind of equality was 38 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 to figure out what sorts of activities he takes joy in doing and bring him a sense of accomplishment.” Tracking turned out to be the perfect, shared activity. Says Borjesson, “Dogs have four hundred times the power of sense that humans have, so I’m meeting Aktis where he can be fully realized, which is part of the way Aristotle defines happiness—activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.” Borjesson argues that a friendship is a journey wherein both parties have a choice. “If dogs are to be called friends, and not merely friendly in the natural, familial sense, then they, too, must be capable of choosing us as friends,” says Borjesson. Training a dog, he says, builds a dog’s capacity to choose and creates a world that is more coherent and trustworthy. This point relates to the role of spiritedness in friendships. “Spiritedness is the drive in the soul, both in the human and the canine soul, to be sociable and put oneself out there, to fight and love, to compete and cooperate.” Part of what masters try to achieve through training and education is to use authority to nurture the cooperative nature of spiritedness. Many dog owners may agree with Borjesson’s comparison of friendships with dogs and parent-child relationships. In the classroom, Borjesson sees a similar dynamic in his role as tutor. “Like most teachers, I naturally want my students to like me,” says Borjesson. “Yet I can’t let this desire override my responsibility to compassionately use my authority when doing so is in the student’s best interest. At St. John’s, those occasions are relatively rare, as tutors and students feel more of a connection and regard for our mutual interest. When classes are at their best, the issue of authority disappears because we’re all sharing responsibility for making the conversation fruitful and enlightening.” Borjesson relates that experience to working with Aktis and Kestra. “There are moments when you use your authority to encourage and praise, others when you use it to discourage and correct, but as the training proceeds, you and the dog begin simply to enjoy cooperating on behalf of common good.” —Erin Fitzpatrick (A14) and Gregory Shook Thomas Simpson: A Vision of Science Simpson illustrates that there is much to be gained from revisiting the major works of this familiar— albeit unlikely— trio of thinkers. What do Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, and Karl Marx have in common? In his recent publication, Newton, Maxwell, Marx: Spirit, Freedom, and the Scientific Vision (Green Lion Press, 2012), Thomas Simpson, Class of 1950 and tutor emeritus, proposes that these three iconic figures share a vision of science that lends itself to achieving intellectual, material, and spiritual freedom. The book is a collection of three of Simpson’s earlier essays (“Science as Mystery: A Speculative Reading of Newton’s Principia,” “Maxwell’s Treatise and the Restoration of the Cosmos,” and “Toward a Reading of Capital”). These essays were first published more than 20 years ago, under the editorial direction of John Van Doren, in the Encyclopedia Britannica’s annual series, The Great Ideas Today, as supplements to the Great Books of the Western World. Simpson expands beyond the essays—reprinted in their original form—adding introductory and concluding essays. He considers each separate work as an inquiry into and also a response to the fundamental ideas of science and nature of each of the three authors’ time—one’s concepts of which, says Simpson, necessarily concern one’s beliefs about society and freedom. Simpson reads the three essays anew. Inspired by fresh insights, he connects the material and proposes a dialectical thread that begins in the 17th century and develops a vision of science that remains challenging today. Simpson illustrates that there is much to be gained from revisiting the major works of this familiar—albeit unlikely— trio of thinkers; their intense regard for the human spirit is what unites them. Beginning with Newton, Simpson writes: “We once approached the Principia as the founding work of modern physics; now we see it as the culminating work of serious alchemy—a mathematical biology of all natural functions, inclusive of the very cause of life itself—and indeed, as Newton’s book of life. The unity of Newton’s thought may astound us, as we ourselves try to piece together in our own time a coherent picture of the world; thus, the Principia holds a central place in Newton’s theology, since the concept of force restores scope for God’s active presence in the world, a presence crucial to Newton’s faith, for which mechanism had left no room.” Simpson is passionate about the scientific contributions of Maxwell. He has published three books on the subject: Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study (Rutgers University Press, 1998), Figures of Thought: A Literary Appreciation of Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Green Lion Press, 2006), and Maxwell’s Mathematical Rhetoric: Rethinking The Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Green Lion Press, 2010). Simpson writes, “Maxwell perhaps reflects the larger course of human history when with equal concern he carries this same human spirit to the level of its democratic manifestation.” Arguably, Simpson’s connection to Marx is the most curious, as he examines the science behind Marx’s vision of human society. “It is almost as if we had read Capital until now only as ideology, failing to confront the vastly expanded concept of science which Marx is proposing, in which society itself, its institutions and its practices, become objects of serious scientific thought,” writes Simpson. According to Simpson, Marx extends the scope of science, and would have us reason as a community, intelligently and cooperatively, in matters belonging to the social domain as we do in those of nature and technology. A dyed-in-the-wool Johnnie, Simpson reminds us that a great work of science is a great work of literature. He invites readers to explore Newton’s Principia, Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, and Marx’s Capital with fresh eyes and open minds, receptive to the possibility of rethinking prior notions about these individuals whose revolutionary ideas have been reduced and even distorted over time. When taken together and presented as an intertwined scientific vision, these complex works underscore that history is never left behind, but always remains an integral part of the present. —Gregory Shook Thomas Simpson and illustrator Anne Farrell (A69) recently released an e-book, Lewis Carroll Meets the Imaginary Number, available on iTunes. To learn more: http://thomasksimpson.com. The College ||st. john’s college ||summer 2013 | The College st. john’s college spring 39 �bibliofile Forgotten Tales of New Mexico By Ellen Dornan (SF93) The History Press, 2012 Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of New Mexico’s statehood, Ellen Dornan’s (SF93) Forgotten Tales of New Mexico takes readers on a voyage through the state’s colorful past, from the Apache Wars to Los Alamos. In the collection of 40 quirky stories rife with complexities and controversies, Dornan carefully balances oral history, genealogy, and scraps of 400-year-old documents to present alternate The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard By Richard McCombs Indiana University Press (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion), 2013 In his new book, The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard, Santa Fe tutor Richard McCombs presents Kierkegaard as an author who used irrationalism as a deliberate strategy to present rational arguments about reason and faith, often via the use of pseudonymous writings. McCombs finds Kierkegaard’s pretense “rational enough to be instructive and mistaken Plato Statesman: Translation, Introduction, Glossary, and Essay Eva Brann (HA89), Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (A77) Focus Philosophical Library, 2012 This valuable new translation of Plato’s Statesman by three St. John’s tutors does justice to the distinctive character of the philosopher’s style. Plato’s artistry exists in the nuances of diction and register, metaphor and allusion that leave the reader with much to think about when the resources of the argument turn out to be insufficient to answer all our questions. It is particularly useful to have a translation of Plato 40 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 interpretations of individuals and events that shaped the course of the state’s development. From heroic outcasts and scheming governors to women warriors and fierce revolutionaries, she sheds light on stories unfamiliar even to New Mexicans. For those who have ever wondered about the tiny plaque commemorating Fray Geronimo de la Llana in Santa Fe’s St. Francis Cathedral, or why New Mexico leads the nation in midwifery care, Dornan’s tales surprise and delight and give readers the inside scoop on the rich heritage of the Land of Enchantment. enough to need correction.” Initially, McCombs explores Kierkegaard’s conception of reason and why Kierkegaard thought his irrational rhetorical pose was necessary to communicate its opposite. In subsequent chapters, he delves more deeply into the paradox that Kierkegaard creates through his use of indirect communication regarding the paradox. McCombs shows evidence of Kierkegaard’s respect for reason in several instances, such as his great admiration for Socrates, whom he could not respect so highly if he did not respect reason, “For to esteem Socrates but not to respect reason would be like loving circles but detesting roundness.” that acknowledges this supreme importance of style by its exquisite attention to detail and its unerring ear for what is both readable English and faithful to the peculiar speech and thought of the dialogue’s main speaker, the stranger from Elea. The translators include thoughtfully chosen aids that prepare the novice for the journey and help the serious student to delve into Plato’s restless political and philosophical imagination. —Greg Recco, tutor “�Students have to revolutionize their thinking twice, then, once to register the appearances and imagine them accounted for through Ptolemy—this is an undoing of a former opinion; and then, again, to take stock of the revolution through Copernicus.” — Pamela Kraus, Annapolis dean The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 41 �alumni notes 1934 Celebrating a Century Mary J. Leslie writes, “My grandfather, James F. Leslie (Class of 1934), turned 100 years old on March 30, 2013. From him, I have heard many stories of his time spent at St. John’s, including missing his graduation ceremony, to the deep disappointment of his mother because he was ill (I think he told me he had the measles). He was a Naval Officer during World War II and a history teacher and guidance counselor at Towson High School in Towson, Maryland. He lived many years in Stevensville, Maryland, and is presently fairly healthy and living well for a 100-yearold in Tappahannock, Virginia. He can be reached at P.O. Box 2025, Tappahannock, VA 22560.” 1942 At Homecoming last September, Ernest Heinmuller, Class of 1942, had planned to have his new book, A Different Reading, available for signings. It did not come from the publisher on time. The book is a series of Bible passages, each followed by a poem that conveys a different idea about the passage. 1951 Tony Hardy (A) announces the publication of his new book, Symbol Philosophy and the Opening into Consciousness and Creativity, in which he explores the symbol philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (not on the St. John’s reading list!). 1961 Richard Freis (A) has released his debut novel, Confession, an intense and engrossing thriller of psychological suspense. It was published by Sartoris Literary Group in May 2013 and will also be available in an e-book edition. A Mississippi resident for almost 40 years, Freis is a poet whose work has appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Drastic Measures, and other magazines and anthologies. 1963 Easing into retirement, Marcia E. Herman (A) enjoys doing a blend of scientific and garden writing. She writes, “A second edition of my first gardening book, Sipping My Garden, came out in the spring of 2013 and is available at www.seedpodpress.com. I have several more in mind. I hope to make Homecoming in Annapolis this fall.” 1966 Ian Harris (A) writes that a third edition of his book, Peace Education (co-authored with Mary Lee Morrison), is being published by McFarland Press. 1971 George Elias (A) and his wife just sent their youngest daughter off to Vassar, while their 21-year-old daughter announced she was taking a year off after completing her junior year at Columbia. Their 42 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 alumni notes older sister graduated from the University of California, Berkeley several years ago. Alas, none of them wanted to attend his alma mater. More than five years ago, George changed careers to become a financial advisor (and trader) at Merrill Lynch. He expects to continue working in this field for at least another 20 years, perhaps longer. He also finished the manuscript for his second book, New Genesis: A Creation Story for Global Civilization. Championing monotheism and evolution, it is a sequel to his first book, Breakout Into Space (William Morrow, 1990). Visit his website at www. newgenesis-creationstory.com. He is looking for severe and articulate critics to review his work. 1973 Susan Martin Dressel (SFGI) writes, “If I survive my husband, for whom I am now caregiver, I will definitely come for some alumni seminars in a year or two. It will be nice to see new faculty and students.” Barbara Rogan (SF) has a new novel titled A Dangerous Fiction, coming out with Viking Penguin in July 2013. She writes, “I think that Johnnies, as people who appreciate the power of books, will get a particular kick out of this mystery set in the New York City publishing world. I’m delighted to announce that my last three books, Suspicion, Hindsight, and Rowing in Eden, have been reissued as e-books and paperbacks by their original publisher, Simon & Schuster, and two more backlist titles will follow shortly. On a personal note, we had the pleasure of seeing our elder son marry this year. He and his Israeli wife have moved from Tel Aviv to New York, and we couldn’t be happier about that. Our younger son lives in D.C. and works for the government. We could tell you what he does, but then we’d have to kill you.” 1974 During the last few years, Roberta Faulhaber (SF) has been developing a new business in visual facilitation. She writes, “It’s a fascinating field, first developed by David Sibbet in the 1970s and inspired by watching designers and architects work and applying their visual thinking-based approach to the business environment. I’m based in Paris and have been working 15hour days to introduce the French to using visual facilitation in meetings, especially in collaborative and creative sessions such as world cafés, open-space meetings, and innovation development. During the process, I find myself calling on skills I developed at St. John’s, such as active listening, the ability to wade through verbiage to the salient points in record time, and a complete faith in people’s ability to solve their issues through dialogue, if one can call that a skill. As a side benefit, I’m finding the work incredibly stimulating for my personal idiom as an artist, and have taken to creating pieces using the Surrealist technique of automatic writing/drawing by doing both at once while listening to Collège de France lectures in metaphysics. I suppose that’s a start!” 1976 Alice Joy Brown (A) writes, “I spend a great deal of time when I’m on the Internet learning Torah. Great sites for learning are www. chabad.org, www.aish.com, www. torahanytime.com (try Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein, among others); and www.torahlectures.com (try physician and rabbi, Rabbi Akiva Tatz, among others). I’d welcome hearing from anyone who wants to recommend other speakers, spe- cific articles, videos or audios, and other Torah sites. You can contact me at ajbluv@yahoo.com.” Christian Burks (SF) and Janet Moody (SF) had their first grandchild, became dual citizens (Canada and U.S.A.), and relocated to Seattle. Janet is working in recruiting on the creative-design front, and Christian is working in biotech. Their daughters are in Portland and the Bay Area. Christian and Janet write, “Look for us on any map of seismic, volcanic, or career hotspots/risk in North America.” Miriam Marcus-Smith (SF) writes, “I’ve worked in the fields of health-care quality improvement and patient safety for about 15 years in the Seattle area, and for several years have split my work life between the Foundation for Health Care Quality, where I’m the program director of the Washington Patient Safety Coalition, and the University of Washington, where I’m a research manager in the Department of Health Services. It’s a mix that works well for me. My boys are growing up: Nathan (25) is in grad school at UMass Amherst, working on his masters in biomechanics; Aaron (23) lives in Seattle and is nearly done with an associate degree; his plan is to become a history teacher. When not working, I play a lot of chamber music, sail whenever I can find a boat that will take me, hike, cross-country ski, read, and weave. I may be the only person in Seattle who does not have a computer at home by choice. (I don’t have a TV or microwave either, but it’s the lack of computer that people seem to find odd.)” 1977 Paul Kneisl (A) writes, “Recently at work I soldered the (top secret) CPU on the motherboard of the computer that controls the look-down-shoot-down-target- 1983 An App for That Peter McClard (SF) writes, “I’ve just released a new iPad app called Biographer, which helps people organize the events of their lives into chapters and then within those chapters to sort out the memories, anecdotes, pictures, etc. The final result is a nicely formatted e-book that can be shared or not, with no knowledge of design or layout required. Love to all my fellow Johnnies! Send me your stories.” acquisition device of the hit-to-kill kinetic warhead of the SDI Missile Interceptor, for a program sometimes known as Star Wars.” Carla Schick (A) won first place in the 2012 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest for her poem, “Their Grandmother’s Palm,” which is in the style of a Pantoum, although modified. During most of her time, she is teaching mathematics at a high school in Hayward, California. She is currently teaching the AP calculus class. Her St. John’s background prepared her well to teach this course that focuses on critical thinking and problem solving rather than rote memorization. 1979 Lisa Simeone (A) reports that since being blacklisted by NPR in 2011 for her involvement with the Occupy movement, she’s as politically active as ever. She still hosts two nationally syndicated public radio programs, World of Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Broadcast Series, and she continues to write for Baltimore’s Style Magazine, where she’s the beauty editor. She keeps in close touch with Bruce Babij (A) and his family, who live only half a mile away. Rosenberg, have issued The Bretton Woods Transcripts as an e-book from the Center for Financial Stability in New York. A hardcover version will appear in the spring. Schuler’s discovery of the transcripts was the subject of stories in the New York Times and foreign newspapers. The book is available at www.centerforfinancialstability. org/brettonwoods.php. Read the New York Times story here: www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/ business/transcript-of-1944-bretton-woods-meeting-found-at-treasury.html?_r=1&. 1983 Ann Walton Sieber (A) and Coldwell “Khyber” Daniel IV (A84) married each other twice, in Quaker meetinghouses in Houston (July 2011) and Memphis (May 2012). Both are independent writers, and they are living a two-city life. In addition, Khy continues his theater work, and Ann cooks for meditation retreats. After a 25-year separation, they rediscovered each other on Facebook in 2008. They are pretty tickled about this whole turn of events, and welcome contact and tidings from other Johnnie friends. 1987 1981 While browsing in the library of the U.S. Treasury Department where he works, Kurt Schuler (A) found the transcripts of the Bretton Woods financial conference. The conference, held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, established the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the world exchange-rate system that lasted until the early 1970s. The transcripts, never intended for publication, show previously unknown details of how it all happened. Schuler and his co-editor, Andrew Scott Cuthbert (SF) is pleased to announce the publication of two new chiropractic textbooks: Applied Kinesiology Essentials: The Missing Link in Health Care, and Applied Kinesiology: Clinical Techniques for Lower Body Dysfunctions, which bring the outcomes and basic-science research underlying applied kinesiology chiropractic technique up to date. Another textbook, Applied Kinesiology: Clinical Techniques for Upper Body Dysfunctions, is under development. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 43 �alumni notes alumni notes 1989 1986 Bullies Beware! Kristen Caven’s (SF) new book, The Bullying Antidote: Superpower Your Kids for Life (Hazelden, 2013), will hit the shelves in July. Caven, who co-wrote the book with her psychologist mother, Dr. Louise Hart, says that it provides a “unified field theory” of bullying. Aiming to help parents teach their children to develop the communication skills, self-respect, and self-esteem needed to be confident and resilient when facing a bully, Caven writes, “The book also includes a pretty thorough presentation of the best current thought on positive parenting.” In addition, she just released a new e-book, The Souls of Her Feet, a postmodern, magical-realism version of Cinderella, and is currently writing a blog column, “Life in the Fast Brain,” for ADDitude magazine. Her books can be ordered through the St. John’s bookstores. Visit www.kristencaven.com for more information. 1988 Tobias Maxwell’s (A) book, Homogium, was published in January. Jimmy McConnell (SF) is now a published author. He can be found on Amazon under Curtis James McConnell. His other work appears in a free podcast at drabblecast.org and two anthologies from thirdflatiron.com. He welcomes contact from Johnnies at cjmfanbase5@ ymail.com. Kim Paffenroth (A) edited three essay collections in 2012: Augustine and Psychology (Lexington Books, 2012); Augustine and Science (Lexington Books, 2012), which includes a back-cover endorsement by Mr. Kalkavage; and The Undead and Theology (Pickwick Publications, 2012). The latter was recently announced as a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, which was given on June 15 at a ceremony in New Orleans. 44 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Burke Gurney (SFGI) was recently promoted to full professor with tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine Physical Therapy Program, where he is an active researcher, teacher, and clinician. In addition, he directs a yearly trip to Guatemala, where his students study Spanish and do volunteer work in physical therapy at a hospital/orphanage in Antigua. He is married with two children, both of whom chose small liberal arts schools (but alas, not St. John’s). His older daughter just graduated from Colorado College with a degree in comparative literature and is studying in Colombia on a Fulbright scholarship, and his younger daughter is finishing her degree at Carleton in economics. Sarita Cargas (A) has just changed jobs and will be teaching human rights at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She is excited to be near a St. John’s campus and looks forward to catching up with her dear alma mater. 1990 Kilian Garvey (SF) writes, “My wife and I welcomed our second daughter into the world. Margaret MacEachern Garvey was born on June 8, 2011. I also just recently joined the Department of Psychology at the University of Louisiana, where I teach social cognition and evolutionary psychology, among other things, and conduct research primarily at the intersection of affect, (ir)rationality, and motivated cognition.” David Long (A) lives in Baltimore with his wife, Dr. Liz Selvin, an associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, and his two boys, Benjamin (5) and Eli (2). He writes, “My work is divided between my management consulting firm that specializes in pre-K-12 and higher education, and my film production company. That and writing puppet shows for my boys.” Jon Ying (A) earned a PhD from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. His dissertation was entitled “Essays on Translational Bioscience Entrepreneurship: Evidence from America, China, and Taiwan.” Currently he is an assistant professor of global business and society at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where he teaches courses on global corporate social responsibility and on China. 1993 Rachel E. Blistein (A) has been meaning to share the news of the launch of her natural hair-care company for some time. She writes, “I went from a graduate degree and career in landscape design to formulating, manufacturing, and selling my own hair-care products. Everyone always asks me if I have a degree in chemistry (I do not), but I do feel that my education at St. John’s gave me the tools I needed to educate myself, and the belief that I can do anything! As far as an update on the personal front, I am living in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with my husband of eight years, Paul Alexander, who is a senior research engineer at General Motors, our two active dogs, and one surly cat. Life is good!” James Craig (AGI) has published a book of his photography, The Moon has been Eaten—Images from a Year on Easter Island, in the form of a signed, limited edition (500) hardbound volume. The book features 98 tritone images, with anecdotes and extras. More information is available on his website, www. jamescraigphotography.com. 1994 1997 William Kowalski (SF) and Alexandra will celebrate 11 years of marriage this March. They have been living in Nova Scotia for 10 years now. He writes, “Our girls are aged 7 and 9: beautiful, healthy, smart, bilingual in French and English. Alexandra is over a decade deep into a rich, tantric yoga practice; I write and teach adults how to read, find jobs, and use computers. Life is quiet and good. My fifth novel, The Hundred Hearts, will be published by Thomas Allen Publishers in April of 2013. Please visit my website (www.williamkowalski.com) for more details, or just to say hello.” Heidi (Jacot) Hewett (A) writes, “I’m temporarily taking a break from my career in data analysis to be a stay-at-home mom. My daughter, Ariadne (good classical Greek name!), is almost a year and a half now, very bright, very curious, very into everything. We live in Woodstock, Illinois, with my husband, Bob, a sculptor, teacher, and the art department chair at a local high school. I’ve recently started a classics reading blog based on Clifton Fadiman’s ‘Lifetime Reading Plan’ at http://hjhreader.blogspot.com.” 1995 Janet Sunderland (SFGI) has a new book of poetry, At the Boundary, published by Finishing Line Press and available through the press and on Amazon. Some of the work is thanks to studies at St. John’s. “If I hadn’t read the Iliad again,” she writes, “I’d never have found a line like “bronzed green-gold like Hephaestus forging eternity.’” 1996 Heather Pool (SF) writes, “I graduated from the University of Washington with my PhD in political science in December 2011, and, after a year and a half on the academic job market, landed a tenure-track job at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, starting in August 2012. Denison, like St. John’s, is a small liberal arts school (enrollment is a whopping 2,200), and I’m thrilled to be on faculty there. If folks are passing through Columbus and want to get in touch, give me a shout at heatherpool@ gmail.com.” Jill Nienhiser (SFGI) started a blog last summer to promote sustainable agriculture and food freedom. Read it at farmfoodblog.com. She continues to work as a consultant for Mind & Media in Alexandria, Virginia, and as the webmaster for the Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org and realmilk. com). In addition, she is developing new shows for children as a member of Kaleidoscope Theatre Company (ktheatre.org). 1998 Philip Armour (EC) married Amanda Dumenigo (EC), whom he actually met in the Eastern Classics program and eventually married in 2006. He writes, “We have two boys (7 years and 9 months) and have much to thank St. John’s for—and Santa Fe and New Mexico, in general. We still have many dear friends in the area, and my graduate degree helped me kick-start my journalism career at Outside magazine, where I worked from 1998-2004. Amanda now does therapy work using horses (mainly to help children), and we live on a five-acre farm/ranch in north Boulder County, Colorado. We thought a lot about St. John’s recently, with Baltimore’s run to the 2013 NFL championship; our elder son is named Raven, which amused us all. Max Fink (SF) returned to the States after living for eight years in South America. He is raising boisterous 3-year-old Anastasia with “Porteña” wife Gabriela. He works in Internet marketing in the finance industry and resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is happy to meet any Johnnie who comes through town! Dawn Star Sarahs-Borchelt (A) (nee Shuman) and her husband, Matt, gave birth to Juniper Evening Sarahs-Borchelt on December 9, 2012. Juniper joins older siblings Wolfy (8), Robin (6), and Daysi (3). The family is now living full-time in Philadelphia, home/unschooling away, and hoping to sell their house in Maryland as soon as it’s worth more than its mortgage. 2000 Doug Howard (SFGI) is one of 10 attorneys who have been named to the partnership at Duane Morris law firm, where he is a member of the firm’s Corporate Practice Group in Baltimore. Zach Warzel (SF) and Erika (Carlson) Warzel (SF) welcomed the birth of their second child, Rye Samson Warzel, on November 21, 2012. Rye, Corrina, and parents are happy and healthy. Erika also took a new position as the National and State Register Historian for History Colorado, the State’s historical and preservation arm. Abby Weinberg (SF) has been working for nine years at the Open Space Institute directing conservation research. She is currently doing a deep dive into climate adaptation, water quality, and sustainable forestry. Her 3-year-old son and learning about physics and meditation are providing great joy outside of work. 2001 Raife Neuman (SF) graduated from Lewis and Clark Law School in 2008 with a certificate in environmental and natural resource law. Two years ago, he founded Intelekia Law Group (named after his favorite Greek word!) with two other partners, in Portland, Oregon. Intelekia focuses on forming and advising sustainable businesses and working with entrepreneurs of all types. Raife also works extensively with homeowners facing foreclosure. If Johnnies are in the Northwest, he’d love to hear from you at raife@intelekia-law.com. 2002 Dillon and Justin Naylor (A) write, “Thomas John was born on August 30, 2012, weighing 8 pounds, 15 ounces. He joins brothers Peter (5) and James (3). We’re still dorm parents at Wyoming Seminary, a college prep school in northeast Pennsylvania, where Justin teaches Latin. Our labor of love is Old Tioga Farm, our four-acre property where we raise vegetables and run a farmto-table restaurant on weekends. Staying busy, as always!” 2003 Cassie Sherman (A) and Martin Marks (A04) married on April 19 in a small ceremony at the Cloisters in Baltimore. Many thanks to Aidan O’Flynn (A05) for his design of invitations and all graphics for the wedding website, which can be chuckled at here: mermansharks. com. Neil Swanson-Chrisman (A02) officiated, and various Johnnies were in the party, including Sarah Peters (A02), Katherine Nehring (A), Tori Tyrrell (A), and Remi Treuer (A00). They write, “We are very happy that St. John’s gave us The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 45 �alumni notes In Eloquent Fashion FASHION WATCH Mimi Nguyen’s fashion sense was inspired by a few SJC tutors. Some of the tutors are fondly remembered for their sartorial panache—described by the Johnnies who admired them: by Chelsea Batten (A07) With insight, humor and disarming intensity, Mimi Nguyen (A09) sports the personae of fashionista and bookworm Like much of literary fiction, Mimi casey danielson “� may not entirely enjoy I Mies van der Rohe’s architecture, but I do subscribe to his philosophy of less is more when it comes to clothes.” Nguyen (A09)—fashionista, bookworm, first-generation Vietnamese American —does not fit neatly into a category. No matter where you encounter her—in the main branch of the Washington, D.C. public library, where she works as an associate in the Popular Services division, or on her edgy fashion blog—you’re seeing only one side of a multifaceted person who has spent as much time examining her lens on life as looking through it. Read her blog, “Mimi+Pravi,” to find references to Mimi’s favorite literature. Canonical Russian novels keep company with pulpy urban fiction: “I learned English largely because of the Sweet Valley High series, so just ’cause I’ve read, like, Kant in college (re: read, not understood), who am I to get all high and mighty about tastes?” she writes. 46 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 “People who read totally rule. High five, lovely, literate humans.” Mimi observes that “the way people present themselves through dress is literally a snapshot of history.” Her own history can be graphed through the evolution of her personal style. Growing up as the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants made it hard to fit into her high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Fashionable clothes helped her to blend in with her peers. But her deep respect for her mother kept Mimi from becoming one of the crowd. Mimi describes her mother as “really intense, but down-to-earth, kind of a feminist.” As an original hipster, she bought her clothes at thrift stores before it was cool. “Back then, I was really ashamed,” Mimi says, “because as Nabokov says in Lolita, there’s nothing more conservative than a child.” Eventually “the way she carried herself, the way she dressed really influenced me. She was always interested in the unique.” Mimi’s own sense of style was established by the time I met her on the third floor of Pinkney Hall, when she was a junior and I was a senior. With her striking appearance counterbalanced by demure poise, Mimi seemed like Billy Wilder’s Princess Anne reimagined by Wong Kar Wai. One day, she knocked at my door, holding an armful of clothes. She’d been cleaning out her closet, she said, and thought I might be interested in some of her clothes. I caught my breath at the sight of what must have been the eidos of trench coat. It was the perfect color (camel beige), the perfect weight (assertive but flexible), and boasted ideal proportions between its length and the spread of the lapels. It was the kind of garment that advertises nothing but the wearer’s discerning taste. Last year, I was elated to learn that Mimi was launching a fashion blog. “Mimi+Pravi,” a bicoastal collaboration with her friend Pravisti, is nothing like the what-to-wear guides that glut the genre. Like Mimi herself, the blog recombines facets from several categories to create something novel. It’s free of label-worship; if a designer is mentioned, it’s likely to be someone from another field. “I may not entirely enjoy Mies van der Rohe’s architecture, but I do subscribe to his philosophy of less is more when it comes to clothes,” she writes. “This dress is very minimal, structured, and, to me, lovely. Paired with maroon red heels for a bit of pop, and a little belt, and this entire outfit took me from work to after-hours play with no fuss.” She includes affectionate tributes to her upbringing: “Built-in accessories are an excellent economical choice for those who want to look fairly fancypants nice without spending over $7 on any given clothing item. Hey, I’m a proud product of immigrant parents, OK? Cut me some slack.” And yes, even homages to Program authors: Feeling “good in this color,” she says, “is the sartorial equivalent of Baudelaire’s ‘Enivrez-vous’; on wine, on poetry, on virtue.” As a fashion blog must, “Mimi+Pravi” features headlines both silly and snarky, such as “The Return of Flower Power” and “Space, the Final Frontier.” Plenty of photographs appear, with sources for each clothing ensemble. Would-be imitators beware: Nearly everything shown on Mimi’s blog was thrifted or gifted—part of Mimi’s style ethic. “I don’t believe in spending a lot of money on clothes,” she writes. “I really want to stress that. You can find beautiful, well-made clothes in thrift stores.” This statement reveals the blog’s subtle ethnographic slant. Mimi says she’s “obsessed with identity as a narrative expressed through clothes.” As “a first-generation Vietnamese woman who grew up in Arkansas,” she explains, “sometimes I feel like I don’t have cultural legitimacy in either country. Sometimes I don’t know who I am, beyond my experiences and personal preferences. Perhaps these experiences and preferences are precisely what build identity. I am always concerned about what sort of narrative I’m projecting when I pull on a certain sweater, wear a certain hat, throw on a certain scarf, because, at the age of 26, I haven’t decided yet what sort of human I am. But clothes are pretty expressive.” When Mimi began working in the library after graduation, her first foray into the blogosphere, “POP! Street Fashion,” featured photographs and interviews with library patrons about their varied, distinctive styles: WASPs dressed in J. Crew read Tobias Wolff, punkers in torn jeans and imitation leather checked out comic books. Like Mimi herself, most of her profile subjects defied categorization. Yet the details of dress offer glimpses into intriguing stories. In a Raymond Chandler-like spirit, Mimi charges each scene with visual details, and leaves you to imagine the rest. These days Mimi prefers to wear clothes with “clean, classic lines. I like red a lot. I like to wear things that fit me, that are unusual, that punctuate subtly, that evoke a mood.” Although she hasn’t yet defined her personal style, her blog requires her to carefully assemble interesting outfits that “maintain a sense of self.” Mimi often finds books to be better companions than people. Her life has more in common with the originality and unpredictability of a great novel than with the average Washington twentysomething. She shares that experience in much the same spirit as she gave me the trench coat. Feeling as though some ineffable wisdom had been passed on to me, I wore the hell out of that coat during life after graduation. Ms. Kraus always reminded me of Jacqueline Kennedy with her classic sweater-skirt-andpearls combination. Mr. Zuckerman had a set of linen suits, and could rock a corduroy sport coat better than any man in history. Ms. Heines’s perfectly styled hair and coordinated jewelry set off her striking eyes. Not sure if that was a coincidence or a calculated move. Mr. Maistrellis was like a pre-hipster prep poster boy. Ms. Kronsberg’s pencil skirts, paired with tall leather boots, made it look as though she was carrying a riding crop. (It was actually Cady’s leash.) Mr. Sageng had a dapper-looking white mustache and long white hair, and often wore bow ties or loud ties with clashing button-down shirts. But with his horn-rimmed glasses and smile, the effect was charming. Mr. Badger’s wardrobe appeared to have been lifted from the set of The Matrix— trench coat and all—and the gorgeously greasy hair of a ’90s grunge rocker. Mr. Milner always wore bow ties with exceptional conviction. Mr. Page’s tweeds and perfectly laundered shirts, all in a color spectrum evocative of the Scottish moors. Mr. Beall gave a Sean Connery vibe, especially when crossing the field from the observatory in his leather jacket and aviator glasses. Mr. Bell talking with Mr. Simpson—“one glorious shock of white hair nodding to another.” Brother Robert seemed to possess exactly two suits, two hats, and two different pairs of Birkenstocks. He always looked exactly like Brother Robert, and more than this we cannot ask. FASHION STANDOUTS Ms. Seeger’s chunky folk-art necklaces Mimi Nguyen’s personal fashion blog is at mimipravi.com. Find “POP! Street Fashion” at dclibrary.org. Mr. Aigla’s magnificent black beard Mr. Lenkowski’s safari vest Ms. Delgado De Torres’s urban black chic The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 47 �alumni notes alumni notes 2005 1997 2004 Award for Exceptional Service Emma Elliot (A) was married to Lucas Grassi Freire on December 22, 2012 in College Park, Maryland. A large number of Lucas’s family in Brazil was able to travel to the wedding. After their marriage, the two moved to Exeter in the United Kingdom, where Lucas works at the University of Exeter. Juan G. Villaseñor (A), Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, received the U.S. Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service for Securing the Extradition of Five Terrorists from the United Kingdom. He writes, “This award was presented to a group of 11 individuals responsible for securing the extradition from the United Kingdom of five terrorists who now face charges in the United States in connection with, among other things, the 1998 East African Embassy bombings and the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998. The ceremony was held on December 10, 2012, in the Great Hall of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.” Pictured from left to right: Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, William Nardini, Stephen B. Reynolds, Juan G. Villaseñor, Susan Prose, Chris Synsvoll, Lystra Blake, Berit Fitzsimmons, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz, and Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Bruer. so many wonderful friends to stand by us—not to mention each other. The date was planned so that the celebration could continue the next day at Croquet in Annapolis. We recently bought a house in the improbable and charming Dickeyville neighborhood in Baltimore; are reading about the care and feeding of its slate roof and how to vanquish English ivy in our absolutely nonexistent spare time.” Michael Tereby (A) is moving to Arizona from China. Michael and his wife, Yan Ma Tereby, celebrated their first anniversary at the Grand Canyon after their marriage in the Great Hall on August 13, 2011. 48 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Annette Prapasiri (SF), after four children (Sam turned 8 in March, Rose and Claire turned 5 in February, and Fin will be 3 this August), is venturing back into the world of design. She writes, “Keep an eye out for my interpretation of the Johnnie Chair in the 2013-2014 Calendar due to be released this summer. Reserve your copy of this limited-edition print at aprapasiri@gmail.com.” Justine Schneider (SF) and her husband, Jason, have welcomed their first child into the world. Gabriel John Schneider was born on November 14 at 12:06 p.m., happy and healthy. They write, “He was born at our home in southern Utah (yes, we planned to have him there).” Amy E. Taylor (A) finished her clinical psychology PhD in 2012 at Duquesne University, in a psychology program that finds its roots in philosophy and is a good fit with the St. John’s Program. She writes, “At that point, I began a postdoctoral fellowship at the Austen Riggs Center, a top-ranked psychiatric hospital using psychodynamic and systems approaches to treatment. At Austen Riggs, my primary task is to engage in intensive fourtimes-weekly psychotherapy with individual patients. The hospital offers research internships for undergraduate students, which may be of interest to current St. John’s students or recent grads.” 2006 Allison (Ali) Bastian (AGI) is graduating from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Science this May. She is looking forward to residency in family medicine somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Aran Donovan (SF) received his masters in Italian from Middlebury Language School in May 2012. He is now finishing his MFA in poetry and translation from the University of Arkansas. Christopher Stuart (A) and April Sharp (A07) welcomed Kallan Stuart (A35?) into their lives this past October. They write, “He is beautiful, fine, noble, and good.” Emily Terrell (A) (formerly Nisch) is having a baby due in August! Hollis Thoms (AGI) has been invited to submit 11 of his major musical scores, which include operas, oratorios, and three symphonies, for a special collection at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis. Thoms has written more than 125 works for a variety of ensembles. His Symphony 2 will be premiered in January 2014 by the Londontowne Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Dr. Anna Binneweg. Visit www.hollisthoms. com for more information. 2007 Chelsea Batten (A) is a writer and itinerant journalist. She profiled Mimi Nguyen (A09) for this issue of the magazine. You can read more of her work at www.chelseabatten. com. Christopher Benson (SFGI) now teaches literature at The Cambridge School of Dallas, a classical Christian school. He continues to write for Christianity Today, Books & Culture, and The Weekly Standard. Anna Fenton (SFGI) is one of the founders of a new venture, Sustainable Learning Inc., a nonprofit incorporated in the state of New York for the purpose of facilitating experiential and theoretical learning on the subject of environmental sustainability. She writes, “Under the name Sustainable Summer, we operate summer educational travel programs for teen student groups with a curricular focus on sustainability issues, while also providing an enriching, safe, and exciting travel experience. My business partner and I have combined our expertise in teen travel programs and environmental education with the resources and experience of like-minded organizations in developing communities that possess dynamic opportunities for the experiential teaching of sustainability.” Blair Thompson (A) traveled to Hong Kong, where she taught for three months. She writes, “After my return, I applied to law schools, and received a full scholarship to attend law school at Drexel University. I graduated and passed the Maryland bar exam in 2011. I served as law clerk for the Honorable Robert B. Kershaw on the Circuit Court of Maryland for one year, and am now an attorney at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore City, where I represent indigent persons charged with crimes who cannot afford to hire private attorneys. I wanted to go to law school so that I could become a public defender, and I am living the dream, fighting the good fight, and always contemplating what justice means. I encourage anyone interested in public criminal defense to contact me at bthompson2@opd.state.md.us.” 2008 Ashley Cardiff’s (A) new book of humorous essays, Night Terrors: Sex, Dating, Puberty, and Other Alarming Things (Gotham Books, 2013), will be published in July. Reid Pierce (EC) writes, “After St. John’s, I received my JD from the University of New Mexico. I am about to start a cool job as manager of legal affairs for a tech startup in Kathmandu.” 2009 Sara Luell (A) was recently promoted to the position of Public Affairs Officer I for the State of Maryland at the Anne Arundel County Department of Health, where she has served as Public Affairs Specialist since August 2009. João Santa-Rita (A) graduated in 2012 with a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. He is currently working at a private firm in Washington, D.C. Students or alumni considering law school may contact him at santarita.joao@ gmail.com. Pauline Stacchini (A) became the new reference and instruction librarian for the Bellevue University Library in Omaha, Nebraska, after graduating from the University of Iowa with a masters in library and information science in 2011. 2010 Kirstie Dodd (A) just received notification that she has been accepted as a Fulbright Scholar, and will be teaching English in Luxembourg starting September 2013-June 2014. Aldona Dye (SF) is currently working on her masters in musicology at Brandeis University, from where she expects to graduate in 2014. Drew Nucci (SFGI) currently works at Santa Fe Prep, where a very exciting summer program for teachers is starting. Information on the program as a whole can be found at www.sfprep.org/index.php?/ colloquium/C184, and information specifically on the course that he is teaching can be found at www.sfprep.org/index.php?/colloquium/ mathematics_as_the_gateway_to_ western_metaphysical_thought. Theater Goes National San Francisco playwright Candice Benge (SFGI) is in her second year as a founding member of a national traveling theater cooperative, Transient Theater (www.transienttheater.com), a group she started last year. Following the group’s first production in summer 2012, they did a tour to 14 cities in nine states across the country. The group performed at the New York International Fringe Festival, where it received great reviews and won several awards, including the Overall Excellence Award for Directing, as selected by a panel of 40 theater professionals. This year, Transient Theater plans to perform in 20 cities from coast to coast, and has recently hired current St. John’s sophomore, Gabriele Montequin (A15), as Annapolis co-producer. Candice writes, “Our mission is to increase empathy in our culture by producing new plays from various communities and giving those plays a national audience. There’s a short documentary video (about 13 minutes) that summarizes our process last year.” View the video at https://vimeo. com/58157656. The password is “sweetpotato.” 2013 New Year card by Annette Prapasiri (SF04) The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 49 �in memoriam alumni notes David Drury (SFGI09): Firefighter Turned Teacher Inspires Future Johnnies David Drury (SFGI09) understands what it means to triumph over adversity. After 20 years as a New York City firefighter, Drury was looking at retirement and planning to go to college. Then the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11. “Certainly it was a crossroads for me,” says Drury, who was one of the first-responders that morning. Following his intended plans, he ultimately pursued his undergraduate degree at Columbia University. Two years later, his wife passed away. With school as his solace, he threw himself into his studies, setting his sights on graduate school. “Life just changed,” says Drury. “But I told myself, ‘I can do this.’” Armed with a bachelor’s in history and a minor in teaching, Drury came to the Graduate Institute at Santa Fe with the goal of becoming a teacher. As a firefighter, he taught courses in rescue and hazmat skills at the New York City Fire Academy on Randall’s Island. Until recently, Drury taught middle-school history both in a classroom and on a moving bus. His students were professional singers at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, N.J., the country’s only non-sectarian boychoir boarding school. The students, who tour four times a year for up to a month at a time, sing at churches, schools, and larger venues, including Carnegie Hall. In 2005, they performed at the Academy Awards. Drury was drawn to the American Boychoir School because of its emphasis on discussion-based learning; the head of the school, Lisa Eckstrom (A84), is a Johnnie. In his regular classroom, Drury and the students engaged in texts while gathered around a seminar table in St. John’s style. “In sixth grade, they’re learning how [the seminar process] works,” says Drury. “By the eighth grade they handle it really well.” He was recognized at his school for his ability to motivate his students and instill in them a passion for learning. “I call our history classes an ongoing historical discussion with a little bit of philosophy thrown in,” says Drury. Observing Drury’s classroom, Eckstrom was surprised to find the boys reading a Supreme Court decision. “To be honest, I was a little skeptical that middle-school boys would be able to decipher the text,” says Eckstrom. “But within 15 minutes, I was silently applauding. David’s teaching style—grounded in the St. John’s approach to discussions—has had a wonderful impact on our students. Imagine finding your seminar voice as a middle-school boy!” Curtis A. Wilson August 24, 2012 Tutor and dean, Annapolis John Drury by Jennifer Levin Drury’s discussion approach was also useful when the students were on tour, as classes on the bus vary in duration and are often disrupted. Being able to pick up where the class left off is a way of keeping the learning engaging as well as flexible. “It’s not a stationary classroom,” says Drury. “You have to get your sea legs, which is certainly challenging, but it’s a great experience.” This summer, Drury returned to New Mexico, where he will be teaching at the Estancia Valley Classical Academy, a new charter school in Moriarty. He relished the opportunity to parlay his St. John’s experience at the American Boychoir School, inspiring a new generation of future Johnnies. Last school year Drury’s seventh-grade class read portions of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, a book he first encountered at St. John’s. It continues to resonate with him today, especially ‘The Unlimited Power of Majority’ chapter. Tocqueville writes, “If these lines are ever read in America, I am well assured of two things: in the first place, that all who peruse them will raise their voices to condemn me; and in the second place, that many of them will acquit me at the bottom of their conscience.” As a teacher, Drury finds the book an excellent, if challenging, source of inspiration. “I fought Tocqueville—that book and that line—tooth and nail,” says Drury. “And then I came to love it for its accuracy, its impressions, and its philosophy.” Drawing from his own life experience, Drury looks to his young students, as they, too, grapple with the text, and tells them the same thing he told himself several years back: “We can do this.” “Curtis stood for something, a kind of moral perceptiveness and intellectual integrity. He showed himself genuinely unselfish and completely honest. Invariably his words were deeply considered and deeply human in the highest sense.” —Nancy Buchenauer “Curtis Wilson was universally admired and loved by everyone whose life he touched as tutor or dean, friend or colleague, including those who knew him mainly as a renowned scholar of the history of astronomy.” —Joseph Cohen Gentle of heart and wise in spirit, Curtis Alan Wilson (1921-2012), a widely recognized historian of astronomy who twice served as dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis, died in Petoskey, Michigan, at McLaren Northern Michigan Hospital. He had been vacationing at nearby Mackinac Island when he sustained a heart attack. He was 91. A 1945 graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, Wilson received his doctorate in 1952 from Columbia University. He undertook two separate, four-year stints as dean of the Annapolis campus and, as part of the original faculty, taught for two years on the Santa Fe campus when it opened in 1964. Wilson’s association with the college began in 1948 during the formative years of the New Program. During his first deanship (1958-62), Wilson effected the first major change in the New Program when the college approved his proposal for preceptorials for the junior and senior years, the only elective part of the curriculum. Another change occurred during his second deanship. In 1976-77, the faculty, under his guidance, decided that five sophomore classes were too many, and the sophomore laboratory should be discontinued, with its components absorbed into the three other years. An important effect of this decision was that the college was able to strengthen the sophomore music tutorial. He also was respon- sible for planting the seeds of what was to become the Mitchell Gallery. Wilson retired in 1988 but continued an active association with St. John’s. His extensive writings resulted in an international reputation. He became the first recipient in 1998 of the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for writings in the history of astronomy, awarded by the American Astronomical Society. Wilson was “the most highly regarded historian of astronomy of this generation,” wrote the Journal for the History of Astronomy. Besides Wilson’s final book, The Hill-Brown Theory of the Moon’s Motion: Its Coming-To-Be and ShortLived Ascendancy (1877-1984), published just before his 90th year, and many articles and reviews, he edited the second volume of The General History of Astronomy: Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, published by Cambridge University Press. Wilson belonged to both the International Academy of the History of Science and Commission 41 of the International Astronomical Union. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, the former Rebecca Marston, their two sons, and a number of nieces and nephews. A memorial service was held on September 30 in the Great Hall. Gifts in his memory may be made to St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. At Wilson’s memorial service, he was lauded with speeches by five tutors—former Dean Thomas Slakey, Nancy Buchenauer, Joseph Cohen, Thomas May, and Louis Petrich—by Professor Paolo Palmieri, a Galileo scholar from the University of Pittsburgh, and by Wilson’s two sons, John (A81), of Blacksburg, Virginia, and Topper (Christopher), of Pueblo, Colorado. Repeatedly, speakers cited three qualities for which Wilson was known: his gentleness, kindness, and integrity. “Curtis was more than a historian and a philosopher of science. Curtis was a master of humane scholarship. He was a rare figure of humanist and scientist. His rigorous methodology was never divorced from poetic imagery. He cultivated the history of astronomy, combining the rigor of intellectual analysis with the most sophisticated elegance of exposition.” — ­ Paolo Palmieri 50 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 51 �in memoriam in memoriam David Hanford Stephenson November 29, 2012 Tutor, Annapolis David Hanford Stephenson (19362012) joined the college as a tutor 50 years ago. An informal gathering in the Great Hall was held on November 30, 2012, the day after he died. Students, faculty, and staff remembered him in speech and joined in singing Sicut Cervus in his memory. The community gathered again for a memorial held on April 14 in the Great Hall. Over the course of his devoted service, Stephenson led every one of the seminars and tutorials that comprise the curriculum of the New Program. When asked what his favorite class was, he replied that it was usually the one he was teaching at the moment. Accordingly, his Elliott C. Carter November 5, 2012 Tutor, Annapolis Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (19082012), the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and St. John’s tutor, died at his home in New York City. He was 103. From 1940 to 1942, Carter was a tutor and director of music at the Annapolis campus during a time when the college was establishing the New Program. He approached music as an art form closely intertwined with the liberal arts. In the years after St. John’s, Carter wrote two essays that relate to his tenure at the college: “Music as a Liberal Art” (1944) and “The Function of the Composer in Teaching and the General College Student” (1952). Carter received his bachelor’s in English literature and his master’s in musical composition from Harvard. He is best known as favorite author was Montaigne or Sophocles or Leibniz or Dante or Kant, though he confessed that he was drawn back to Homer every other year. Stephenson’s very first seminar, in 1962, had been with Jacob Klein and John Sarkissian as co-leaders. His students and advisees remember him as a leader rather than an expert, one who met them from the start as an equal and then patiently drew them forward and upward, as curious and delighted as they were in what could be found and seen together. This was equally true of the way Stephenson conducted the St. John’s Chamber Orchestra for many years. In his very gestures, he expressed Schopenhauer’s claim about the absolute uniqueness and universality of music. Similarly, in freshman music he firmly believed the class capable of the most difficult and beautifully splendid things, whether it was the final chorus of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion or the finale of Mozart’s Magic Flute. He led his laboratory classes with a confidence born from his na- a composer who fused European and American modernist traditions in seminal but formidable works. “As society evolves,” he once said, “people will have to become much cleverer and much sharper. And then they will like my music.” Igor Stravinsky was credited with calling Carter’s “Double Concerto for Harpsichord, Piano, and Two Chamber Orchestras” (1961) the first American masterpiece. In the late 1930s, Carter created neoclassical, approachable, “American” works such as the ballet “Pocahontas,” which had its premiere in 1939. That same year, he married sculptor Helen Frost-Jones. She died in 2003. In the mid-1940s, Carter wrote the “String Quartet No. 1,” which was considered his first real breakthrough. The work won him the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes in 1960; the second was for “String Quartet No. 3” in 1973. In addition to his two Pulitzer Prizes, Carter’s awards include the National Medal of Arts, the Edward MacDowell Medal, and two Guggenheim fellowships. He is survived by his son, David, and a grandson. 52 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Journet G. Kahn Class of 1942 October 7, 2012 Tutor, Annapolis and Santa Fe Journet Gordon Kahn (1921-2012) dedicated his life to the art of the Socratic seminar and innovation in interdisciplinary program design. A tutor at both the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses, he died at 90. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Kahn was the oldest of four children of Rose and Ellis Kahn. After graduating from the Annapolis campus in 1942, he joined the faculty for the following year. Kahn received his Licentiate from Quebec’s Laval University, his doctorate in philosophy tive interest in all things natural, as well as from his formal study of physics and music at Columbia University. The phenomena themselves as well as their theoretical illumination interested him deeply, and he was delighted by the restoration of the Foucault pendulum in Mellon Hall. Stephenson was a poet as well as a composer, and he hosted a poetry writing group in his home on Prince George Street for a number of years. His final lecture this past November, a meditation on the Meno, was a typically profound, wide ranging, and witty exploration of questions and analogies suggested by this dialogue so central to the program he loved. It was truly a poignant ending to a half century of joyful inquiry and dedicated service to this community. from the University of Notre Dame, and completed 14 post-doctorate courses in graduate psychology. He taught at numerous Midwest universities, including Notre Dame, Marquette, and St. Xavier in Chicago. From 1964 to 1965, Kahn returned to St. John’s, where he was one of the original tutors at the Santa Fe campus. In addition to his passion for education, Kahn was an accomplished photographer and an avid supporter of the arts. He lived in Chicago for 48 years, raising two families, his first with Peggy Kahn, and his second with Barbara Moriarty. Preceded in death by his parents and one sister, he is survived by his eight children, David, Carl, Stephen, Judy, Elizabeth, Margaret, Jonathan, and Daniel; two sisters, Harriet Kessler and Thelma Richman; 13 grandchildren; a greatgrandchild; and numerous nieces and nephews. Carl A. Linden Tutor, Annapolis April 2, 2012 In 1965, Carl Arne Linden joined the faculty in Annapolis, where he taught for five years and led study groups with students on 19th- and 20th-century political writings of Russian authors. Born in Greenwich, Conn., Linden received a master’s degree in Russian studies from Harvard in 1956 and a doctorate in political science and international affairs from George Washington University in 1965. He did intelligence work with the Air Force during the Korean War and was a political analyst for the CIA-affiliated Foreign Broadcast Information Service from 1956 to 1965. At the time of his death at 82, Linden was a professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. He taught fulltime at GWU from 1971 to 2001. Teresa (Engler) Raizen (SF78) December 13, 2012 Teresa Raizen (1955-2012) of Cambridge, Mass., died of metastatic breast cancer. She was 57. After earning a JD from the University of Chicago, Raizen spent three years practicing law. She worked for several years as the director of development at the Waldorf High School of Massachusetts Bay and volunteered as a La Leche League leader. She also enjoyed writing short stories, singing, playing recorder, knitting, and travelling. Raizen was thrilled to see both of her sons find their way to St. John’s. She was a strong supporter of the college and gave generously to it. Raizen was loved for her devotion to her family, strength of character, steadfast courage, and the loving kindness she displayed to all. She is survived by her husband, Dan (SF79), Carol Lackman, A78 June 9, 2012 John C. “Jake” Smedley Class of 1944 December 9, 2012 Gloria Lagasse-Page, SF76 February 24, 2013 Born in England, John C. “Jake” Smedley (1921-2012) moved to California to live with his aunt and uncle in 1930, following the death of his parents. Smedley studied at St. John’s from 1940 until he entered the Army in 1942. After marrying Georgianna “Georgie” Rogers of Baltimore, he served in General George Patton’s Third Army in Europe. Following Smedley’s discharge in 1945, he returned to Annapolis, where he graduated from St. John’s in 1948. He pursued a career in social work and received his MSW from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951. His career took him from Ruxton, Maryland, to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. In 2007, Smedley and his wife moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, to be closer to family. Smedley is survived by his four children Beth, Bill, Joe, and Webb; five grandchildren, including Giovanni (A08); and three great-grandchildren. and her three children, Nathaniel (SF10), Ben (SF13), and Claire. William A. Rohrbach (A85, SFGI-EC98) January 15, 2013 William Alan Rohrbach, a Santa Fe resident for 37 years, died at home at 50. Devoted to his family and to his community, he will be remembered for his intellect, warmth, and imagination, and for his fidelity to St. John’s College. Rohrbach was a member of the St. John’s Search and Rescue team from 1995 to 1999. He became an accomplished artist over the past decade and enjoyed playing the piano. Rohrbach also served on the board of the William H. and Mattie Wattis Harris Foundation for 20 years. Over the years, the foundation has been a champion of the Eastern Classics program. He is survived by his wife of 24 years, Elizabeth Rohrbach, (SF85, SFGI-EC03); son Alan; mother Louise Heydt, (SFGIEC95); father Charles; and many other caring family members. Also Deceased: Irving Abb, Class of 1947 July 13, 2012 Harvey Alexander, Class of 1961 November 23, 2012 Anne Allen, Class of 1954 May 23, 2012 Dawn Osoff Andrews, SF80 October 2012 H. Richard Bixby, Class of 1951 September 19, 2012 Lorin Blackstad, SF08 November 7, 2008 Louis Brin, Class of 1947 December 23, 1998 George Cochran, AGI82 March 30, 2013 Thomas Eaton, Class of 1965 March 1, 2013 Hallie Leighton, SF92 April 30, 2013 Barry Lexton, Class of 1960 April 28, 1995 Paul Liebow, Class of 1964 April 30, 2012 Kathleen MacDuff, A68 October 20, 2012 Gordon McNamee, Class of 1949 October 16, 2012 Don McQuoid, Class of 1961 February 10, 2013 John Meehan, Class of 1952 January 29, 2013 John Miller, Class of 1948 April 16, 2013 Ernest Piron, Class of 1954 December 23, 2012 John Povejsil, A92 June 26, 2012 Gilbert Renaut, A68 February 27, 2013 Nicolas Richardson, A99 February 8, 2013 Tevell Scott, SFGI69 August 28, 2009 Haven Simmons, Class of 1944 May 15, 2012 Vernon M. Smith, Class of 1945 July 30, 2012 Gerard Sparaco, A90 February 20, 2013 Raymond Starke, Class of 1951 March 22, 2013 Robert T. Everett Jr., Class of 1942 F. Elizabeth Tapia, SFGI94 October 12, 2012 Lawrence Scott Fitzpatrick, A83 April 4, 2013 George Van Sant, Class of 1947 January 20, 2013 Jack Cruz Hopkins, SFGI78 March 30, 2004 Peter Whipple, Class of 1950 January 2, 2013 Robert Hunter, Class of 1943 June 3, 2012 Diane Katz, Class of 1965 September 5, 2012 Samuel Kramer, Class of 1964 November 13, 2012 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 53 �philanthropy transitions The Graduate’s Odyssey By Charlotte Lucy Latham (SF02) Fund for Health and Wellness Honors Hallie L. Leighton (SF92) At the time of her death, she was working on a documentary on her father’s career. Hallie L. Leighton (SF92) April 30, 2013 Leighton is survived by her mother, Lynda Myles; her brother Ross Leighton; her Aunt Wendie Myles; and a large, loving extended family. with Bill Fant (A79) in the 1990s. The board served as a mechanism for alumni diaspora communication about job openings, rental property availability, and other short announcements. Hallie Leland Leighton, who fought successfully for passage of New York State’s Breast Density Inform Bill, a bill that would require doctors to notify patients if they had dense breast tissue, which can hide cancer during a mammography, died while fighting her own battle with metastatic breast cancer. She was 42. Born and raised in New York City, Leighton attended the High School of Performing Arts where she majored in drama. After St. John’s she worked in writing and publishing. At St. John’s, Leighton was known for her many friendships as well as her intellectual and leadership contributions, among which was the creation of JohnnyXpress, an electronic bulletin board for alumni that she started With her late father, the actor/ impersonator Jan Leighton, she co-authored two books: Rare Words and Ways to Master Their Meanings I and II (Levenger Press, 2003, 2008), a collection of useful but little known words. Scholarship Fund in Memory of Michael A. Chiantella (A97) Michael A. Chiantella (A97) May 30, 2012 Michael A. Chiantella was only 16 when he started his freshman year at the college. We first met when I showed up looking for a corkscrew on the second floor of Randall. We began a conversation that lasted 18 years. We sat in his room, smoking cartons of cigarettes and drinking cases of Coke, and talked about everything young Johnnies talk about. Even early on, he knew exactly what he wanted from his life. My greatest memories of him, selfishly, have to do with how he, through our interactions, made me feel about myself and the hope he gave me for my future. Through who he was innately and the generous soul he had cultivated, he gave me a glimpse of who and how I wanted to be. Chiantella was a gallant dreamer. He married his childhood love, Karen. They had two children, Dylan and Morgan, and lived in Venice, Fla., where Chiantella had a successful estate law practice. I saw him build the life that he had so wanted and so clearly described as a 16-year-old boy. Chiantella’s dreams included not only helping his family and friends, but also buying a house across from the college and getting a third master’s degree from the Graduate Institute. 54 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Inspired by her many contributions, fellow alumni, friends, and family have launched the Hallie Leighton Fund for Health and Wellness at St. John’s College. The group hopes to raise $50,000 to name the student health office on the Santa Fe campus after Leighton. It will serve as a tangible and lasting memorial to Leighton’s legacy of advocacy, commitment, and action. In addition, it will provide needed health-related services and support to St. John’s College students. The goal is to raise $50,000 by June 30, 2014, in time to hold a naming ceremony as part of the Fiftieth Year Celebration of the Santa Fe campus. To make a gift to the Hallie Leighton Fund for Health and Wellness, send a check to the college, or visit www. stjohnscollege.edu/giving. The Fund will serve as a tangible and lasting memorial to Leighton’s legacy of advocacy, commitment, and action. It would belittle his memory to solely state the obvious: that he was brilliant, beloved, and generous. This man was a catalyst. He changed people and the course of their lives. From the charity work he did with his law practice, helping thousands of veterans create wills, to telling me to change my major in graduate school, he nurtured and encouraged those he knew. The last book he gave me was a volume of Marcus Aurelius. As I sat in the church while they held his funeral mass, I found a passage that did not comfort, but did explain why my dear, dear friend was now dead. I have thought so many times about the Oxford English Dictionary sitting on his bookshelf, surrounded by books from the authors whose names we all know. His OED was both the latest and the last edition. That large collec- tion of words, with its history and dedication to helping us more fully understand the words we use each day, is married in my mind to my memory of Michael A. Chiantella. The OED will not be printed again; a renewed, physical version will not enter new peoples’ lives. Accessing the OED online is not the same as pulling one of its volumes off the shelf, just as the memory of Chiantella is not the same as him living in the world with us. –Vada Mossavat (A00) To make a gift to the Michael A. Chiantella Memorial Scholarship Fund, send a check to the college, or use the online giving form for the Annapolis campus. (Select “other” and designate the Michael A. Chiantella Memorial Scholarship Fund.) The online form is available at http://community.stjohnscollege. edu/AN-DonationForm-CURRENT “�I have brought you here with intelligence and art; Now you must take your pleasure for your guide; You are out of the steep and narrow way. [...] No longer wait for words or signs from me. Your will is free, just and as it should be, And not to follow it would be a fault: I leave you master of your body and soul.” thought, and watched their little ones become conscious of the world around them. And so did I. Working with children was, I learned after another year, no longer for me. From working as an artist model at an art gallery and school in Santa Fe, I —Virgil to Dante, The Divine Comedy: Purgatory Canto 27 became their interim art director. My organizational experience (from previous work as a stage manager and as Polity Chair) got me planning one-week workshops, helping visiting students, overseeing the bookkeeper, writing content for the website, and pretending every day that I knew what I was doing. I learned most of it after hours. Unfortunately, I found the owner careless and stupid, and argued with her vehemently. Though everyone thought my work was excellent and expected that I would be promoted, she fired me. I was devastated. Not knowing what to do in Santa Fe, I moved to Vermont where I don’t remember the day after graduamy boyfriend had family, where we could tion. I had a job to teach in France, but live and reassess our options. I went online halfway through the summer, I refused to do personality tests. I read horoscopes. it. Not because something else appealed, I talked to friends. I think we all felt guilty but because I didn’t know why I was going admitting how much we were flounderother than to do the next thing, always the ing. With no clear goal in mind, I decided right thing. I remember a lot of fear that to become a family therapist. When I was summer while others seemed so relaxed. rejected from an MSW program, I tried By August, I found work as a governess, not to cry. Visiting an aunt in New York, I tending a six-year-old girl and eightdecided to stay. With a few hundred dollars year-old boy for a wealthy Texas family. I to my name, I needed employment, an spun romantic stories for them about my apartment, and a new life. life in Pecos, living in an old, baby-blue I left messages with everyone I knew Airstream trailer on top of a hill made of that I was looking for a job. I would take rose quartz, though the long drive each anything. A week later, over a Diet Coke, way felt lonely. However, their troubles the owner of a medical publishing compadid not need the addition of mine; in fact, ny to whom I had been referred asked me they needed me to help them learn how many unexpected questions, including to handle their challenges. The job ended “Pick: black or white?” I answered red. after eighteen months, whereupon I deWhat I knew about publishing came from cided to work with another family. I moved working as an editor at my high school with the family to a plot of land deep in paper, but I made it sound good. I had a Santa Fe National Forest. I got a truck that job. Promotions came regularly, until I could make the hill out of Tesuque up to launched the education division, overseethe stone cabin where I lived and read and ing a half-million-dollar budget in the “�With a few hundred dollars to my name, I needed employment, an apartment, and a new life.” first six months. The job was grueling but I learned about work, life, business, and myself across those four years. I left the job, despite my success there, because I realized that I really could learn anything, and the compelling work I sought would only come from a new direction. I’m now in graduate school at the City University of New York. My dissertation thesis focuses on how poetry and prose can help us look at fine art—full circle to the conversations I had with the artists in Santa Fe. I have discovered a niche: helping artists and writers break through creative and business challenges by offering them readings that shake them out of mental stupor. This fall I will be on the job market again because a PhD isn’t the end of the road. All is not settled, but my liberal arts education at St. John’s College helped me immeasurably in finding my way. I learned non-linear geometry and the rationality of freedom in the books, but also the faith to persist, to keep on discovering. Virgil spoke to Dante with sincerity, and though Dante wept, he knew that the stories from their travels had taught him much. Now in my conversations with Johnnies, we admit how complicated the first decade out of school was. Yet we describe our quests with pride. We were lost innumerable times, but learned to incorporate missteps into our journey, to tread paths we couldn’t have imagined. Life is an odyssey, and it’s the adventures—and terrors—that make the story so satisfying in the end. Charlotte Lucy Latham seeks stories from liberal arts graduates about how they have fared in the first decade after graduation. www.scriptandtype.com The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 55 �alumni news alumni news s av e t h e d a t e Homecoming 2013 Santa Fe Friday, September 20Sunday, September 22 Annapolis Friday, September 27Sunday, September 29 Homecoming 2013 is gearing up to be a fantastic weekend for alumni. Both campuses will offer a wide variety of activities, including seminars, dancing, and career networking events, that will make your return to St. John’s fun and memorable. Early Bird registration opened June 7. A special rate is offered to recent alumni. Please join us and your classmates as we celebrate and support St. John’s College. Sarah Palacios and Leo Pickens, directors of Alumni Relations For more information and to register: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu. Click on “Homecoming.” Annapolis Alumni Office 410-626-2531 alumni@sjca.edu Santa Fe Alumni Office 505-984-6103 alumni@sjcsf.edu 56 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Inviting Conversations in Texas Admissions staff and alumni worked together to host two “Inviting Conversations” events in Texas that combined alumni gatherings with receptions for prospective students and their families. On April 20, at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, and the following day at Hotel Icon in Houston, alumni played a key role in recruiting new students. According to Larry Clendenin (SF77), director of Admissions in Santa Fe, anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of prospective students who attend these events go on to apply to or confirm their decision to enroll at St. John’s. “We’ve been doing these joint receptions for a few years now,” says Clendenin. “Alumni introduce themselves and talk about when they graduated and what they’ve done with their St. John’s education since then. We had a wonderful mix of younger and older alumni, men and women—scientists, professors, attorneys.” The alumni introductions in Houston went especially well, convincing one applicant’s father of the college’s virtues. He approached Clendenin at the opening of the reception to say that he just wasn’t sure how St. John’s stacked up against the other colleges where his daughter had applied, despite her enthusiasm for St. John’s over the other schools. “He didn’t know why she wanted it so much or how practical it was going to be,” says Clendenin. “But at the end of the event he told me the alumni had sold him, that they’d made the case for the college perfectly.” In addition to talking to prospective students and their families at “Inviting Conversations” events, the Austin/San Antonio alumni chapter has found a number of ways to give back to the college, including raising scholarship funds for the Summer Academy at St. John’s. Each year for the past five years, Larry Davis (SFGI87) has also searched all the Half Price Books locations in Austin “�We had a wonderful mix of younger and older alumni, men and women— scientists, professors, attorneys.” —Larry Clendenin (SF77) for complete 54-volume sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World to give to an underclassman from the Austin/San Antonio area. He uses coupons and sales to further reduce the cost to as low as $100 per set. He then asks other chapter members to help underwrite the gift. This year, Davis found two sets. One was given to a rising sophomore from Austin and, after the college confirmed there were no other currently enrolled underclassmen from the area at either campus with financial need, the other set went to an incoming freshman from San Antonio. —Jennifer Levin Lincoln Comes to Baltimore The elegant 1847 mansion at 14 Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore’s historic Mount Vernon neighborhood—one of nine buildings in that area belonging to Agora Inc.— was the ideal setting for a seminar led by Annapolis President Chris Nelson on Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address and the Gettysburg Address. “These two documents, more than any others since 1790, have provided the basis for the re-founding of the nation on the ‘proposition’ (requiring demonstration) that all men are created equal rather than the ‘selfevident truth’ that this is so,” says Nelson. “I think this has profound implications that would be good to explore. And for those who have seen the recent film, Lincoln, the time is fortuitous.” Baltimore chapter Johnnies gathered in March for lively conversation. “During the discussion, an interesting question came from the Gettysburg Address regarding political philosophy and the nature of being tested,” says chapter coleader Nathan Betz (AGI09). “We talked about whether or not war is a suitable example for testing humanity.” Betz and fellow chapter co-leader Talley Kovacs (A01) were among the approximately 20 alumni, along with President Nelson and Annapolis Alumni Director Leo Pickens, who participated in the seminar—and kept the conversation lingering afterward over glasses of wine at a local watering hole. “This was definitely one of the best attended seminar events we’ve had,” says Betz, who initiated the reading. “At first I proposed that we read Lincoln’s and President Obama’s respective second inaugural addresses. It was President Nelson who suggested we read two Lincoln documents instead, which actually worked even better.” As for the chapter’s future activities, Betz says the members balance socializing with scholarly pursuits. They welcome Johnnies in the Baltimore area to connect with them via their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/ groups/71905982751. “We’ve got plans to catch an Orioles game and do a seminar on Euripides’ The Trojan Women. There’s a real desire for ongoing interaction among Baltimore Johnnies.” —Gregory Shook To read President Nelson’s “Lincoln and Liberal Education” blog, visit www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-nelson/liberal-arts-educationlincoln_b_2966192.html CONNECT TO THE COLLEGE Alumni Association Board President Phelosha Collaros (SF00) “�The Alumni Association and St. John’s staff are working together to create meaningful ways that alumni can volunteer to support the mission of the college. Together, we can make sure the life-changing education we had is available to new students for many years to come.” Alumni online community: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Agora career mentoring network: http://alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Click on “Career Services” Alumni offices: alumni@sjca.edu alumni @sjcsf.edu Facebook: facebook.com/stjohnscollege The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 57 �Croquet Mix Waltz archon Virginia Early (A13) provided a local radio station deejay with the playlist for dancing during croquet, including these favorites: Waldo in Wonderland “After I Say I’m Sorry” Throughout the afternoon on April 20, 2013, St. John’s croquet players, decked out in red-and-white-striped shirts and hats and round black glasses, peeked through the crowd of more than 3,000 spectators gathered on campus for the 31st annual St. John’s-U.S. Naval Academy croquet match. This year’s croquet team, led by Imperial Wicket Drew Menzer (A13) of Granville, Ohio, sported uniforms inspired by the globe-trotting character from the Where’s Waldo? children’s books created by British illustrator Martin Handford—and rather convincingly at that. Unlike in the books, in which Waldo is clearly hidden, the team’s outfits popped against the backdrop of bow ties, spats, umbrellas, vintage suits, and festive frocks. “I got the idea for the uniforms during the summer after my sophomore year, long before I knew I would become Imperial Wicket,” says Menzer. “Out of nowhere, the idea just popped into my head, and I went with it.” With new wooden mallets in hand, courtesy of the Annapolis campus master craftsman, Gary Dunkelberger, the players burst onto the front lawn with vigor and gusto. This year’s “Prime Mover” award recipient, Shaun Callahan, U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1985 and the Imperial Wicket that competed against former St. John’s Imperial Wicket, John Ertle (A84), struck the opening shot. The “You Are My Sunshine” “Bei Mir Bist Du Schein” “Oh, Lady Be Good” “C-Jam Blues” “720 in the Books” “They All Laughed” “On a Slow Boat to China” “I’ve Got the World on a String” “Lean Baby” “Take the ‘A’ Train” “Jersey Bounce” “Route 66” “I’m in the Mood for Love” “My Blue Heaven” “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” by Gregory Shook “Bye Bye Blackbird” “Crazy Rhythm” “�When it comes to game time, we’re not afraid to make the bold move—and we’re not afraid to have it go wrong either.” “Jive at Five” “Hey, Good Lookin’” “Sailing Down the Chesapeake” “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” “Tainted Love” “Hard-Hearted Hannah” “Ja-Da” “Oh, When the Saints” “All God’s Children” “Bidin’ My Time” Imperial Wicket Drew Menzer (A13) “Moon River” kenneth tom johnnie traditions “Honeysuckle Rose” game was afoot! Geared up for another St. John’s triumph, the teams tapped and swung their mallets for more than five hours, one of the longest matches—if not the longest—in the event’s colorful 31-year history. Alas, like Waldo, for the Johnnies victory was hard to find. Their seven-year winning streak ended. The Midshipmen paraded downtown with the Annapolis Cup after a decisive 4-1 win. Josh Cohen, Annapolis mayor and son of tutor emeritus Joseph Cohen, Class of 1956, presented the victors with the trophy. “I have never even seen the Annapolis Cup until today,” says Midshipman First Class Ross Herman, the U.S. Naval Academy’s Imperial Wicket. For students on the croquet team, the sport is not only about having fun; it is an opportunity to build relationships with their neighbors on the other side of King George Street. Menzer was impressed with the level of camaraderie established between the two schools during the past several months. “More than any other year, the St. John’s and Navy teams really made an effort to spend time together and get to know each other as friends,” says 58 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 Menzer, who plans to start law school in the fall. “Croquet’s been such a fun part of my experience at St. John’s. I hope to keep playing for years to come.” The match is a centerpiece for the waltz and swing dancing, a grand lawn party, and alumni homecoming. “Croquet is a great second Homecoming, when alumni can catch up with each other and their friends at the college,” says Babak Zarin (A10), a law student at Elon University who hopes to attend the match each year—and the alumni-student seminars. “A Mad Tea-Party” and “The Queen’s Croquet-Ground,” two chapters from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, were the readings at the alumni-student seminars led by President Christopher Nelson (SF70), and tutors Eva Brann (H89), Sam Kutler (A54), and Joseph MacFarland (A87). Gathered in one of the McDowell Hall classrooms, Brann posed the opening question, “How can you achieve depth through pure zaniness?” Alumni and students explored the value of silliness and the meaning of Wonderland, which, it seems, is always close at hand. Opposite page: Saul Leiken (A13), master of ceremonies, introduced the players from both teams. Clockwise (from top): Swing dancing all afternoon; spectators toast the match; Patrick E. McDowell (A01), his wife, Citali, and their newborn son in the vintage outfits that Citali designs for the match each year; former Imperial Wicket John Ertle (A84) and Shaun Callahan (U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1985), former U.S.N.A. Imperial Wicket (1983-1985); Mandee Glasgo (A14) prepares a shot; the “Prime Mover” mallet. Photos by Anyi Guo (A14) unless otherwise noted. The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | 59 �st. john’s forever eidos Continuing the Conversation anyi guo (a14) “This photo resonates with Johnnies because of our fierce, and occasionally irreverent, pride in the Program,” says Hugh Verrier (A14). “Johnnies appreciate the freedom of thought that is encouraged at the college, and we are glad to see that culture grow and renew itself with each generation of students.” During Homecoming in Annapolis, Verrier and Noam Freshman (A14), joined by photographer Anyi Guo (A14), immortalized their Johnnie pride by recreating the familiar photograph of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan, founders of the New Program, in conversation on the steps of McDowell Hall. “We were both trying to stand there and look as accurate as possible, even standing on the exact steps they did. As the photo was being snapped, I couldn’t help but think of what Barr and Buchanan were thinking when the original was taken, and what courage it took to start the college and embark on the New Program,” says Freshman. After the image was posted on Facebook, the trio was surprised by the response from fellow classmates. “It was this outpouring of appreciation that really made me feel like we had tapped into a deep tradition, which was very fulfilling,” says Verrier, who credits Freshman for originating the idea. “His passion for the Program and his good nature drive him to find new and fun ways to participate in our college traditions.” “During our summers in Taos, I worked and talked often with another potter and St. John’s graduate, Betsy Williams (SF84). Our conversations ranged widely over many things besides clay…. We also talked about printmaking, and one winter day I got a package from Betsy, enclosing used tea bags with the opening question, ‘What can you do with these?’ This series of [collagraphy] prints is my attempt to answer that.” —Ebby Malmgren (AGI88), member, Mitchell Gallery Board of Advisers Ebby Malmgren (AGI88), a printmaker, potter, and writer, lives in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work can be seen at The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, The Rift Gallery in Dixon, New Mexico, and The Eastport Gallery, in Annapolis. Her interest in printmaking began with a chance invitation to a monoprint workshop in Taos. After about a year of monoprinting, Malmgren realized she missed the three-dimensional aspect of her work in clay; she has adapted her Bret clay slab roller as a printing press, and uses polymer clay—“Sculpey”—which can be run through a press without breaking. Collagraphy, from the Greek koll or kola, describes a printmaking process in which materials such as clay are applied to a rigid surface, inked with a roller or paintbrush, then printed onto paper or another material. From top to bottom: Imaginary Journey, Meditation, There is Always a Bright Spot. Photos: Courtesy The Eastport Gallery 60 | The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 The College | st. john’s college | summer 2013 | iii �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage paid Communications Office P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404 a d d r e ss se rvi ce r e qu e st ed Annapolis, md Permit N0. 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <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. 61 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, Summer 2013 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Summer_2013 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 38, Issue 1 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Summer 2013. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f0a78538a87714f81b54f2209ad98093.pdf 88250410c27a954d3b39c44a3a3fd706 PDF Text Text College The SPRING 2016 • S T. J O H N ’ S C O L L E G E • ANNAPOLIS • S A N TA F E Martin Luther King, Jr. On Serving Others �A day of service: alumni, students, faculty, and staff plant daffodil bulbs outside Mellon Hall. ii THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �OPENING NOTE What can you do with a St. John’s degree? I love this question because the answer is so surprisingly simple: anything. And it’s not hyperbole. With commencement just around the corner, a new crop of Johnnies will bid adieu to the place they called home for the past four years, to the friends and faculty who tirelessly helped them grapple with such great minds as Euclid, Hegel, Aristotle, and Kant, among others, and mold big ideas into imaginative and valuable contributions—often in the spirit of service to others. In his final sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia exactly two months before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) called on people to consider the notion of service, saying that it is within everyone’s capacity; the only true requirement needed to serve, he says, is “a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.” This issue of The College shines a light on just a few among so many alumni who apply their “great books degree” to improve the lives of individuals and communities, both far and near, from advocating human rights to addressing women’s global health issues to transforming young students into powerful storytellers. Suffice to say, not only does such work require passion and dedication, it also takes a special kind of courage. Gregory Shook, editor THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 1 �SPRING 2016 VOLUME 41, ISSUE 1 “� ntelligence plus character— I that is the goal of true education.” —Martin Luther King, Jr. FEATUR E S P A G E 1 6�� P A G E 2 0�� PA G E 2 6 A REFLECTION ON SERVICE ROOSEVELT THE REFORMER A PLACE WHERE EVERYONE MATTERS A thoughtful examination of the meaning and value of service deepens our understanding of what inspires and motivates people to serve. Santa Fe’s new president is ready to show the world what matters most in education—and it’s not the glittery, superficial things. On Maine’s waterfront, an after-school program helps refugees and migrant youth become powerful storytellers and academic achievers. ON THE COVER: Martin Luther King, Jr. illustration by Francesco Francavilla PREVIOUS PAGE: JENNIFER BEHRENS 2 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �D E PAR T ME N T S ��FROM THE BELL TOWERS BIBLIOFILE FOR & ABOUT ALUMNI 4 � Serving Women Worldwide: Rachel Seay (A02) 30 � John Sifton (A96) investigates war’s devastating effects in Violence All Around. 32 �lmuni News: A SJCAA 2016 Election Notice 6 An Alumni Leader 7 � Project for Peace 8 � Global Pathways: Jiujun Tang (SF16) 10 History on the Hill 11 First Folio! 12 �he Science Behind T 14 � Together in Song 34 �lumni Notes A 31 �Tutor David Lawrence Levine (Class of 1967) examines tyranny in Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom. � Silvermintz (AGI01) explores Daniel the ancient Greek sophist in Protagoras: Ancients in Action. � Keyser (SF91) shares a Amber story about healing in The Way Back from Broken. . 37 � rofile: Erinn Woodside (AGI) P leads a life of service. 42 �In Memoriam 45 �hilanthropy: Donald Esselborn (A80) P and Edmond Freeman 46 � Johnnie Voices: Russell Max Simon (SFGI06) discusses his most valuable investment. JOHNNIE TRADITIONS 48 �t. John’s Forever S EIDOS 49 Liz Hyatt (SF85) ABOVE: Rachel Seay (A02) in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 3 �From the BELL TOWERS A JOHNNIE MAKES A DIFFERENCE Serving Women Worldwide Rachel Seay (A02) Works with Women in Africa through Doctors Without Borders A woman dies from pregnancy-related complications every other minute, says Rachel Seay (A02), an OB/GYN and researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “Most of those can be prevented,” she adds ruefully—common causes are postpartum hemorrhage, infection, and unsafe abortion. And it’s women in developing nations who suffer most, as Seay observed firsthand while working under the auspices of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Sierra Leone and South Sudan. Last October in Annapolis, as a featured speaker for the Career Services Office, she gave a presentation on global women’s health challenges in support of MSF’s Because Tomorrow Needs Her project. A 2001 Hodson Trust internship allowed Seay to shadow several doctors and helped cement her interest in medicine. She earned her M.D. from the University of Colorado Denver in 2009, and completed her OB/GYN residency at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In 2015, she received the American College of Gynecology’s history fellowship, which allowed her to research the management of postpartum hemorrhage in the United States. Her first mission for MSF was in fall 2013, at a maternal and pediatric hospital in Bo, Sierra Leone; in South Sudan, she worked with local midwives at a government-run hospital. At both facilities, she provided emergency obstetric care to women in need. Not all could be saved: she recalls two girls in Bo, both 17 and pregnant for the first time, who had both labored fruitlessly for days at home before coming to the MSF clinic. “By the time one of the girls had arrived,” she said in a 2015 interview, “her baby had died, while the baby of the other was still alive. Both girls delivered by C-section and ended up having really bad pelvic and abdominal infections.” The woman whose child died eventually died as well, while the other recovered along with her baby. “The complications and suffering of both of these girls were happening at the same time—they even shared the same room! To me, this story paints such a stark picture of two different outcomes from a problem that is completely preventable.” Seay emphasizes that the issues facing women’s health are multifactorial; “often the actual medicine or health care piece is a small piece of a much bigger problem that requires political action” or infrastructure improvements. Poorly maintained roads, for example, keep patients from reaching the care they need, and it can also be difficult to find specialized service providers. Lack of access to contraception is a huge concern as well. The largest obstacle, however, is the lack of priority many world governments and health administrations place on women’s health. Because of this, Seay believes it’s not enough to raise awareness among her fellow medical professionals; talks such as the one she gave at St. John’s are part of her outreach to the general public. But Seay also feels that St. John’s students are uniquely placed to make an impact in the medical field. “One of the strengths of the Program is that we learn to consider other perspectives than our own, and I think that very directly relates to cultural competency, and being able to relate to patients who are coming from a very different context than you.” Seay points out that a doctor who doesn’t make 4 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Rachel Seay (A02) working with women and children at hospitals in Sierra Leone and South Sudan. the effort to connect with patients will likely find those patients less willing to comply with recommended medications or therapies. For Johnnies interested in medical school, Seay urges them to take advantage of the Career Services Office. “[They’ve] been really important to me, both to help guide my own career path and [now] to pay that back, to continue to be involved and offer my own mentoring to current students.” — Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) �“� ne of the strengths of the Program is that O we learn to consider other perspectives than our own, and I think that very directly relates to cultural competency, and being able to relate to patients who are coming from a very different context than you.” —Rachel Seay (A02) ALUMNI MAKE A DIFFERENCE THANK YOU to all the alumni volunteers who supported the Career Services Office this past year! Your efforts are appreciated and valued, and we couldn’t accomplish our goals without you. The alumni listed here have generously given their time, energy, talents, and resources to help current St. John’s students and their fellow alumni through information sessions, webinars, panels, networking events, e-mail connections, and much more: Martha Acosta (A92) Matthew Albanese (A02) Robert Ard (A94) Jim Bailey (A83) Shirley Banks (SF88) Jamaal Barnes (A10) Cynthia Barry (AGI05) David Bohannon (A99) Meredith Bohannon (A03) Donald Booth (A68) Matt Calise (A01) Ellen Chavez de Leitner (SF73) Thea Chimento (A09) Jonathan Coppadge (A06) John Cottrell (A02) Jennifer Dalton (A13) Samuel Davidoff (A99) Joshua DeSilva (A12) Mimi Desjardins (A84) Lyn Des Marais (A83) David Dillard (A89) Cole Donovan (AGI13) Kieran Dowdy (A09) Rachel Dudik (A02) Virginia Early (A13) Jeff Edwards (AGI94) Peter Faulhaber (SF78) Megan Field (A10) Gary Gallun (A69) Samuel Garcia (A99) January Hamill Gataza (A75) Lexi Goetz (A12) Cara Gormally (A02) Diane Hanson (A89) Chelsia Hetrick (SF03) Michael Houston (A82) Nathan Humphrey (A94) Maria Ironside (SF80) Bren Jacobson (SF83) Leslie Kay (SF83) Brittany Keehan (A12) Caroline Killian (SF05) Melanie Kirby (SF97) Katie Kolodzie (A12) Amy Kosari (A93) Louis Kovacs (A02) Marielle Kronberg (A70) Nathan Kross (A09) Tambra Leonard (SF85) Alex Leone (A12) Julia Leone (A12) Aaron Lewis (A96) Ronald Long (A91) Chris MacPherson (A14) Samuel Matlack (AGI11) Constance McClellan (SF73) Elisabeth McClure (A08) Brian McGuire (A96) Aaron McLean (A03) Jeremy Melvin (A98) Reynaldo Miranda (A99) Matthew Mokey (A03) Alistair Morrison (SF84) Amie Neff (SF93) William Nooter (A76) Nate Oesch (A09) Roweena Oesch (A10) Sam Ose (SF05) Tia Pausic (A86) Anna Perry (A11) Micah Pharris (A95) Justin Phelps (A07) Allison Pittman (A08) Temple Porter (Class of 1962) Ephrem Reese (A10) Barbara Rogan (A73) Ryan Rylee (A04) Richard Schmechel (A97) Daniel Schoos (A86) Ellen Schwindt (A88) Salvatore Scibona (SF97) Jessie Seiler (A08) Erin Shadowens (A12) Jon Kara Shields (A08) Suzannah Simmons (SF01) Marin Skokandic (A12) Michael Allen Smith (A87) Nancy Solzman (SF88) Elizabeth Spagnoletti (A12) Leonard Sponaugle (A85) Eric Springsted (SF73) Courtney Stange-Treagar (A00) Christopher Stuart (A06) Janet Sunderland (SFGI95) Jennifer Sweeney (A06) Janice Thompson (A95) Elliott Tulloch (SF91) Heather Upshaw (SF04) Austin Volz (SF09) Melissa Warren (A83) Cornelia Weierbach (A77) Scott Williamson (A03) Iva Ziza (A01) Alumni who are interested to volunteer with the college’s Career Services Offices, please contact us at: Jaime Dunn (in Annapolis) jaime.dunn@sjc.edu 410-626-2500 Margaret Odell (in Santa Fe) modell@sjc.edu 505-984-6067 THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 5 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S JOHNNIES BREAK ALL-MALE TRADITION Carolyn Leeuwenburgh is a member of an elite group—the first class of women to graduate from St. John’s College. Fifty years later, Leeuwenburgh and four other alumnae from the Class of 1955 celebrated this important milestone in the college’s history at Homecoming last fall in Annapolis. She shares the following with The College: In 1950, St. John’s College decided to admit women, for the year of 1951. This was motivated partly for financial reasons as a result of the post-WWII economy, and secondly because women did not have full access to education in America. St. John’s was the first all-male college in Maryland to admit women. Alumni Leader Finds His “Rushmore” Chris Coucheron-Aamot (SF04) has the distinction of being a double dropout. Bright but bored in high school in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Aamot placed third in the state’s academic decathlon and yet carried a 1.8 GPA. As a freshman at the University of New Mexico, he earned straight As but got lost in the crowd and ditched higher education for a job as a religious radio news producer for Moody Broadcasting in Chicago. He might still be in the broadcast booth had he not produced a series of pieces about Christian colleges adopting great books programs. Researching the great books naturally led him to St. John’s College where he found a challenge, a calling, a home—and, finally, a diploma. Aamot graduated on a Saturday in 2004, took Sunday off, and started work at the college on Monday. He has never left the place he calls his “Rushmore,” referring to the cult classic Wes Anderson film. Aamot’s official title at the Santa Fe campus is associate director of Alumni Relations, but it is no stretch to call him the college’s most ardent and grateful Johnnie. “St. John’s shaped who I am as a person,” says Aamot. “It is rare now in this world to have a place of such grace and curiosity and whimsy. What we do and Chris Coucheron-Aamot (SF04) at “home” who we are is not common. And so to be able to be part of it for such an extended period is a tremendous privilege. It’s a great gift.” While many people leave their jobs behind at the end of the day, that’s not Aamot’s relationship with St. John’s. “In addition to the [alumni relations] work that I do I have a “� t. John’s shaped who I am S as a person. It is rare now in this world to have a place of such grace and curiosity and whimsy.” deep love for this place, so that leads me to involvement in all kinds of informal ways,” he says. Aamot often takes a seat at lectures and in study groups. He goes to campus parties, sits in on senior orals, chaperones the ski team, and for five years he lived on campus as a senior resident, walking the high desert campus several times a night with his Tibetan terrier, Lucy. “I do what I do because I love the place, and I consider myself a member of this community,” says Aamot. “And that means something special.” —Leslie Linthicum 6 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 MARION WARREN, SJC ARCHIVES I N S A N TA F E The 50th anniversary of our graduation was a good reason to acknowledge this event, but there is yet another reason. There were 19 single women and six married ones that were willing to undertake this experiment. They combatted prejudices from the administration, the staff, the tutors, and the students. The tradition of 255 years had been broken. Unfortunately at that time, the school was not prepared to offer a support system for the problems that arose. Many women left before completing the full four years. Those women who survived the four years did so because the St. John’s Program enhanced their desire to learn and become enlightened. Learning at St. John’s superseded the personal integration problems because it offered a lifetime direction of learning. �PROJECT FOR PEACE Inspiring Young Journalists in Nepal Growing up in Kathmandu, Nepal, Jon Shrestha (A17) remembers being in only one earthquake. It measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and lasted less than a minute. Afterward, he couldn’t sleep for days. Last April an earthquake again struck the city—this time an even more massive 7.8 magnitude shock—a month before Shrestha and his classmate Sagar Aryal (A18), also from Nepal, returned home to lead a three-day conference that summer for aspiring young journalists. Shrestha and Aryal organized the conference, an initiative supported by the Projects for Peace with the Davis United World College Scholars Program, to promote microjournalism in Nepal by bringing together like-minded, socially conscious writers, ages 15 to 24. Plans got delayed for several weeks while the two students joined the post-quake recovery effort, but they were determined that the conference go on, inspired in part by the outpouring of support from the international community to aid Nepal. Shrestha and Aryal invited 75 young journalists from all over the country to join the conference; with much of the city’s infrastructure damaged, including the venue that was originally reserved for the conference, they needed to secure a new location fast. Shrestha and Aryal never lost hope—or their dedication to the cause. “In Nepal, there are many rural areas, and the people and events taking place in these areas are often neglected by the media,” says Shrestha, who is not alone in his desire to promote microjournalism. Ultimately, 64 intrepid souls attended the conference, some taking an arduous 12-hour bus ride to get there. Months prior to the conference, Shrestha and Aryal worked closely with media professionals and sustainable development researchers in Nepal to discuss ideas and create a robust program schedule. “One of the goals of the conference was to meet youths from various districts throughout the country and to help them bring to light new and untold stories,” says Shrestha. They also invited journalism professors, an editor of a national daily, United Nations representatives, a media law expert, and a mediation counselor for plenary presentations and training sessions. Sagar Aryal (A18) and Jon Shrestha (A17) earned funding for the Projects for Peace. “� n Nepal, there are many I rural areas, and the people and events taking place in these areas are often neglected by the media.” During the conference, participants held discussions on a range of topics, from journalism ethics and culture to networking and mediation techniques. The conference concluded with the World Café Discussion, which provided young journalists the opportunity to ask questions, exchange ideas, share experiences, and explore more deeply some of the issues discussed during the conference. “I am hopeful about the future,” says Shrestha. “I am hopeful that Nepal will not be down for long, hopeful that young Nepalese are still excited to serve their communities.” The College is published by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM thecollegemagazine@ sjc.edu Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD Postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. Editor Gregory Shook gregory.shook@sjc.edu Contributing Editor Sally Baker Contributors Anna Perleberg Andersen (SF02) Nutchapol Boonparlit (A15) Eva Brann (H89) Barbara Goyette (A73) Charles Green (AGI02) Liza Hyatt (SF85) Bob Keyes Brady Lee (AGI14) Carolyn Leeuwenburgh (Class of 1955) Leslie Linthicum Lisa Neal Jan Schlain Jon Shrestha (A17) Russell Max Simon (SFGI06) Robin Weiss Design Skelton Design Contributing Designer Jennifer Behrens THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 7 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S G L O B A L P A T H W AY S Jiujun Tang (SF16) Ventures Where the Wild Things Are International student Jiujun Tang’s (SF16) first experience in the United States was when she arrived on the college’s Santa Fe campus in August 2011. Since it was late in the evening, her memory of that moment is less about what she could see and more about what she could smell: the brisk, invigorating scent of pine. For Tang, studying the classics in the mountains of Santa Fe felt like an ideal setting. “Where you learn contributes to the way you learn,” she says. Now the recipient of a Global Pathways Fellowship from St. John’s, Tang will have the opportunity to put her theory into practice in Tanzania, Africa this summer. Global Pathways is the study abroad component of the Pathways Fellowship program that helps Johnnies transition into graduatelevel study or careers that call for prerequisite courses. Funding is available for credit courses in many fields as well as certificate programs and professional conferences. Recipients are chosen by a small committee of tutors and staff. Tang is unique in that she has been awarded both fellowships. With a passion for wildlife medicine, she plans to pursue wildlife research, conservation, and rehabilitation. Currently, she volunteers weekly at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter to gain practical experience. As a Pathways recipient last summer, Tang got started on the academic requirements she will need to apply to vet school. She received the funding to take organic chemistry and statistics courses at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. “I had the luxury of being completely focused on my schoolwork without having to think about finances,” she says. “It also made me feel clearer, not only about what I want to do, but also the path I’ll need to take to get there.” Following graduation in May, her Global Pathways Fellowship will take her to the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem of northern Tanzania, home to indigenous communities, such as the Maasai, and many wildlife sanctuaries in which elephants, lions, baboons, and other animals roam. “So far I have only been exposed to caring for domestic animals,” says Tang. “Global Pathways will allow me to study wild, African animals in their natural habitat, and also afford me the opportunity to examine changing landuse and resource availability in the region. The focus of the program is safeguarding biodiversity conservation while fostering the wellbeing of local communities. It’s an experience I couldn’t have anywhere else.” —Lisa Neal Jiujun Tang (SF16) pursues her passion for wildlife medicine. 8 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 A R C H E RY I N S A N TA F E Aiming for Gold Move over, croquet, you’ve got company. Johnnies in Santa Fe boast a new game of their own—and their first intercollegiate sport— archery. Started last fall, the college’s archery club is officially registered with USA Archery, the civilian face of the USA Olympic Team and the national governing body of collegiate archery. “It was the number one activity requested by students,” says Mary Anne Burke, facilities and athletics manager at the Santa Fe campus. “Archery gives students a sport they can compete in, not just amongst themselves, but with other colleges on a national level. That was very important to our students.” Coach Richard Dew has the chops to lead the popular club. He set a New Mexico record last year at the sport’s indoor nationals and was a gold medalist at the state’s Senior Olympics. He has more than a decade of archery experience and is classified at level three within the Olympic training system. “The techniques and structures I use to teach St. John’s students are the same ones used to train the Olympic team,” says Dew. “Our students love to see Olympians perform using the same equipment and techniques they do.” In fact, collegiate archery teams are the foundation for Olympic team recruitment, says Dew, who describes this pathway to the Olympics as “very doable for someone who wants to compete at that level.” �DEVELOPMENT NEWS Meet the Veeps “� he crucial elements of T the St. John’s scholastic system carry over into archery. The discipline, honesty, rigor, and focus that students discover through seminar are just as important in archery.” —Archery Coach Richard Dew The club already has 18 student members, a mix of active competitors, beginners, and intermediate-level archers. Devon Ketch (SF18), Zachary Thomas (SF16), and Chris Cullinane (SF16) participated in tournament competition for the first time in early 2016. Students shoot under regulation conditions and are judged and scored by their coach in order to compete digitally. The club goal is to see some students nationally ranked by the end of the year. “Archery is a purely individual sport that both requires and teaches physical and mental discipline,” says Dew, adding that it is a perfect fit for the college. “The crucial elements of the St. John’s scholastic system carry over into archery. The discipline, honesty, rigor, and focus that students discover through seminar are just as important in archery.” —Lisa Neal St. John’s welcomes Phelosha Collaros (SF00) and Laurie Reinhardt as the new vice presidents for Development and Alumni Relations in Santa Fe and Annapolis, respectively. Alumni know Collaros from her previous leadership roles at the college. Reinhardt is a new member of the community. Reinhardt was most recently associate vice chancellor for development and campaign director at North Carolina State University. In that capacity she led university-wide development and campaign efforts in the context of a $1.5-billion comprehensive campaign. Prior to her appointment at North Carolina State, she was associate vice president for development at Rutgers University, managing the fundraising programs for the School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the School of Communication and Information. “Laurie brings a wealth of experience, a warmth of spirit, a firm commitment to our purposes, and a desire to advance the cause of liberal education,” says Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70). “She promises to be a terrific addition to our leadership team.” With more than 20 years of experience in development and development management, Reinhardt also has led development programs at the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies, as well as for nonprofit arts and humanities organizations in Miami and New York. She completed her Ph.D. in musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her M.A. in musicology at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, and her B.A. in music (cello performance) at Houghton College. Reinhardt also holds an M.B.A. in management from the University of Miami. Phelosha Collaros (SF00) comes to her new role at St. John’s from the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT) Foundation, where she served as foundation director/director of development and launched the foundation’s first multi-million-dollar campaign. She led the organization’s strategic planning efforts, daily operations, major and planned gift initiatives, and individual donor Phelosha Collaros (SF00) and Laurie Reinhardt and fundraising engagement. She served in a variety of capacities at ASRT prior to her appointment as foundation director in 2010. Collaros also has served in various leadership positions in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. She was a member of the association’s Executive Committee, association president-elect (VP) from 2011-2013, president from 2013-2015, and, currently, past president. She has been instrumental in implementing structural changes through the introduction of a new mission, a strategic and operations plan, and new board member recruitment and onboarding practices. Especially significant during her tenure, a strong focus on collaboration and trust between the college and the alumni body has resulted in a more effective and supportive volunteer framework for the college. Collaros earned dual master’s degrees in business administration and public administration, with nonprofit management concentration, from Walden University in Minneapolis and was a Robert Wood Johnson Ladder-to-Leadership Fellow. “We are so pleased to welcome these two new vice presidents,” said Senior Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations Victoria Mora. “Each is highly experienced, talented, and brings exceptional skills to our development and alumni relations efforts.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 9 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S S A N TA F E C A M P U S History on the Hill The National Register of Historic Places and the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties have recognized the St. John’s Santa Fe campus for it historical and cultural importance. The state group honored the campus for its significance in education, architecture, landscape architecture, and art. The national register recognizes as historically significant the Peterson Student Center, Evans Science Laboratory, Santa Fe Hall, and upper dormitories, all built in 1964; the lower dormitories, built in 1967; Weigle Hall, built in 1971; and the Fine Arts Building, built in 1973. Also included are the central landscape plan by modernist landscape architect Garrett Eckbo (1910-2000) and the iconic mural inside Peterson Student Center by artist Alexander Girard (1907-1993). In addition, the Historic Santa Fe Foundation voted to add the campus to its Register of Resources Worthy of Preservation. The buildings at 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca have the modified adobe look of the Territorial Revival style developed by famed architect John Gaw Meem in the early 1930s: earth-tone walls and flat roofs, but with sharper corners, brick coping along roof lines, and white-painted windows, doors, and portals. Because of the campus’ concentration of historical significance, Clockwise from the top: A scenic view of campus; cover of the New Mexican, 1963; Eckbo’s landscape plans; painting the Girard Mural. 10 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �the plan and ensemble of buildings were deemed more significant as a group than any one building. As such, the campus is the only college in New Mexico to be listed as a historic district. Meem Library Director Jennifer Sprague began work on the college’s application for these designations in fall 2014 as part of the campus’s 50th anniversary celebration. In the process, she and library staff members Laura Cooley, Heather McClure, and Chris Quinn consulted letters by John Gaw Meem and Richard Weigle, architects Edward O. Holien and William R. Buckley, and other early visionaries, detailing plans to construct the campus. “The process helped us see how important the college is to our Santa Fe community and the effort Santa Feans like John Gaw Meem and Robert McKinney made to bring St. John’s College here,” says Sprague. “Our ties to the local community are very strong.” —Lisa Neal FIRST FOLIO! Shakespeare Takes Center Stage in Annapolis St. John’s and the Annapolis Shakespeare Company Celebrate 400 Years of the “Bard of Avon” Shakespeare will make a special appearance at St. John’s, in the form of a national traveling exhibition titled First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare. St. John’s College, Annapolis, was named Maryland’s only site to host an original 1623 First Folio. The Folger Shakespeare Library (www.folger.edu), in partnership with the Cincinnati Museum Center (www.cincymuseum.org) and the American Library Association (www.ala. org), is touring a First Folio throughout 2016 to all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. This first-ever national tour of one of the world’s most influential books celebrates 400 years of Shakespeare and his legacy. The exhibition will be on view from November 1 through December 4, 2016 at the Mitchell Gallery on the Annapolis campus. To celebrate the First Folio, St. John’s and programming partner, the Annapolis Shakespeare Company, will present a host of exhibit-related programs, including teacher and student workshops, plays, a family fair, lectures, dramatic readings, and more. There will be an online component to the exhibition, too, that will include a calendar of events listing related Shakespeare programming that is going on throughout Maryland during this time. The First Folio includes 36 Shakespeare plays, 18 of which had never been printed before. Without the First Folio, all of those plays—including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, As You Like It, and more—might have been lost forever. Compiled by two of his friends and fellow theater colleagues, the First Folio was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death in 1616. “From Shakespeare experts to students studying the Title page with Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare. Shakespeare First Folio, 1623. Folger Shakespeare Library. Bard’s plays for the first time, this exhibit is a rare opportunity for the St. John’s College community and others to experience one of the most influential books in history,” says Cathy Dixon, library director in Annapolis. First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare is made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the support of Google.org, Vinton and Sigrid Cerf, the British Council, and other generous donors. To learn more about the First Folio! exhibition at St. John’s, visit www.sjc.edu/shakespeare. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 11 �ILLUSTRA TION: PO LLY BECK ER F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S of interns in my lab,” says her project mentor Michael Power, an animal scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park. “She asked intelligent questions, learned quickly…and was able to understand and appreciate the science behind the research.” During her internship, Hill, who plans to pursue veterinary school after graduation, took advantage of opportunities outside the lab as well. She went on rounds with zoo staff, saw some of the pathology cases, and spent a week in the commissary preparing diets for the animals in the birdhouse. “I got to hand-feed an anteater live mealworms and watch the two Andean bear cubs nurse from their mother,” she says. “I also got to take a private tour of the Great Ape House, where Lucy, a forty-twoyear-old orangutan, continually made raspberry noises at me.” —Brady Lee (AGI14) AT T H E S E M I N A R TA B L E HODSON INTERN SUMMER CLASSICS IN SANTA FE Going Ape at the Smithsonian What will you do this summer? Consider Summer Classics in Santa Fe—a chance to return to the seminar table to explore the perplexing, the rousing, and the compelling. For one, or two, or three weeks in July, join fellow alumni and other curious minds from across the country to read and discuss timeless works, meet new people, and encounter bold ideas. Seminars are led by St. John’s tutors; this summer’s offerings include “The Magic of Macondo: An Exploration of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “Herodotus’s Persian War,” Proust’s The Prisoner and The Fugitive,” “Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon,” and many others. To register and learn more about the 2016 Summer Classics program, visit www.sjc.edu/summer-classics. A lover of great books as well as great apes, Andrea Hill (A16) spent last summer as a Hodson intern at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park’s nutrition lab, where she studied the eating habits of the chimpanzee populations at Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park. Working with evolutionary biologists, field researchers, and clinical nutritionists, Hill studied the same chimpanzee populations that renowned primatologist Jane Goodall began studying in 1960. “There was no data about the nutritional content of the foods that these chimps eat,” says Hill, who helped develop a foundational data set for ongoing research. “It was up to me and four other interns to gather that data.” Having a natural curiosity and a desire to dig deep into her work, Hill stood out among her fellow interns. “As a biomedical field, there is more to vet medicine than just the medicine—there’s the science behind the field, which is something that I had yet to experience [and] why I chose to work in a research lab rather than a clinic,” says Hill. She quickly moved up the ranks, training others on procedures and offering guidance on running assays and data interpretation. “Andrea performed at the highest level I expect 12 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Andrea Hill (A16) at work in the lab “� here was no data about T the nutritional content of the foods that these chimps eat. It was up to me and four other interns to gather that data.” —Andrea Hill (A16) �ON SOCIAL MEDIA ONLY AT ST. JOHN’S... Follow St. John’s College on Instagram: #johnniefaces Instagram.com/sjcannapolis Instagram.com/sjcsantafe THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 13 �F R OM T H E B E L L T OW E R S COLLEGIUM Together in Song In ancient Rome, “collegium” was a term used to describe a political or business group that came together for executive purposes. At St. John’s, Collegium has nothing to do with executive power, or politics for that matter. Instead, Collegium is a widely anticipated “talent show” at the college, held once a semester. Students typically gather with friends to give a performance, which may range anywhere from piano solos, choruses, and small bands to a classical sonata, folk song, or parody. Tutors and staff may join the onstage festivities, too. “It’s a Collegium is open to virtually any type of performance, so adventurous students take the opportunity to show off skills they have never before shared with their friends. Students may perform challenging or unorthodox songs, too, comforted by the encouraging atmosphere. “It’s a time for people to come together and sing and play for each other,” says Stoltzfus. “There is a feeling of amateurism in the spirit of love, the love of music making.” Performances at the most recent Collegium held in the Great Hall in December included Heart of Courage, an original piece by current Annapolis Graduate Institute student Luke Dougherty; Clair de Lune by Debussy, performed on piano by Bennett Wildauer (A18); The 12 Days of Christmas, “� t’s a real celebration. I Students unwind and let off steam—and the audience is incredibly supportive. We are a very musical college, and people value making music with each other.” Top: Maxwell Dakin (A16), Evan Frolov (A16), Marina Weber (A16), and Anna Perry (A12) sing a festive tune. Bottom: The Hamann Hawkins Tortorelli Trio swing. Right: The Singing Sensations Youth Choir captivate the audience. real celebration,” says Eric Stoltzfus, tutor and music librarian in Annapolis. “Students unwind and let off steam—and the audience is incredibly supportive. We are a very musical college, and people value making music with each other.” performed by the acapella group, the Equant; and Don’t Explain, by Billie Holiday, performed by MisterSix, a group of mostly Annapolis tutors. Every year there are a few staple performances that are highlights of the event. Per tradition, tutor Judy Seeger leads the audience in a round of song, and the St. John’s Chorus, led by tutor Peter Kalkavage, closes the event with a piece of classical music, typically Mozart or Bach. Since Collegium takes place before the winter break and again before graduation, students savor the occasion, with the college community together in song. “The divide between audience and performer seems to disappear,” says Stoltzfus. “And people are just simply happy to see their friends on stage.” —Nutchapol Boonparlit (A15) 14 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 TONY J PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOS: XINYUAN ZHANG (A17) —Eric Stoltzfus, Annapolis tutor & music librarian �LIFT EVERY VOICE Gospel music filled the Francis Scott Key Auditorium at the ninth annual “Lift Every Voice” concert, celebrating the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Each year in January, the concert draws several hundred people to the Annapolis campus, many for the first time, to share in the uplifting sounds from some of the region’s finest vocalists, choirs, and musical groups. The King Celebration Chorus, led by tutor Judy Seeger, welcomed the audience with a rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”—one of the most cherished songs of the African American Civil Rights Movement and often referred to as the Black National Anthem—and encouraged everyone in the auditorium to lift their voice and sing together. “I lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise, High as the listening skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us, Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 15 ��TUTOR VIEW A REFLECTION ON by Eva Brann (H89) There are two ways to go about almost all things that I know of: You can just go at it or you can think about what you’re doing. Which first? Well, “thinking about” can come at either end. “Before” is surely a good time. Students often tell me that they want to “change the world,” “make a difference”— and seem a little nonplussed when I ask “for the better?” Yet nothing is more in need of prudence (= pro-vidence = foresight = imaginative thinking-things-out) than inducing change. But so is “after,” a good time, that self-debriefing when you ask yourself: What did I think I was doing? What unintended consequence have I called down on the beneficiary-victim of my deeds —particularly of the kind of action called service? PHOTO: TOM HOLLYMAN, GETTY IMAGES THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 17 �TUTOR VIEW “ ervice” is a strange word. It’s derived from the Latin servitium, “slavery.” And that makes sense. Our chief service is in “The Service,” the Armed Forces. The primary law of the military is to obey unconditionally1 and immediately. Here’s another word with a hidden meaning: “to obey” is from Latin ob-audire, “to listen to.” (The German word Höriger, literally “one who listens,” means someone subservient to another’s bidding—a slave.) It gets stranger. We have no draft; people enlist—voluntarily. The Service is voluntary. “Voluntary” means “of one’s own free will (voluntas).” Service-men and women freely lay their life on the line—for wages hardly commensurate with the possible sacrifice. I think something similar holds for all serious service. Our peaceful civil life depends largely on service, that is, on a sort of self-enslavement. Being voluntary, it is willingly free, that is, unpaid, and being serviceable it is obedient to, listens to, makes That drum major instinct is the desire to march out front in the parade, to be seen in the lead of doing good, to shine with virtue. King, however, tells his flock to be great by Jesus’s new norm: He “who is greatest among you shall be your servant.” itself subservient to, the needs of others. The actual labor performed may be practically simple, as simple as ladling out soup, but the two notions involved are conceptually complex in their very entanglement. This little essay is supposed to be written under the aegis of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s sermon “The Drum Major Instinct.” This sermon adds a third notion to service, besides those of freely giving up one’s freedom to serve others: That drum major instinct is the desire to march out front in the parade, to be seen in the lead of doing good, to shine with virtue. King, however, tells his flock to be great by Jesus’s new norm: He “who is greatest among you shall be your servant.” The Greek text of the New Testament, I might inject here, always says doulos “slave” and douleuein “to serve as a slave,” to be least. 18 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Yet King also assures his flock that they need not give up their desire to feel important. He tells them that they don’t have to know Plato, Aristotle or Einstein to be good servants. In the interests of carrying them along, he even suppresses Jesus’s reputation as a learned young rabbi. His point is: Jesus “just went around serving and doing good.” I’m not so sure it works so simply for us; the drum major instinct, the third notion, has its dangers, which vibrate through King’s homily. Before I conclude, here’s a quotation that makes all my points, linguistic and conceptual at once: For brothers, you have been called to freedom; only do not use freedom as a jumping-off place for the flesh, but by caring-love serve (dia tes agapes douleuete) one another (Galatians 5:13). So now I’ll introduce a fourth notion, the one to which I can wholeheartedly subscribe. I found its formulation in a speech quoted by the contemporary American novelist I most admire, Marilynne Robinson: 2 …Love knows no servitude. It is that which gilds with liberty whatever it touches… Service is to people in need from those who have the means. It is, ipso facto, top down, from haves to have-nots, from benefactors to beneficiaries who are not required to say thank you or to return the favor. The service, if individual, is—except when delivered with bumptiously oblivious energy—fraught for the giver with some residual embarrassment about the “Lady Bountiful Syndrome” and with some resentful submission on the part of the beneficiary. And if it issues from a faceless organization, there’s always the regulatory hand in the welfare glove and its complementary effect of entitled dependency—unless…? Unless it’s done as the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher says: with love, which nullifies the servitude in service and transmutes the labor of service into the work of love. This love is not sappily sentimental. It’s anything but unconditional. It has judgment behind it and withdrawal as a possibility. It’s cheerfully impure: ready to rejoice in its own virtue and to revel in its achieved effects—as King says it may. But all that’s on the side. At the center is interest in and liking for the people or the place served. “Interest” is my favorite word: from Latin inter-esse, “to be among, to be there with” the world. “Liking” to me means “Love toned down for permanence, reliable affection.” It �can have its moments of sheer being-in-love, but is more stable than romance. Since I’m a tutor, there’s got to be a little— obliquely administered—lesson. It’s this: One, service is to be done with simplicity and to be reflected on with subtlety. Two, serve only what you can and do love.3 Then listen for and freely obey its demands. Such service may well turn out to be the delight of your life, even if it’s not unimpeachably esthetic. I’ve baby-sat two generations of boys (my oldest friend’s sons and grandsons). Of course, that service included diaper change. While at it, I often reflected on the indubitable fact that something so smelly could be so sweet. It was, of course, the effect of a labor of love. A last point: it is a fair question where there is room for leadership in this view of service as selfsubjection—the leadership not of King’s preening drum major, but of a modest initiator. Well, guessing what is truly wanted, judging what is in fact needed, is surely a part of self-dedicated service, and that is leadership. Students have occasionally asked me how in their first, probably small-scale, environments as alumni they can lead, how they can effectively apply their education to serve their, as-yet-small, world. (My own faith is mostly in small worlds, the best venues for humanly efficacious service.) Here’s a paradigm. Post a notice: “Would anyone like to read some poetry together?” Give time, place, possible poem, and promise cookies (essential). Presto, you’re a founder, the founder of the kind of minuscule community that does actual good. So you’ve led and served by daring to be out front. Now do the same by resolving to be within (interesse), to be within as a mole, so to speak—a mole being both a burrowing animal that digs out underground corridors and an internal spy who prepares clandestine reforms. One, service is to be done with simplicity and to be reflected on with subtlety. Two, serve only what you can and do love. Then listen for and freely obey its demands. There is one exception: If the command breaches a higher law of morality. HIP / ART RESOURCE, NY 1� In her book of essays, The Givenness of Things, p. 170 (2015). The speech is by Henry Ward Beecher, an abolitionist and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 2� My colleague, Peter Kalkavage, recalled an episode from The Twilight Zone that features the dangers of a hasty rush to serve, as well as of ambiguous language. Aliens land on earth, bringing a book of which only the title has been translated: To Serve Man. Some eager-beaver do-gooders are preparing to board the spaceship for service in outer space. Other earthlings, who’ve been examining the volume more closely, come running: “Don’t go! It’s a cookbook!” 3� THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 19 �20 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �I N S A N TA F E ROOSEVELT THE REFORMER SANTA FE’S NEW PRESIDENT HITS THE GROUND RUNNING BY LESLIE LINTHICUM MARK ROOSEVELT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MAN IN A HURRY. Elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1986, three years after graduating from law school, he pushed through gay rights legislation that had languished for decades and overhauled the state’s public school system. Not yet 40, he became the Massachusetts Democratic nominee for governor in 1994. After getting outspent by six to one and beaten by the Republican incumbent, William Weld, Roosevelt dived back into public service as an education advocate and with two challenging rehab projects: taking over the Pittsburgh public schools and resurrecting shuttered Antioch College in western Ohio. Roosevelt describes both projects as “really, really rough,” with institutions in immediate crisis and communities in deep dissent. Roosevelt is now 60 and, on the job since January as the president of the St. John’s Santa Fe campus, he says he’s exactly where he wants to be. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 21 �S itting in his airy Weigle Hall office surrounded by books and overlooking high desert scenery, the lifelong fixer of broken systems is ready to become a salesman for liberal arts education—and especially the rigorous and particular brand that is offered at St. John’s. “Who have I been before in my life? I’ve been a reformer. That’s who I am,” says Roosevelt. “So now I have to be a little bit more of an evangelical. A seller of a gospel. Because that’s really what St. John’s needs. It needs more people to be aware of what it does and how powerful it is.” Coming to an institution that isn’t essentially broken is a refreshing change for Roosevelt, an avid reader and historian who also has a fondness for Santa Fe since eloping there in 2005 and staying for five months. “I never hesitated in wanting the job,” says Roosevelt. “It just felt so completely right for me at this point in my life.” Roosevelt taught at Brandeis while in Massachusetts and at Carnegie-Mellon during his tenure as 22 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Pittsburgh school superintendent. “So being part of a larger community of learners, of aspiring learners, really appeals to me,” he says. His wife Dorothy and their nine-year-old daughter, Juliana, have joined him in Santa Fe. “I know this sounds trite. It is trite,” he says. “But we do feel like we’re coming home.” Roosevelt will begin to preach the gospel of St. John’s at a time when the liberal arts are being assailed by economic analyses that measure the value of an ever-more-expensive college education against future earnings, by collegiate trends away from core curricula and toward non-academic amenities and by the question of whether college actually teaches much. He is dismissive of the idea that to be more attractive to 18-year-olds, colleges should throw out general education requirements and allow free-range grazing among electives. Or that colleges should lower expectations so students don’t struggle. Roosevelt jumps up from his desk and retrieves a volume from one of the new shelves recently added to the president’s office to house part of his collec- �ROOSEVELT ON READING “� HO HAVE I BEEN W BEFORE IN MY LIFE? I’VE BEEN A REFORMER. THAT’S WHO I AM.” tion of some 4,000 books. It is Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, which uses data from the Collegiate Learning Assessment to track the academic gains of students at four-year colleges and universities. The authors concluded that nearly half of students learned nothing in their first two years of college and about one-third had learned nothing after four years. “Not a little,” Roosevelt stresses. “But nothing.” Although he emphasizes that he has a lot to learn about the college, Roosevelt believes St. John’s can find greater success standing in opposition to alarming educational trends. “I think that St. John’s deals “[Reading] plays a huge part in my life. Our own worlds, our own individual lives are almost by definition very limited in their scope. We can only know so many people. We’re limited by our personalities. Reading explodes all of that. I think reading can also make you feel much less alone. I think especially younger people, some of the emotions and thoughts and feelings you have, you wonder, ‘Am I the only one thinking or feeling this?’ And reading should make you feel not alone in that aspect. I wouldn’t know what it would be like not to read. And I actually find myself, like during this move when everything’s been very frenetic, I feel something missing and suddenly I realize I’m not reading. I can feel it like an absence. I also tend to get too preoccupied with my own life if I’m not reading. There’s something about reading that takes you out of your own life and gives you perspective.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 23 �ROOSEVELT ON LINCOLN “I’m a Lincoln fanatic,” says Roosevelt, gesturing to shelves crammed with books on the 16th president. “He’s a wonder to me. One, how much he suffered. And how much he tried to do the right thing, I believe, all the time. I find criticism of Lincoln to say much more about the criticizer than about Lincoln. I find no evidence that he didn’t try to move on slavery as aggressively as he could, given the circumstances. And then there’s just the overwhelming decency of the man. He was so unpretentious. I know of no greater writer in America. Totally self-taught. Lincoln’s second inaugural, which I still think are the greatest words ever spoken by an American, is this magnificent, complex theological document.” “� T. JOHN’S DEALS IN DEEP, S DURABLE THINGS IN AN ERA THAT IS ATTRACTED TO MORE GLITTERY, SUPERFICIAL THINGS.” in deep, durable things in an era that is attracted to more glittery, superficial things,” he says. “The fear—a fear I don’t happen to share—is that it’s so against the prevailing winds of the dominant culture that it has lost its relevance. I have exactly the opposite feeling, which is that the dominant culture needs things like St. John’s to remind it of what matters more.” In addition to raising money and being conscious of costs, Roosevelt says his most immediate task is to help attract more applicants and build enrollment on the Santa Fe campus. The college as a whole, he says, can do more to spread the word to high school students, parents, and college counselors so that St. John’s is on the radar of many more students who might find it to be a good fit. “I think there’s a certain frustration here that we haven’t been as successful as we might in telling people who and what we are,” says Roosevelt. “So one of the things that I believe I have been hired to do is be an aggressive proselytizer for what there is here. And that is a very comfortable role.” Maxwell King, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Foundation, who worked with Roosevelt in Pittsburgh, has no doubt Roosevelt is up to the challenges of raising money and aggressively promoting the merits of St. John’s. He once went with Roosevelt to a donor looking for funding to launch The Pittsburgh Promise, a scholarship fund for the Pittsburgh Public Schools graduates that was Roosevelt’s creation. They went in thinking they might get $10 million and came out with $100 million. “He is really persuasive and collaborative,” says King. “Another of Mark’s great attributes is persistence. He does not give up.” 24 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �ROOSEVELT ON ROOSEVELT Roosevelt is the greatgrandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and, like many descendants of famous people, he has had a complicated relationship with the connection, especially wanting to avoid the appearance of selfaggrandizement. “But yet,” Roosevelt says, “I like the fact that the three famous Roosevelts were mostly people I would want to be associated with and mostly did things of which I am proud. So I guess I’ve come to a point as I’ve aged of being willing to see myself as an inheritor of a tradition that I’m happy to be a part of.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 25 �26 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �SUCCESS STORIES A PLACE WHERE EVERYONE MATTERS by Bob Keyes A fourth grader hones his skills during a writing and photography field trip. Heather Davis (SF01) felt the pull of public service when she first felt the pain of a broken world. A friend suffered a violent assault while studying abroad, and a veil of innocence fell away. avis was studying ancient astronomy at a sheltered campus, nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, while people around the world, including someone very dear to her, suffered as victims of violence, oppression, and prejudice. Shocked and ashamed at her privileged life, she committed herself to doing something to alleviate at least a little of the suffering in the world. Davis learned the ideals of a good, just, and virtuous society at St. John’s, and put those lessons into practice with community-building work at nonprofit organizations in New York City, Austin, Texas, and, now, Portland, Maine. “I’ve always had a bias toward action,” says Davis. “I was always interested in what good and virtue mean in the real world.” PHOTO: MOLLY HALEY THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 27 �Davis is executive director of The Telling Room, a nationally recognized writing center on the Portland waterfront that empowers students and young adults, many of them immigrants and refugees, with communication tools to succeed in school, at work, and in the world. She teaches students to express themselves in their own words, with confidence, conviction, and clarity. She turns shy, quiet kids into storytellers. Last fall, Davis stood beside First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House, where she accepted a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award, the nation’s highest honor for an after-school arts program. The White House recognized The Telling Room’s Young Writers and Leaders program as a national model for its effectiveness in helping refugees and migrant youth assimilate American life and culture by engaging in the arts and humanities. It serves 45 international, multilingual students, who collectively speak 20 languages. Among its successes is a 100-percent college-acceptance rate. There’s a long wait to get in, and Davis hopes to turn the publicity of the White House award into funding to expand the program. The work is timely. With the backdrop of the ugly national discourse about immigration, The Telling Room personalizes the issue by helping Maine’s newest residents tell their stories in their own words and voices, neighbor to neighbor. “We have the unique opportunity to let people know who these kids are, who their families are, and what they’ve been through,” says Davis. Davis grew up in Easton, Maryland, in a home largely without books, the daughter of parents who were not readers. The school and town library expanded her horizon and imagination, and turned her into a bookworm. “My favorite things were always talking about reading and writing, and talk- MOLLY HALEY SUCCESS STORIES Heather Davis (SF01) works with a young writer during a workshop. “� was always interested in what good I and virtue mean in the real world.” ing about books.” She applied for admission to one college: St. John’s, Annapolis, just 45 minutes from her home. She enrolled in 1997, and transferred after her freshman year to the Santa Fe campus. She thrived in the relaxed lifestyle of the Southwest, while studying Plato, Homer, and Aristotle. Her junior year, she got a job helping other students improve their writing by reviewing their papers and offering tips, ideas, and feedback. “I just loved it,” says Davis. “I couldn’t believe it was a job I got paid for.” After St. John’s, she earned her master’s from Goddard College, a progressive liberal arts college in Vermont, where she specialized in transformative language arts. After 28 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 college, she searched for work with meaning as a tutor and volunteered on a crises hotline. She joined the Peace Corps, but left her assignment in Haiti early because of illness. She cast a wide net, and toyed with environmental education as her path, but nothing stuck until she started teaching writing to kids. She landed at the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York, where something clicked. “It was magic for me, and I knew that teaching, writing, arts education, and nonprofits were where I could make a difference and feel happy and alive doing it,” says Davis. “I was in love with it, and still am.” From there, she moved to Austin, Texas, where she co-founded a youth writing center �SMITH GALTNEY SMITH GALTNEY called Austin Bat Cave and served as senior grant writer for Creative Action, a nonprofit arts education organization. She and her husband moved to Maine in 2008, after the birth of their first child. She volunteered at The Telling Room, was hired as a senior staff member in 2008 and became its director in 2011. In practice, Davis sits side by side and gets to know her students. When they land on a memory, experience, or significant place or person in their lives, she asks them to write a few sentences. “We do it until there’s a framework for a story about something that really matters to them.” This is The Telling Room model: Writers tutoring students one on one, coaxing stories, and building confidence through self-expression. It’s hard when working with kids from different cultures, and harder still when many students are homeless, living in poverty, or suffering from mental health issues. “Though in the moment, when sitting with a kid to talk about their lives and work on the writing process together, it’s pretty much just you and that kid connecting as human beings, which is an incredible experience,” says Davis. It was front-page news in Maine when The Telling Room received its award from the White House. The coverage generated dialogue in the community and commentary on newspaper websites, much of it racist and derogatory. Davis urged her staff to resist answering the commentators directly. Instead, she told them to keep doing their jobs. The best answer is teaching kids to write and publishing their stories. She told them what she learned years ago at St. John’s: “You are participating in the discussion. You are taking a stance, and you are acting on your beliefs, which are that the world should be a just, peaceful place where everyone matters, and everyone has access to what they need.” Clockwise from top left: First Lady Michelle Obama presents a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award to student Ibrahim Shkara and Executive Director Heather Davis (SF01) for The Telling Room’s Young Writers and Leaders program; Telling Room staff members Heather Davis (SF01) and Andrew Griswold stand with student Ibrahim Shkara and his brother at the Capitol building; Ibrahim Shkara’s mother and younger brother on their way to the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award ceremony in Washington, D.C. “� e have the unique opportunity W to let people know who these kids are, who their families are, and what they’ve been through.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 29 �BIBLIOFILE JOHN SIFTON (A96) Uncovering Abuses of Power The world Sifton works in is permeated by a new kind of violence—its two sides are terrorism and the so-called war on terror. W hy do humans engage in violence? Why do people find it difficult to kill other people? What is terrorism? Why are we so fascinated by war? These are some of the questions that John Sifton (A96) strives to answer in Violence All Around (Harvard University Press, 2015). Working with Human Rights Watch, he has spent time in troubled spots throughout the world: Afghanistan during the American invasion, Egypt shortly before the Arab Spring, and around Africa and Europe searching for the CIA’s secret detention centers. He combines his personal observations and experiences with philosophical reflections and historical analysis in this exploration of violence. Sifton’s book is filled with heart-piercing descriptions of war’s devastating effects on families, cultures, parents and children, cities and villages—those we know as victims of violence as well as those who perpetrate violence. His accounts of visiting sites in war-ravaged Afghanistan, before September 11 and the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan by the U.S., open the book and set the very personal tone. Violence is pervasive, from our creation myths (Cain and Abel, Osiris and Set) to symbols like the Christian cross, and even our white-picket fences (which come from the French word piquet, “to prick”). The world Sifton works in is permeated by a new kind of violence—its two sides are terrorism and the so-called war on terror. While this battle follows traditional patterns of military advance and retreat, of political persuasion and strategic uses of power, of religious fervor and the justification of certainty, it also embraces new kinds of alliances, intelligence activity of previously unknown ferocity, new technology, and weapons that take war to a new level of impersonality. As Sifton observes, opportunities for abuses of power are abundant. A fascinating focus of this book is Sifton’s long investigation into the treatment of prisoners on all sides of the terrorism conflicts. It’s important, he notes, for humanitarian aid work to be understood as neutral politically; the aim is to uncover abuses and recommend actions to rectify them. In 2004 and 2005, Sifton tried to find out what was happening with missing CIA detainees; in addition to Guantanamo, there were a number of locations where terrorism suspects and other persons of interest were held and, presumably, questioned. He concludes that there were probably CIA detention centers in Poland and Bulgaria, at least, but is 30 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 unable to prove it conclusively. He picks up the threads several years later while working as a consultant for an international law group. His research rivals that of the journalists he often meets with from the New York Times and other major media outlets, and his account is cinematic in its detail—meetings in smoky cafes in Kabul and in tiny, cold police offices in Warsaw. In any discussion of violence, one must confront the idea of nonviolence. Sifton traces back the history of nonviolence, from Gandhi to Jesus, Vardhamana (founder of the Jainist religion), and the Buddha; he observes that while these leaders all promoted nonviolence (indeed, devout Jainists today wear masks to avoid inhaling germs or insects), these teachings seem to find little staying power in the real world. For instance, while many early Christians were pacifists and mystics who tended to withdrawal from the greater world, those of the later Roman Empire, when Christianity became the official religion, were deeply engaged in politics. The Catholic Church was an incredibly powerful political entity, which required using force to achieve its ends. When religion enters the political realm, it seems the ideals get re-directed and pragmatism takes hold. Sifton is astute in his analysis of the paradox, calling on philosophers from Plato to Descartes to Wittgenstein (and Reinhold Niebuhr, his own grandfather). In a world permeated with violence, what role do human rights organizations play? The book summarizes the discussion within Human Rights Watch about the possible effect of the group’s support of or opposition to the invasion of Iraq; human rights groups hold to the tenet that they must remain neutral, judging only whether a war is fought justly, not whether the conflict itself is just. Sifton’s ideas on this point and on his mission are nuanced. While it’s possible to see the work as invoking “sentimentality,” he also suggests that in documenting and publicizing abuses, these groups can “wake the giant” and probe the consciences of nations into rectifying them. He recognizes, though, the limits and ironies of such work. —Charles Green (AGI02) �Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom By David Lawrence Levine (Class of 1967) Lexington Books, 2016 In his new book, Profound Ignorance: Plato’s Charmides and the Saving of Wisdom, Santa Fe tutor and former dean David Levine (Class of 1967) examines Plato’s dialogue and its exploration of tyranny and Socratic ignorance. Charmides begins paradoxically; it seeks to have a conversation about sophrosyne (moderation) with two of Athens’ most notorious men, Charmides and Critias, who in the dialogic future are associated with the Thirty Tyrants. Protagoras: Ancients in Action By Daniel Silvermintz (AGI01) Bloomsbury, 2016 The ancient Greek sophist Protagoras (c. 490-420 BC) remains one of the most elusive figures in the history of philosophy. In the lengthiest surviving fragment known as the “Great Speech,” Protagoras argues that virtue is a teachable trait that is common to all mankind. Despite his upright appearance, his contemporaries condemned him for having corrupted his students rather than educating them in virtue. In his new book, Protagoras: Ancients in Action, Daniel Silvermintz (AGI01), associate professor and The Way Back from Broken By Amber Keyser (SF91) Carolrhoda Lab, 2015 Amber Keyser’s (SF91) debut young adult novel, The Way Back from Broken, is the story of 15-year-old Rakmen and 10-year-old Jacey, who are brought together by separate traumatic events in their lives. While spending a summer in the Canadian wilderness, the two are forced to confront the difficult topic of death and dying. The book is a slow burn that builds in intensity as Rakmen and Jacey each struggle to come to terms with being a survivor and the complex The dialogue was written after the two became notorious. The young Charmides, praised as already possessing all the Athenian virtues, and his guardian Critias, widely thought “wise,” show their reputations to be ill-deserved. In addition, Critias thinks himself a student of Socrates, but, closely examined, his “Socratic opinions” only show how Socrates’s “beautiful speeches” can be perverted. Indeed Socrates’s association with Critias and Charmides was held against him at his trial. The dialogue can thus be seen as a defense of Socrates against the corruption charge, further explicated in the Republic, that Levine calls “the best commentary on the dialogue.” director of humanities at the University of HoustonClear Lake, accounts for the conflicted views that surround Protagoras by showing how a subversive secret teaching is conveyed between the lines of his moralistic public teaching. Silvermintz also advances a provocative argument concerning Protagoras’s influence on Pericles—the architect of Athenian democracy—that helps to explain the aristocratic statesman’s abrupt shift in political allegiance in support of the poor masses. emotions—guilt, fear, anger, sadness—that brings. Can they find healing in the great outdoors? Keyser’s own personal loss is at the core of the story, as is her deep connection to the backcountry of northern Ontario. “Writing this book was part of my own ‘way back from broken,’” says Keyser. “And although I’ve been told it’s a tear-jerker, the book’s pages also contain more than a small portion of hope.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 31 �For & About ALUMNI Homecoming 2016 Homecoming is a time to reunite, reconnect, and reminisce with friends, classmates, and the college community. It is also a time to make new memories, meet new friends, and share SJC with the special people in your life. We invite you and your friends and family to celebrate Homecoming 2016 in Santa Fe or Annapolis (or both!) this September! Both campuses offer child-friendly activities and childcare options. Don’t forget to make your hotel reservations early. Santa Fe accommodations: SJC rates offered at Sage Inn, La Posada, Hotel Santa Fe, and Drury Inn on the Plaza. www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/ santa-fe/santa-fe-business-friends Annapolis accommodations: SJC rates offered at Historic Inns of Annapolis and Sheraton Annapolis Hotel. www.sjc.edu/friends/businessfriends/#accommodations CAST YOUR VOTE in the 2016 SJC Alumni Association Election: May 16–June 3 This June, alumni will elect the treasurer, secretary, and six at-large members of the Alumni Association Board of Directors, as well as one alumni-elected member of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors. Save the Date Homecoming 2016 September 16-18 in Santa Fe September 23-25 in Annapolis St. John’s College Alumni Office Annapolis 410-626-2531 annapolis.alumni@sjc.edu Santa Fe 505-984-6114 santafe.alumni@sjc.edu Alumni are encouraged to cast your vote using the online or paper ballots between May 16 and June 3. Or cast your vote at the All Alumni Meeting during the Alumni Leadership Forum on June 5 in Annapolis (see next page for ALF details). HOW TO VOTE In Person: Alumni Leadership Forum 2016 The Association’s Annual Meeting will be held during ALF weekend on Sunday, June 5, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. on the Annapolis campus. 32 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Online: community.stjohnscollege.edu For an online ballot, login and click the link under Notice of Elections and Annual Meeting. By Mail or Fax: Request a Paper Ballot Contact Leo Pickens, Annapolis director of Alumni Relations, at 410-295-6926 or leo.pickens@sjc.edu. Online and paper ballots must be received by June 3, 2016. Alumni Association Mission To strive for the continued excellence of our college and fellow alumni by celebrating our distinctive educational experience, connecting our community in efforts toward shared support and benefit, and fostering a culture of intellect, generosity, and service. �7TH ANNUAL ALUMNI LEADERSHIP FORUM “To Kindle a Light” June 3-5, 2016 | Annapolis The Alumni Leadership Forum (ALF) is an annual, three-day event that rotates each year between the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses. Since its founding in 2010, ALF’s seminars and sessions have brought together St. John’s alumni to learn about the current state of the college and how alumni can engage with and support the St. John’s College community, whether through alumni chapters, as a Class Chair, or as part of one of the Alumni Association’s working groups. Through seminars and workshops, participants of the 2016 ALF will have the opportunity to: • � evelop tools to support and D improve career services • � iscuss and develop admisD sions strategies with admissions professionals • � eceive training in and help R formulate social media strategies to build community and support for the college And much more ALF attendees also enjoy a multitude of social gatherings, seminars, and other opportunities to catch up with one another and meet alumni from other classes. The most notable of these is the Awards Banquet held the evening of the second day of ALF, where the Association presents the Volunteer Service Awards (or “ALFies”) to alumni in recognition of their leadership and volunteerism in the Alumni Community. To register and for more information, visit sjc.edu/alumni. Below: Alumni participate in a workshop at the annual Alumni Leadership Forum. PIRAEUS 2016 Thirsting for good conversation? At Piraeus, St. John’s College welcomes Johnnies back to the seminar table. Held on both campuses and led by tutors, Piraeus seminars provide an opportunity to relive the rigorous classroom experience over the course of a leisurely weekend. Named for the port city that served Athens, Piraeus brings alumni from all career paths and geographical areas back to their educational roots. Said Thucydides of ancient Piraeus, “From all the lands, everything enters.” In that spirit, we invite you to bring your voice back to the seminar table and share in the reflection, discussion, and community that Piraeus offers. Upcoming Piraeus offerings include: In Annapolis on June 9-12, tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Lise van Boxel will lead seminars on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night and the John Keats poem “Ode to a Nightingale.” Tutors Tom May and David Townsend will lead seminars on Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. In Santa Fe on August 5-7, tutor Grant Franks (A77) will lead a seminar on James Joyce’s Dubliners, a collection of 15 short stories that form a sparse and detailed, yet deeply moving, tableau of middle-class life in early 20th-century Ireland. Recent alumni (2006-2016) receive a special tuition rate. On-campus housing is available. To register online and read more information, visit sjc.edu/piraeus. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 33 �ALUMNI NOTES 1964 Julie Wiggenhorn Winslett (A) writes, “I’m still teaching English at the University of North Georgia and enjoying life in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I feel lucky to be part of several lively groups of writers and poets who have inspired me in my writing. I’ve finally finished my mystery novel set in Taos and am now trying to navigate the intricacies of social media marketing. If anyone knows of an agent or publisher in New Mexico who specializes in mysteries set in the Southwest, e-mail me at juliewinslett@windstream.net.” 1969 Mark Bernstein (A) published an article in the Drexel Law Review, Thomas R. Kline School of Law, Volume 7, Number 2, titled “Jury Evaluation of Expert Testimony under the Federal Rules.” In the article he explains how the Federal Rules of Evidence have detrimentally affected the ability of the jury to find the facts and created a highly paid cadre of professional witnesses. 1972 Washington, D.C. The trio caught up on family, friends, and the infamous McDowell Hall Bell Clapper Napper Mystery dating from 1970, among other things. This spring, Williams will retire from his college teaching job to temporarily relocate to D.C. to be closer to his new grandson and family. 1966 Constance (Bell) Lindgreen (A) sends a note from France to say that one of her short stories was published last year by the International Club of Bordeaux and a second will appear in May, published by the Gascony Writers Association. 1967 Rebecca Tendler (A) lives in Philadelphia, where she loves her work as a psychologist in a private practice. 1968 Thomas Keens (SF) received the Robert M. McAllister Faculty Mentoring Award from the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. This prestigious award is given most years to a faculty member who “demonstrates the most effective mentoring through guiding and nurturing the collegial and professional development of junior faculty.” Bob Shimizu (SF) released his second jazz album, titled “Let’s Get Together.” The album garnered four stars in Downbeat Magazine and held a place on the JazzWeek charts for 10 weeks. More information can be found at www.bobshimizu.com. After 42 years, Irv Williams (A) reconnected with fellow Johnnies Christel Stevens (A) and Steve Hanft (A70) for an afternoon in Irv Williams (A72), Christel Stevens (A72), and Steve Hanft (A70) enjoy a long overdue reunion in the nation’s capital. 34 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 1973 Galen Breningstall (SF) is working as a pediatric neurologist at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul, Minn. Insights into his current state of mind can be obtained at http://childnervoussystem.blogspot.com. The art and design work of Howard Meister (A) were part of a retrospective group exhibit held in December by the Magen Gallery in NYC. The exhibit featured works by the influential Art Et Industrie gallery between 1979 and 1999. Meister and the other prominent Art Et Industrie gallery artists were interviewed for a forthcoming documentary film on the art movement. Frazier O’Leary (SFGI) is still teaching in D.C. Public Schools after 45 years and is a member of the board of the Toni Morrison Society. He is also a member of the board and past president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is active with the foundation’s Writers in Schools program. Nick Patrone (A), above, made the front page of the Rocky Mount Telegram for his 4,300-mile bicycle trek across the United States to raise funds for multiple sclerosis research and treatment. This June 1 to August 1 he is planning a 62-day ride from Yorktown, Va. to San Francisco, covering 3,685 miles as part of the Trans Am ride for Bike the US for MS. Learn more and donate at www.biketheusforms.org/cyclists/ detail.asp?cid=823. 1974 Proud Johnnie parent Jena Morris (SF) writes to say that her son Jeremy Breningstall (AGI01) became a student again in September, having been accepted into a prestigious cross-disciplinary program at the University of California at Berkeley. He is part of a family of Johnnies that also includes his father, Galen Breningstall (SF73); his aunt, Aimee Morris (SF79); and uncles Joe Morris (SF80) and Jack Morris (SF87). Janet O’Flynn (A) writes, “It’s a long way from the Piraeus to Portau-Prince, but a group of Johnnies is trying to make the connection.” She and Donnel O’Flynn (A73), Janis Popowicz Handte (A77), Malcolm Handte (A75), and Aidan O’Flynn (A05) are working together to start a new program in rehabilitation science at the Episcopal University of Haiti. “Several �other Johnnies have also, of their generosity, contributed financially. Estimates of at least one million persons who are disabled in Haiti but not receiving therapy show the problem they are trying to address. The school is one of the first in Haiti to offer academic education in physical therapy, and the only one to offer academic education in occupational therapy, both at the bachelor’s level. Starting an educational program like this in a country with few resources is a daunting challenge. However, this group of people was willing to read Hegel, Homer, and Herodotus, so courage is not lacking.” Read more about the O’Flynns’ daily life in Haiti at haitiotptdegrees. wordpress.com and more on their project at www.haitirehab.org. 1977 ONE HIKE AT A TIME 1976 Last summer Robert Godfrey (A) took a bicycle trip from his home in Oakland, Calif. to Annapolis, where he concluded his journey with a dip in College Creek. Godfrey happily reports that the water was cool, clear, and full of little fish—and did not have a jellyfish in sight. After being nominated by President Barack Obama, William W. Nooter (A) was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November and sworn in on December 22 to serve as an associate judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Nooter served on the D.C. Superior Court as a magistrate judge since 2000. Dave Pex (SF) reports that he has successfully completed hiking the entire 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). He completed this endeavor over a five-year period, on nine separate trips, hiking the trail in sections. Pex completed his first section in 2010, a trip on the John Muir Trail of just under 250 miles in 16 days. The following year he completed a PCT section from northern Oregon to central Washington. Since then, he had hiked about two sections a year, the longest being from Cajon Pass, in southern California, to Mount Whitney (14,505 feet, the highest point in the contiguous U.S.). On September 5 he hiked north from Mount Rainier and headed to Canada. Two days later he reached Monument 78 at the Canadian border. His wife Jill hiked eight miles south from the Canadian trailhead and met him with celebratory piña coladas. 1977 Jonathan Wells’s (A) second collection of poems, The Man With Many Pens, was published by Four Way Books in October 2015. It includes poems that had been published previously in The New Yorker, AGNI, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day project, and in other journals. Acting D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Frederick H. Weisberg swears in William W. Nooter (A76), with his wife Elissa Free beside him. 1978 The Princeton Friends of Opera, led by Anne McMahan (SFGI), helped bring a semi-staged performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s sole opera Fidelio to audiences there. The performing ensemble was Grand Harmonie, a Boston-based periodinstrument group focused on classical and romantic repertoire. The January 23 performance was the first one with original instruments in the United States. 1979 Lisa Simeone (A) made a splash at the Homewood Museum’s Harvest Ball, which raised money for the Baltimore museum’s programs and collections. Her affection for vintage fashion was noted in the Baltimore Sun. She was also featured in Current’s “The Pub” podcast that addressed the question, Are public media journalists really all liberals? Listen to the podcast (#48) at www.current.org. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 35 �ALUMNI NOTES After retiring from teaching high school mathematics, Paul Anthony Stevens (A) now spends his time helping family and friends, reading, playing music, going to church, riding his bike, and walking three miles every day. While recently studying to write on Plato’s Meno, Stevens learned that he was born next to the temple of Zeus in Athens. 1978 Great Books on the Go 1986 1980 Lisa Rosenblum (A) made a huge career and life change by moving to Brooklyn, where she is the new director/chief librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library. She is responsible for overseeing the activities and services offered at all the system’s 59 branches as well as the Central Library. “BPL is doing some amazing work in meeting the needs of the community,” she writes. “My experience working not only as a library director but also directing social services in a number of cities in California was one of the reasons Brooklyn recruited me.” James C. White (A) joined the law firm Parry Tyndall White in Chapel Hill, N.C. His practice is evenly divided between bankruptcy and complex litigation, and he handled large lawsuits against banks during the financial crisis. However, he says that some of his most satisfying work involves helping people stay in their homes, particularly after wrongful foreclosures. 1984 John L. Bush (SF) won re-election on November 3 to his third term on the Blacksburg (Virginia) Town Council. In Don Dennis’s (SF) note that appeared on p. 34 in the fall 2015 issue of The College, the text should have read “Bohmian” not Bohemian. St. John’s makes free (wo)men from children by means of books and a balance, but we grow up through experience. There’s not an app for that.” Rita Collins (A) hit the road last summer with her new traveling bookstore, making appearances throughout Montana at festivals, fairs, farmers markets, private parties, and even a galler y opening. She is planning the bookstore’s itinerar y for 2016, to take it to other states and perhaps across the countr y. She hopes to run into Johnnies along the way. “It really is a great way to have a bookstore that meets people’s needs wherever they happen to be,” she writes. “Although compact, it can carr y about 600 volumes, which I keep stocked with a variety from classics to children’s books to, of course, travel.” 1985 Rob Crutchfield (A82) writes, “After several years of hard work, Ruth Johnston (A) has published her fourth book, Re-Modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance (Pannebaker Press, 2015). In it Ruth outlines a new model of human personality, based on brain science, the theories of Carl Jung, and the Jungian typology of the Meyers-Briggs personality test. She uses the model to account for individual differences in innate tendencies of thinking, feeling, and behavior and to explore the difference those differences make in life. Jung’s types have been known and used for many 36 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 years, but this book stands out in articulating the underlying system which gives rise to them. One of the book’s most original and interesting sections deals with which different types of personality tend to get along best in marriage. Ruth’s debilitating illness is still unidentified and untreated. Donations are welcome and can be made at www.gofundme.com/helpruth-johnston.” Maggie Hohle (A) writes, “I moved to Japan after graduation, wrote nonfiction for fifteen years there and fifteen here. My daughter just returned from Europe, now with friends from everywhere. Kristen Baumgardner Caven (SF) kept busy in 2015. In January, she wrote lyrics to Franz Liszt’s Invocation, with pianist Daniel Finnamore. In March, she blogged about her trip to Italy with Jennifer Flynn Israel (A). In September her novel The Souls of Her Feet came out in paperback, and she began hosting “shoe salons.” In September she spoke at Mills College about chronicling the historic 1990 student revolt and began co-producing “The Heart of the Muse,” a salon for creatives. In November, she launched a city-wide reading group of her book The Bullying Antidote for 3,000 Oakland, Calif. readers. (Throughout the year, she gave talks to parents on “Zorgos,” the superpower described in this book.) During the summer, she was fortunate to spend a weekend in Santa Fe and visit the campus for the first time in over a decade, visiting with Will Fischer (SF) and Janette Hradecky Fischer (SF85). Highlights were soaking in mud with Mike Ryan (SF), the molé sauce at Pasquales, and (deep breath!) a 20-minute writing retreat at Abuquiu Lake. Visit www.kristencaven.com for all the details. 1987 Michael R. (Vitakis) Brown (A) is currently living in Austin, Texas and hungering to return to northern California. In late 2014 he was featured in a film on the American feminist proto-Surrealist Mary MacLane (1881-1929), about whom he has written and published several books. Future book projects include a first-ever biography and detailed study of MacLane and a philosophicalspiritual synthesis provisionally entitled Beyond Fragmentation. �PROFILE CLARITY OF MISSION By Robin Weiss Erinn Woodside (AGI) Leads a Life of Service JENNIFER BEHRENS A fter deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a U.N. peacekeeping mission during the peak of the Ebola crisis in Liberia, 30-year-old Captain Erinn Woodside (AGI) finds that civilian life, “sitting at a desk,” makes her antsy. Raised in a Navy family, Woodside and her two siblings were homeschooled by their mother. At age 10, inspired by her grandmother’s work on the Atlas Rocket Program, Woodside savored what she calls “astronaut dreams.” The science curriculum and discipline of a service academy initially drew Woodside to the United States Air Force Academy, where she graduated in 2008. “It was the best and worst time of my adult life,” says Woodside, who found the “very mechanical, lecture-based” teaching methods disappointing. As one of the 15 percent of women among four thousand cadets, she endured teasing and insults. But “living daily with nasty jokes makes you tough,” she says, and the whole program, “designed to keep you stressed, as a constant state,” was excellent preparation for deployments. When cyber warfare was relatively new, her first assignment, as a communications officer in San Antonio, trained her in cyber development. Two years later, Woodside volunteered to serve in Iraq and arrived at Camp Victory Base, a city of fifty thousand within Bagdad, between two campaigns: Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. As platoon leader, working 12 to 18 hours a day with her soldiers in a signals battalion, she recalls her experience as both wonderful and awful. Woodside made time to engage with 65 Iraqi girls, ages 4 to 15, from on and off base, in a popular scouts-like program. However, two weeks before leaving Iraq, she sustained a percussive brain injury from a rocket bomb. “We call it ‘getting blown up’,” she says. Though tests found no brain bleeding, cognitive problems affecting memory and attention plagued her for years. Firefighter friends took her in and cared for her, until she was flown back to Texas for months of medical hold. During her next assignment in Fort Meade, Maryland, Woodside, dismissing her injury, volunteered for Afghanistan, just nine months after returning from Iraq. She loved what she calls “the clarity of mission.” But despite the rewards of working off base 18 hours a day, seven days a week, she could no longer ignore her symptoms from the blast. Back at Fort Meade in fall 2012, Woodside received intensive medical attention at Walter Reed Hospital. Neurological exams revealed lesions consistent with blast damage; she was diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury. Woodside learned that overwhelming guilt and denial are common symptoms following trauma. Without a missing limb or bullet wound, “I felt I was taking resources away from others,” she says. Woodside received a Purple Heart, the military decoration awarded to soldiers wounded or killed while serving. In summer 2014, after hearing an ad on NPR, she applied and jumped into the St. John’s Graduate Institute while still an active duty officer. Three GI segments later, she volunteered to serve in Liberia. “It’s one of the poorest countries in the world, just this side of a failed state,” she says, noting that it has only five paved roads and little to no hydro and electrical infrastructure. Woodside felt welcomed as the only woman in her “truly global” team, representing at least 10 countries and five religions. With “no touching, no physical contact,” they tracked the spread of Ebola, while living alongside, interviewing, and educating locals. In her fourth GI segment, Woodside values “the soft skills” gained from the St. John’s curriculum. “The heart of the program, to suspend pre-conceived notions and look at something from a different perspective, to withhold judgment” creates, for her, “a similar mindset to deployment. The openness of mind that the program fosters produced the very skills I needed in Liberia and elsewhere.” She tolerates no excuses for fear-based ignorance, and loves to shatter stereotypes. “If there is one thing I’ve learned, both in the world and at St. John’s, it’s that there is so much gray.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 37 �ALUMNI NOTES around the country, and it has won several awards, including First Prize for the Providence Film Festival Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.” More information is available at www. happygramthemovie.com. Joyce Turner (A) moved back to South Carolina last year, though she regularly returns to Iowa, where she still works for the Writers’ Workshop. Last fall she taught composition as an adjunct lecturer in South Carolina and is currently working on a novel and some nonfiction projects. “I miss the St. John’s Coffee Shop, waltz parties, and long walks through the bricked streets of Annapolis,” she writes. “Please feel free to drop me a note if you’re planning to be in the Charlotte, N.C. area.” Max Ochs (AGI) released a collection of 65 poems titled Just Caws. Daniel Reilly (SF) is beginning his 10th year with the National Democratic Institute, a D.C.- based NGO that provides democracy and governance support in challenging environments around the world. He enjoys his work on operational security for National Democratic Institute missions and offices. Now based in Maryland, Reilly and his wife Seheno are celebrating 13 years of marriage and have two daughters, Diamondra (8) and Holisoa (5), and three guinea pigs. 1988 Elaine Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI) has two books scheduled for upcoming release: Santa Fe on Foot (Ocean Tree Books) and All the Wrong Places (Pocol Press), a suspense novel set in the Southwest. Look for her musings on adoption and life on her blog www. elainepinkerton.wordpress.com. Erin Milnes (A) reports that she is now creative director for Catchword Branding, a national naming firm based in Oakland, Calif. “Being a generalist with language skills is key for this work, so naming could be a great fit for Johnnies, particularly if they are into language, symbols, messaging, semantics. I love it!” 1990 Kilian James Garvey (SF) gave a TEDx talk last October on “Geography of Morality.” The talk, a non-data discussion of the empirical research he does analyzing the pathogen prevalent theory of human values, is available on YouTube. Fritz Hinrichs (A) finished two videos on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, which are both available on YouTube. 1993 Erika Suski (A) welcomes Johnnies to drop her a line at P.O. Box 1133, Dumfries, VA 22026. 1996 1991 Kemmer Anderson (AGI91) made his fourth trip to the Holy Land. 1992 research into what had caused her mammogram to miss her cancer until it had metastasized.” They discovered that mammograms are ineffective for the 40 percent of women with dense breast tissue who account for 70 percent of invasive cancers, missing 50 to 75 percent of cancers in these women. “This is the main reason that breast cancer screening has failed to reduce the rate of metastatic breast cancer in the U.S., and it is the source of neverending controversy surrounding mammography. Happygram is a documentary about this issue that I started before Hallie died. It has been screened at film festivals Kemmer Anderson (AGI) and his wife traveled to Israel and Palestine in October. In Bethlehem he read the poem “Bethlehem 2002” from his new book Songs of Bethlehem: Nativity Poems. His poem “Mary of Nazareth: 2015” was published in Sojourners in January 2016, and he is currently working on a new set of poems. Julie Marron (SF) writes, “Hallie Leighton (SF) was one of my closest friends. In 2010, she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer after several years of mammograms. She died in 2013 at the age of 42. After she was initially diagnosed, the two of us conducted 38 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Loreen Keller (AGI) completed her doctoral studies at Northeastern University and was awarded her Ed.D. in September 2015. Her dissertation “Adjunct Faculty Engagement: Connections in Pursuit of Student Success” was published in October. Jake McPherson (SFGI) started a new job as the consumer affairs chief for Hawaii’s Department of Health’s Adult Mental Health Division. 1997 Heidi (Jacot) Hewett’s (A) first story The Curious Case of the Clockwork Doll (18thWall Productions) was published in January as part of a new anthology of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Read more on her blog http://hjhreader. blogspot.com. �2000 Leo Vladimirsky (A) had two more short stories published: “Dandelion” on Boing Boing and “Squidtown” in the January/February 2016 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. INSPIRING CHANGE 2002 MAXIMILIAN FRANZ, THE DAILY RECORD James Marshall Crotty’s (SFGI) feature-length documentary Crotty’s Kids has secured global distribution through Passion River Films. Learn more at www.passionriver.com/crottys-kids. 2003 Melanie Santiago-Mosier (A) (center) was named one of 2015’s Leading Women by The Daily Record, Maryland’s premier legal and business newspaper. Leading Women recognizes women age 40 or younger for the tremendous accomplishments they have made so far in their career. They are judged on professional experience, community involvement, and a commitment to inspiring change. An award ceremony was held December 7 in Annapolis; her profile appeared in the December 8, 2015 issue of The Daily Record in its special Leading Women publication, available online at http:// thedailyrecord.com/leading-women/melanie-santiago-mosier. Jane McManus (A), who is still covering the NFL for ESPN and a columnist for espnW, has taken on two new roles. In December she began co-hosting a national radio show on Saturdays for ESPN Radio and is co-teaching the sports journalism class this spring at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. In other news, she finally hung up her skates after seven years of playing roller derby and is on the lookout for another challenge. 1998 Richard Field (SF) published From the Sands of the Arena: Ancient World Trivia for the 21st Century. The book contains trivia from three eras: ancient and classical Greece, Hellenism, and Republican and Imperial Rome. 2001 Jonathan Culp (A) is now an associate professor of politics at the University of Dallas. He and his wife Natalie and their five children live in Irving, Texas. Kagan Coughlin (A) is a trustee at Base Camp Coding Academy, which provides Mississippi’s underadvantaged youth with vocational training in computer programming to support the technology needs of local and regional employers. The charitable, nonprofit organization was recently awarded a grant to help train the state’s next generation of software developers. Wilson Dunlavey (A) had a momentous year. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law last spring and defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Humboldt-Universitaet in Berlin in September, earning him the dubious distinction of receiving two doctoral degrees in the same calendar year. His dissertation examines the history of German public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, and nation-branding in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is now a civil rights and class action attorney at the firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann, and Bernstein in downtown San Francisco. Alexandria Poole (A) joined Elizabethtown College as assistant professor in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies. She teaches introductory courses in ethics and philosophy, as well a course in comparative environmental philosophy: perspectives from the Americas. She also is associate managing editor of Environmental Ethics, a founding journal of the field. Her primary research interests are comparative environmental philosophy, environmental ethics, and sustainability. Lewis Slawsky (A) and Alexander Wall (A) have established a publishing imprint, digest, and online magazine called Political Animal, dedicated to elevating the quality of political discourse in North America. It also addresses the subject of politics in a manner that will be familiar to many Johnnies, with a special concern for philosophy and an eye to the unity of knowledge. Political Animal welcomes article submissions and book manuscripts from SJC alumni. Visit them at www. politicalanimalmagazine.com. Michael Waldock (SFGI) completed a new novel How I Saved the British Empire: Reminiscences of a Bicycling Tour of Great Britain in the Year 1901 (Ailemo Books, 2015). He notes that most of the ancillary characters and events were real, and he immersed himself in the year 1901 using the annual versions of such publications as The Illustrated London News, Tatler, The Sphere, among others, to get timing and content right. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 39 �ALUMNI NOTES 2004 Suzie (née Vlcek) Lee (SF, EC05) recently earned a second master’s degree in nutrition and functional medicine and is a clinical nutritionist and chiropractic physician in private practice in Alameda, Calif. Angus MacCaull (SF) managed to combine his two passions, food and writing. His new picture book for kids, Lawnteel at the Store, is the story about a young lentil that faces a tough financial question: What to buy with your only leaf? David Penn (SF) and Britt Hofer (SF) announce the release of their first wines, under the label Krater. Inspired by former Santa Fe tutor John Cornell and many notable alumni winemakers, they are thrilled to have wines of their own to offer to the fray—and be part of St. John’s’ rich and long connection with wine. Learn more at kratercellars.com. After working in the industry for five years, Eric Schaefer (SF) seized an opportunity to open up his own sightseeing company in San Francisco. SF Adventure Tours is a one-man operation that offers unique city tours, Marin County and Muir Woods tours, and beer tasting trips. He invites alumni in the area to come by to say hello. 2006 Norman Allen’s (AGI) play The House Halfway was named a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s prestigious National Playwrights Conference, and his children’s play A Lump of Coal for Christmas opened at Adventure Theatre in Maryland to rave reviews. In addition, his essay “Finding a House that Fits,” which features his time at St. John’s, was published in Yes! Magazine. Constantino Diaz-Duran (A) writes, “I’m getting married in May to David Khalaf, an author based in Portland, Oregon, where I also live these days. We met two years ago through the Gay Christian Network, and I’m grateful to be able to do life with someone who shares my faith. We’ve launched a blog (http://daveandtino.com) discussing the sometimes complicated issues surrounding Christianity, sexuality, and marriage.” 2007 Charles Kitchen (A) is the Nevada deputy operations director for the Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign. James Wrigley (A) lives in North Conway, N.H. and works for the Appalachian Mountain Club. On New Year’s Eve, he and his wife Courtney celebrated the birth of their baby, Evelyn Jean Wrigley. 2008 After graduation, Jack Brown (A) lived and taught in Lebanon for six months, and then joined the Peace Corps. While serving in Senegal, West Africa, he met Emily, the love of his life. They moved to Seattle in 2013 and were married on August 29, 2015 in a delightful affair, with many Johnnies in attendance. Brown is a software engineer and looks forward to buying a house, acquiring pets, and eventually starting a family. Kayla Gamin (A) got married in 2014. Later this year, she will graduate from the University of Chicago Law School and begin work at a D.C. government agency. 2009 Marcello Kilani (SF) is the current Macricostas Professor of Hellenic Studies at Western Connecticut State University. This one-year visiting professorship, endowed by the Macricostas family, supports courses in ancient Greek philosophy and culture. Kilani delivered a public lecture “Ethics and Identity in a World of Chance” on March 16 at the university. Left: David Penn (SF04) crushes the Cabernet Franc at Krater winery in Sonoma County. BRITT HOFER (SF04) Do you have news to share with The College? Send your note, along with your name, class year, and photo(s), to thecollegemagazine@sjc.edu. 40 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 �2008 Renaissance Woman Terrill Legueri (SFGI) and Kane Turner (SFGI) were married on September 12 in Santa Fe at Church of the Holy Faith, with many Johnnies in attendance. KATHI BAHR From the left: Ross Hunt (A05, SFGI10); Clara Terrell (SFGI10); Ian Dag (SFGI); Terrill Legueri (SFGI); Stacia Denhart (SFGI); Kanishka Marasinghe (SFGI10); tutor Matthew Davis; Lisa Marasinghe (Johnnie by association); Kane Turner (SFGI); Allison Roper (SFGI10); John Hobson (SFGI); and tutor Natalie Elliot. Laura (Waleryszak) Zak (SF) co-wrote, co-produced, and stars in the new six-episode series Her Story. Featuring predominantly LGBTQ women, the first season, which premiered online on January 19, follows two transgender women in Los Angeles who had given up on love until chance encounters suddenly give them hope. Zak plays a reporter with a passion for social change and an endless curiosity for experiences that differ from her own. Watch the series and learn more at http://herstoryshow.com. Kea Wilson’s (SF) first novel is scheduled for release on August 23 from Simon and Schuster/Scribner. We Eat Our Own is about the production of an Italian horror film in the Amazon rain forest in 1979, based loosely on true events. He says Euripedes, Aristotle, Dante, and Rousseau were key touchstones for him as he wrote the book. 2010 Marianna Brotherton (A) and Jake Crabbs (A09) were married in Killington, Vt. on June 20. The couple currently resides in Chicago. JR Johnstone (SF) recently accepted a position as a research coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. 2011 Brittany (Olson) Johnstone (SF) will graduate in June from the University of Denver with an education specialist degree in child, family and school psychology. 2013 Michael Fogleman (A) writes, “I am currently a resident at the Center for Mindful Learning, where I work, live, and meditate full time. I began practicing meditation while at St. John’s, something that was born out of my relationship to the books I was reading. After graduating, it seemed fruitful to spend even more time dedicating myself to that practice. Moreover, the Center is a very interesting organization. Not only are we what we call a ‘modern monastery,’ but we are also a nonprofit, and one that is run like a start-up organization. I am heavily involved in the process of seeking a new business model and putting the skills I learned at St. John’s to good use.” THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 41 �ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, GREENFIELD LIBRARY IN MEMORIAM Nancy Lewis (H01) December 7, 2015 Registrar, Annapolis Nancy Rawlings Lewis (1933-2015), who served for 20 years as the registrar at St. John’s, Annapolis, died peacefully at her home, surrounded by family. Born in Washington, D.C. to Nellie Morton Rawlings and Herbert Lee Rawlings, she spent her childhood in Forest Glen Park, Maryland and attended the University of Maryland. There she met and married artist Eric Winter and traveled with him to Juneau, Alaska, where the first of their four children was born. Two years later they moved to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, where they raised their children in a home they built out of ruins of the Christensen farm in Estate Tutu. In St. Thomas, Lewis managed the A. H. Riise art gallery and the Sheltered Workshop for disabled adults. After the marriage ended, Lewis moved with the children to Barcelona, Spain, where they settled for five years in the seaside town of Sitges. There she became part of a creative international expatriate community. In 1976, she relocated to Annapolis and joined the staff at St. John’s, where she worked until her retirement in 1998. She was on the board of the Friends of St. John’s and a member of the Caritas Society. In 1984 she married an old college friend 42 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Nancy Lewis (H01) in 1992, working with student Devin Rushing-Schurr (A93) “Nancy conducted all duties of [the Registrar’s Office] with astute attention to detail and calm organization. Her natural grace and her care for others, especially students, permeated every part of her responsibilities.” —Annapolis Dean Pamela Kraus Fred Lewis; the couple remained together for 31 years. At a celebration of life service held in McDowell Hall, Lewis was remembered for her warmth, kindness, humor, and grace. She is survived by her husband, Fred; two daughters Page Winter and Leslie Winter Mills; two sons Eric Winter and Cy Winter; stepson, Freddie Lewis; brother, Herbert Rawlings; eight grandchildren; and four step-grandchildren. �IN MEMORIAM Matthew Frame (A73) July 24, 2015 Known for his sharp wit and gentle nature, Matthew Albritton Frame (1951-2015) passed away peacefully at home in Raleigh, North Carolina. After a rewarding 30-year career as a software engineer and systems architect with IBM, Frame retired in 2008, and began his second career as a full-time bridge professional. His natural ability to understand and process complex information, and his extremely logical mind, fueled his success in both careers; his generosity was evident in his volunteer work and mentorship to aspiring bridge players. Two maxims that Frame lived by throughout his last year were: “It’s never too late to do the right thing” and “Relish every moment left on this earth.” In this spirit, he devoted his abbreviated time to the people and passions he cherished most, including his four children Laura Knox, Mark, Rebecca, and Susannah; his granddaughter, Allie Knox; six surviving siblings David, James, Jr., Margaret Lipton, Martha, Ruth, and Shannah Frame Whitney; and numerous other relatives. Jeremy Tarcher Class of 1953 September 20, 2015 Jeremy Phillip Tarcher (19322015), who founded the publishing house that bears his name, died at his home in Los Angeles. Considered a maverick in the industry, in the early 1960s Tarcher packaged book deals for celebrities, including Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints and Johnny Carson’s Happiness Is a Dry Martini. Later inspired by New Age thinking about human potential, he brought California’s counterculture to the mainstream with such works as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards and The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson. “I published books I cared about rather than books people thought would sell,” he told Publishers Weekly in 2013. “But it turned out that there were thousands of readers out there like me.” In the early 1970s, Tarcher founded the house, known first as J.P. Tarcher, specializing in nonfiction books on health, psychology, and New Age spirituality. Today it is part of the Tarcher Perigee imprint of Penguin Random House, the company where Tarcher remained until 1996. He published numerous bestsellers, including Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood, The Faith of George W. Bush by Stephen Mansfield, Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class by Bikram Choudhury, and The United States of Wal-Mart by John Dicker, among others. He married the television puppeteer and children’s author Shari Lewis in 1958 and went on to produce her Saturday morning TV show for several years and publish some of her books, including The Kids-Only Club Book. The couple also collaborated on a script for an episode of Star Trek. Tarcher grew up in a prosperous family of readers, with him as the exception. After he was rejected by nearly every other college he applied to, Tarcher found a home at St. John’s. In a 1982 interview with the Los Angeles Times he recalled, “I would not be what I am now, where I am now, had it not been for St. John’s.” Ernest Heinmuller Class of 1942 December 5, 2015 Ernest Jean Heinmuller (19212015) was a member of the first class to graduate from the New Program at St. John’s College. Born in Baltimore to Ernest Richard and Angeline Magne Heinmuller, he grew up in Easton, Maryland. In 1943, he married Donna Hoyt, his high school sweetheart, and later joined the U.S. Coast Guard. He served in three theaters of WWII as a submarine hunter off the U.S. coast, troop rescue in the English Channel during the invasion of Normandy, and other assignments in the South Pacific. His ship was awarded the Coast Guard Outstanding Service medal with star and the Defense medal with star. At the end of WWII, he and his wife returned to Easton, where he opened an office for Monroe Systems for Business A portrait of Ernest Heinmuller, Class of 1942, as a senior and served as manager and head of sales for the next 28 years. Heinmuller is survived by his son H. Hoyt of Alamo, Texas; his daughter Jodie Peirce of Chapel Hill, North Carolina; four granddaughters Dee, Lynn Heinmuller Fisher, Shayn Peirce Cottler, and Leyf Peirce Starling; eight greatgrandchildren; and two greatgreat-grandchildren. Heinmuller was preceded in death by his wife, and his daughter Frances. Amy Kass August 19, 2015 Tutor, Annapolis Amy Apfel Kass (1940-2015), who taught at St John’s in the early 1970s, died in Washington, D.C. She grew up in New York City and earned degrees at the University of Chicago, Brandeis, and Johns Hopkins, where she wrote a history of the great books movement and founding of the New Program at St. John’s College. In 1976 she returned to the University of Chicago, where she taught humanities and great books classes for 34 years. Classes on works by Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Melville, and G. Eliot were among the most popular. She co-founded the “Human Being and Citizen” course, and taught in the “Fundamentals: Issues and Texts” program. During her teaching career, she organized the “Toqueville Seminars on Civic Leadership,” and “Dialogues on Civic Philanthropy,” and edited anthologies of readings on American autobiography, philanthropy, courtship and marriage, American identity, and American national holidays, all widely used in high school and college classes, workshops THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 43 �and seminars, and by independent readers. She served on the Council on Humanities for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. Kass lectured at St. John’s and was a familiar visitor at Friday Night Lectures and the question periods that follow. Whenever she met students she thought would thrive at St. John’s she urged them to consider attending. Many St. John’s alumni met her in graduate school at Chicago; some of them and others have returned as tutors in Annapolis or Santa Fe. Kass was the living proof of how very important like-minded friends are to St. John’s College as an institution, to its students, and to the faculty that make this their primary home. She is survived by her husband, Leon R. Kass, of Washington; two daughters; four granddaughters; and hundreds of students whose lives she helped to shape. Larry Dutton (SF74) Terry McGuire (H12) July 14, 2015 March 6, 2016 Maria Kwong (SF73) shares the following remembrance about her friend Larry Roscoe Dutton (1950-2015): Larry’s life spanned many realms, from his beginnings in the heart of the Midwest to his years at St. John’s College, where I and many others forged a lifelong bond with him; to his more than 10 years in Los Angeles, where he lived with my family, began his practice in Tibetan Buddhism, and met his life partner and wife, Sharon McMillan. Returning to Santa Fe, they continued to practice Tibetan Buddhism and furthered the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Those who loved him remember a man of many passions, particularly music, and whose sense of the absurd informed his wit. A spiritual, intelligent, kind, caring, and fiercely loyal friend, he will be deeply missed by those who knew him. Theresia “Terry” J. McGuire (1947-2016), assistant to eight deans on the Annapolis campus, passed away from cancer. Terry joined St. John’s in 1969 as secretary to the assistant dean. Her extraordinary talent was noticed quickly, and she was singled out to be the dean’s assistant, beginning with the deanship of Curtis Wilson, in 1976. She retired in May 2015 after 46 years at the college. Her powers of organization, prodigious memory, and gracious professionalism informed Also Deceased: John R. Garland, Class of 1950 October 23, 2015 Anne M. Ahern, A69 June 26, 2015 Christopher Gillen, A90 August 24, 2015 Gerald (Jerry) Milhollan, Class of 1958 September 26, 2015 William Randall Salisbury, Class of 1962 November 14, 2015 Joseph L. Berkman, Class of 1951 April 8, 2014 George Gilbert Graham, SF73 December 18, 2015 Edward W. Mullinix, Class of 1945 December 9, 2015 Jon Sanford, SFGI79 October 20, 2015 Frederick James Blachly, Class of 1966 November 21, 2015 Jeffrey Frost Burnham, A01 August 2, 2015 William F. Church III, Class of 1967 September 1, 2015 Paul Ringgold Comegys, Sr., Class of 1941 January 13, 2016 Caryl Actis-Grande, SFGI09 November 28, 2015 Ernest C. Hammond, Jr., Class of 1962 September 13, 2015 Amy (Carle) Jobes, Class of 1959 August 23, 2015 Michael C. Jordan, A74 January 24, 2016 Susanne Elizabeth Martin, A68 August 14, 2015 Elisabeth Funnell, Class of 1966 October 24, 2015 44 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 and fortified the deans in their duties, from their initiation in the office to completion of their terms. Her natural good cheer, forgiving nature, courtesy, and uncomplaining fortitude enriched the spirits of all in countless ways. She was a force of benevolent togetherness, for us as members not only of the St. John’s community but that of all living things. Terry McGuire (H12) with various deans with whom she had worked. From left: George Doskow, Eva Brann (H89), Terry McGuire, Michael Dink (A75), Pamela Kraus, Sam Kutler (Class of 1954), and Harvey Flaumenhaft. Jonathon Josiah Orbeton, SF00 November 12, 2015 William Westerman Simmons, Class of 1948 January 18, 2016 Maryrose Vigna Patrone, SFGI80 November 2, 2015 Helen Roelker (Sparrow) Sisk, SF85 October 1, 2015 Royal Parker Pollokoff, Class of 1947 January 8, 2016 Rina Swentzell, SFGI70 October 30, 2015 Robert (Bo) H. Reynolds, Classof 1940 November 27, 2015 Eric Daniel Rosenberg, A01 October 14, 2015 Susan Tixier, SFGI03 October 8, 2015 Suzy Ellin Van Massenhove, Class of 1962 September 7, 2015 Nathan James Walker, A86 January 3, 2014 �PHILANTHROPY A Lasting Tribute Donald Esselborn (A80) (1951-1991) died too young. Twenty-five years after his death on October 30, his classmates, led by Charlotte Murphy (A80) and with help from Steve Edwards (A80), Rebecca Krafft (A80), Kate McCullough (A80), Annapolis Director of Alumni Relations Leo Pickens (A78), and members of the college’s grounds crew, planted a tree in Esselborn’s memory on the front campus in Annapolis. The linden basswood, native to North America, with beautiful, heart-shaped leaves, stands along the brick walkway that stretches from Prince George Street to McDowell Hall. Years previous at a Homecoming celebration in Annapolis, Murphy joined with Dante Beretta (A80) and Josh Kates (A80), and held a wine tasting in honor of Esselborn. There they heard stories, often filled with humor, from fellow classmates and alumni Great Gift Edmond Freeman first set eyes on Santa Fe in the early 1980s, when he and his wife June stopped there on the way to a Southern Newspaper Publishers Association meeting in Colorado Springs. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Freeman knew that St. John’s had a campus in Santa Fe and made a point to visit. He and June fell in from other class years. “He had made a lot of friends through singing and acting on campus and hanging out at the Coffee Shop,” says Murphy. “Many students found comfort in talking with him and listening to his take on being a Johnnie— he loved it.” During the planting ceremony, the group buried a sugar bowl in the tree roots, filled with ashes of classmates’ written notes about Esselborn, photos, his favorite play titles, and sheet music of beloved songs. Following a rendition of “People Get Ready” by Curtis Mayfield, the intimate ceremony concluded with a moment of silence. “I loved Donald, and the tragedy of his death has not left me,” says Murphy. “I had to plant this tree, and I feel lucky that circumstances conspired so I could. Trees capture the abiding strength of love like few other tributes can.” love with the city—the Spanish-Native influences in the architecture, the jogging and hiking trails, the majestic mountain backdrop. It was the start of a relationship that culminated in 2015, when June gave $25,000 to establish the Edmond Wroe Freeman III Scholarship Fund to honor her husband’s lifelong love of learning and teaching. Graduating from high school in Pine Bluff, Arkansas during WWII, Freeman always straddled two worlds; while serving as an Ensign on an aircraft carrier, he was reading Plato and Hume for a correspondence course in philosophy from the University of Chicago. He left the Navy in 1949 to study philosophy and English at Chicago. After he and June got married the following year, Freeman joined his family’s newspaper, the Pine Bluff Commercial. “At that time I wasn’t sure whether I was going to make that my life’s work,” says Freeman. “But as it turned out, that was.” He served as editor and eventually succeeded his father as publisher, where he was known for his curiosity, thirst for knowledge, and great eye for talent. One of the paper’s editorial page editors, Paul Greenberg, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 under Freeman’s editorial direction. “He made people better writers,” says Freeman’s daughter, Gretchen. Edmond recently made a second gift of $25,000 to the fund, and both of their children have also given to the fund. The family says that the scholarship criteria will be set by St. John’s, but Edmond has a clear vision of the kind of student it will encourage: “Curious. Open-minded. Interested in reading. Having a thirst for knowledge.” —Jan Schlain THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 45 �JOHNNIE VOICES MY MOST VALUABLE INVESTMENT: A MASTER’S DEGREE IN GREAT BOOKS By Russell Max Simon (SFGI06) I n April 2015, I made the final payment on my student loan. I borrowed nearly $21,000—about half the amount it costs to get a master’s degree from St. John’s College. Unless you obtain a professional degree in a field such as law or medicine, I believe graduate school to be generally a waste of time and money. Time should be spent learning what is needed to get the job you want by apprenticing or working to gain real-world experience—not to mention money. Yet as I make my final payment eight years into a twenty-year loan for what many consider to be a glorified philosophy degree, I can say without hesitation that my graduate education is the most valuable thing I’ve ever bought. The most obvious value comes from my first, most crucial jobs: rungs on the career ladder given to me by St. John’s alumni or employers who sought St. John’s graduate students. An editor who was sick of hiring journalism school students gave me my first job as a journalist. A St. John’s alumnus gave me my first job as a marketing professional, and continues to recruit from St. John’s. Both employers wanted a St. John’s grad. Perhaps only one out of ten employers appreciates my degree, but they only want someone like me. It made getting those jobs extremely easy. Jobs are just the beginning. Here’s the long answer as to why my St. John’s education is so valuable. Americans collectively hold $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. Most took on that debt because of a misconception about what has value. People think education is mainly about skills transference, yet our education system transfers skills that will soon be out of date, if they aren’t already. Our competitive economy moves too fast for an education based on skills transference. Yet many people take massive time out from building their careers and pay tens of thousands of dollars—or go into debt— to learn skills that will soon be out of date, or were never useful in the first place. Like them, with my undergraduate history degree in hand, I thought that I had the skills that would help me succeed in life. If someone had asked me what those skills were, I couldn’t have identified them. Soon after finishing undergraduate, I read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, a scathing critique of what liberal education has become in the past forty years: not a tool to develop great thinkers, but a means of instilling openness, which Bloom calls the great American virtue. At liberal arts institutions across America, Bloom observes, every culture is valid and every idea deserves respect. In classes such as “comparative politics” or “comparative religion,” we compare and contrast republicanism to communism or Islam to Christianity in a non-judgmental manner. That is a mistake. In life, everything requires judgment. Some ideas are less valid than others. Such judgment is what helps people and companies succeed. The most difficult question for most of us in our daily work is what do I do next? That’s judgment. For menial jobs, including those occupied by over-educated graduate interns in the think tanks and nonprofits of Washington, D.C., where I live, judgment is not necessary. But as soon as you achieve a modicum of success in any industry, judgment becomes essential, including the ability to judge which ideas are valid, which are idiotic, and which ones require an honest discussion. 46 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 Nearly every creative pursuit, including starting or managing a business, requires incisive judgment. The typical liberal arts education, which emphasizes non-judgmental cultural understanding and openness to every idea, works against your chances of succeeding. Judgment is the first thing that gets blown up at St. John’s, so that it can be rebuilt from the ground up. Not all ideas are considered equally valid; some are just plain wrong. Not everyone is entitled to their own unique snowflake of an opinion. Each great thinker in history became so in part by calling out some ideas as wrong, arguing for what they considered the correct idea. It started with Aristotle faulting Plato, and continued from there. A great, three-thousand-yearlong conversation about fundamental questions regarding the nature of humans, reality, knowledge, and more, has been ongoing since the time of the Greeks. The higher one rises in any profession, the more one must make judgment calls with which people will disagree. At the highest levels, most people disagree with your judgments. Which brings me to the next skill that St. John’s teaches: an assurance in your ability to learn new things, one of the most valuable skills for succeeding in the economy of the future. No curriculum keeps up with the pace of change in today’s world. The skills you learned in school will be obsolete by the time you leave. All that matters is your capacity to adapt. St. John’s students think they can learn anything, because of the difficulty of the readings and their source. Go ahead— try to read Heidegger. Then try to learn calculus from Newton’s Principia Mathematica, widely understood as the most �difficult textbook ever. St. John’s students learn through the eyes of the first mover, the first discoverer, the first thinker. Renaissance artists’ experiments in color inform a painting class. The replication of experiments by Niels Bohr are among the foundations for learning the principles of physics. Geometry is taught by working through Euclid’s Elements; every St. John’s student can recite the definition of a point from memory: “That which has no part.” It’s no wonder that St. John’s students are perfectly comfortable swinging between abstract philosophy and hardcore math and science. They understand how one discipline relies upon and interweaves with the other. It’s no wonder that we think we can learn anything. We experience the same process as those who first learned the greatest things, from a phenomenology of the spirit to the theory of relativity. We receive road maps to the thinking of the greatest minds in history. We are helped to find our way through to the end, and are then asked to make a major judgment call: is it true? Those with pre-existing bias are told to address the argument. Those who rely on flimsy logic are swiftly taken down by the Socratic method, through withering questioning from wicked-smart professors called “tutors,” none of whom accepts the fallacy that all opinions are equally valid. The confidence I gained by communing, grappling with, and defending (or attacking) the great thinkers led me to launch into careers in which I had no formal training—and succeed. I have embarked on crash-course self-training regimens in evolving industries that advanced my career and earnings potential, inventing new ways of doing things and new processes. In investment-speak, dividends will continue for decades to come. If you require conventional measures of success in order to accept the value I’m describing, consider that I am director of marketing for a $60-plus million “�Perhaps only one out of ten employers appreciates my degree, but they only want someone like me.” company; that I do most of my work from the comfort of my home in Silver Spring, Maryland, which I own with my partner; that we have three amazing kids; that I follow my passions of travel, writing, filmmaking, and adventuring as passionately as I do my career; and that I consider myself rich in material wealth, meaningful relationships with family and friends, and creative fulfillment. My education led me to think in the grandest terms possible, and to expect great things from myself. When you shoot for the stars, every once in a while you are able to reach the moon. I would say you can’t teach that kind of thing. But evidently, you can. THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 47 �JENNIFER BEHRENS S T. J O H N ’ S F O R E V E R THE COLLEGE 1.0 A previous incarnation of The College appeared in the mailboxes of alumni in the 1960s and early 1970s. “Our aim is to indicate . . . why, in our opinion, St. John’s comes closer than any other college in the nation to being what a college should be. If ever well placed beacon lights were needed by American education it is now. By publishing articles about the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind that is the College, we hope to add a watt or two to the beacon light that is St. John’s”—so went the editorial mission. The College contained news, lectures and talks, and alumni notes. Many of Jacob Klein’s writings first appeared in its pages. 48 THE C OL L E GE | ST. JOH N ’ S C OL L E G E | S PR I N G 2 016 In 1974 The College was discontinued and The Reporter, a tabloid format newsprint quarterly, launched. It contained St. John’s news and alumni notes, while a few years later the St. John’s Review was conceived to publish lectures, reviews, and thought pieces reflective of the St. John’s Program. The last issue of The Reporter appeared in fall 1999. The St. John’s Review continues to publish twice a year, and it can be found on the college website at www.sjc.edu/blog/st-johns-review. The College 2.0 was born in 2000. Reader, it’s in your hands. —-Barbara Goyette (A73) �EIDOS I have been an art therapist for twenty-five years, beginning at a women’s clinic for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and childhood abuse, later developing an arts-in-healthcare program for a cancer hospital, and most recently providing therapy at an eating disorder treatment center and teaching within two art therapy graduate programs. My career requires I tend two identities: psychotherapist/clinician and artist. Because clinical work pays the bills, it is challenging to keep in focus my asessential artist self. With patients, I use a variety of art modalities including visual art, creative writing, movement, storytelling, and music. My primary personal art practices are poetry, Celtic harp playing, and kinesthetic, process-focused drawing/painting/printmaking. I have published three books of poetry and one nonfiction book on environmental stewardship through the arts. that reconciles mind, body, and spirit, and unites the person to the world. I experience poeisis within each art therapy session as an improvised collaboration between three partners: myself; another person who is suffering emotionally, spiritually, and physically; and the universal field of imagination/soul. —-Liza Hyatt (SF85) Learn more about Liza Hyatt (SF85) at lizahyatt.com. Liza Hyatt, Grief Angel, 1995, monotype. One word that best sums up the work of art therapy is the ancient Greek poiesis, meaning “to make.” Poiesis is a creating THE CO LLEG E | S T. JOH N ’S C OLLEGE | SPRING 2016 iii �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Annapolis, MD Permit N0. 120 Communications Office 60 College Avenue Annapolis, MD 21401 JENNIFER BEHRENS Address Service Requested � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <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 2016 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Spring_2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Description An account of the resource Volume 41, Issue 1 of the <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Spring 2016. 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/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/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/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/902fe7b41f9221a153b36b1c448de638.pdf 880839e891ff40dde92151e113bcfed5 PDF Text Text College The St. John’s College • Annapolis • Santa Fe Frederick Douglass Considering Freedom S u m m e r 2 0 0 9 �“It is only by the practice of the liberal arts that the human animal becomes a free man. It is only by discipline in these arts that spiritual, moral, and civil liberties can be achieved and preserved. It is in such obvious propositions as these that the founding fathers of 1784 and 1789 gave reasons for the institutions they set up.” Scott Buchanan, Bulletin of St. John’s College, 1937-38. On Freedom T he roughly chronological structure of the St. John’s Program puts readings such as Marbury v. Madison and Abraham Lincoln’s speeches in senior year. These readings allow students to think deeply about governing and being governed just as they are about to emerge from a college created, in part, to render them educated citizens, guardians of democracy. Assembled together in one spiral-bound book are the Marbury and Dred Scott readings, along with works by Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington. While the selections vary, Johnnies have been reading Douglass’ “The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-slavery or Anti-slavery” and “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln.” Douglass’ speech on the Constitution was delivered in Glasgow in 1860. Along with his eloquent argument that the Constitution is anti-slavery, the speech includes his acknowledgement that he has examined and revised many of his opinions. He no longer seeks revolution—as he had as a follower of William Lloyd Garrison—but reform: “When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led me to examine for myself.” Douglass’ “Oration” is a moving speech, but one that acknowledges the political realities that faced Lincoln. He calls Lincoln “the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.” He recounts the many decisions that “taxed and strained” the faith of those who sought emancipation. As Douglass was shaped by his youth in bondage, he points out that Lincoln was shaped by a hardscrabble youth: “He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broadhanded splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth.” When the two men came together, their respect for each other grew, writes James Oakes in The Radical and the Republican: “Both were uncommonly intelligent. Each was a brilliant orator whose greatest speeches fused razor-sharp logic to soaring idealism. . . . They respected self-made men and so they respected each other.” A few blocks away from the Annapolis campus the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass is commemorated in the Banneker-Douglass museum. On the grounds of the Maryland State House sits an imposing statue of Roger Brooke Taney, most remembered for presiding in the Dred Scott case. And Lincoln himself walked through campus in February 1865 during a brief stop on his way to the Hampton Roads Conference in February 1865. For her essay in this issue, Laurel Pappas (A09), senior seminar readings fresh in her mind, read Frederick Douglass’ autobiography and explored his life through visits to his homes in Anacostia and Anne Arundel County. She found in Douglass’ quest for freedom striking parallels to her own education. Some changes to The College in this issue: You’ll find the alumni calendar in an expanded Alumni section, featuring Alumni Association news and what’s happening in the chapters. In its place, on the inside back cover (in the magazine trade, supposedly the way most readers enter the magazine), you’ll find Eidos, a new section created to highlight the work of Johnnies in the fine arts. —RH The College is published three times a year by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, MD postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Rosemary Harty (AGI09), editor 443-716-4011 rosemary.harty@sjca.edu Patricia Dempsey, managing editor Jennifer Behrens, art director The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters can be sent via e-mail to the editor or mailed to the address above. Annapolis 410-626-2539 Santa Fe 505-984-6104 Contributors Sophia Koltavary Sara Luell (A09) Laurel Pappas (A09) Nathaniel Roe (SF08) Deborah Spiegelman Curtis Wilson (HA93) Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �College Summer 2009 The The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 10 Commencement d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 At Commencement in Annapolis and Santa Fe, the theme was courage. • Norman Levan: a portrait of philanthropy Launching the Jeff Bishop The man in the basement St. John’s new BVG chair Celebrating 20 years of Summer Classics What Caritas means to St. John’s News and announcements New board members Still obsessed with the white whale Letters 30 bibliofile • • • 14 A Freedom Through Education • page A brand-new St. John’s graduate discovers why education and freedom were synonymous to Frederick Douglass. from the bell towers • • • • • page 14 16 On Freedom page • We gave three tutors free reign to talk about freedom, and they roamed far and wide with their topic. 32 J.B. Shank’s The Newton Wars details how French thinkers viewed Newton’s theories; plus, celebrating Johnnie poets. alumni P RO F I L E S 32 Michelle Vest (SF90) explores the lives of 22 Resilience in a Recession page page 16 Few American lives remain unaltered by the economic crisis. Four Johnnies detail how their lives have changed. immigrants in her one-woman play. 36 Jazz producer A.T. Michael MacDonald (SF76) seeks a balance. 41 St. John’s provides an educational model for school founder Melanie Hiner (A81). 48 46 Croquet 52 page This year, it was East vs. West as Santa Fe fielded its first croquet team, and Vikings vanquished their foes. page 22 on the cover Frederick Douglass Illustration by David Johnson alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} A Life Changed by Giving By Diane Hardisty Bakersfield Californian His first donation went to Bakersfield College, where it is being Carmen Schaad sat quietly in a room at Bakersfield’s Heart Hospital. used to develop the Norman Levan Center for the Humanities. In the bed slept her 88-year-old boss. To pass the time on that long His $5.6 million donation is the largest the college has ever night in 2004, she watched the Bakersfield Beautiful Awards cerereceived and is funding the renovation of an existing building to mony on television. Dr. Norman Levan, a Bakersfield dermatologist, her employer and house the center and its programs. A portion of the money also supports the Levan Institute that offers lifelong learning classes to friend for four decades, faced surgery the next morning to clear a area residents 55 years of age and older. blockage from his heart. As Carmen watched people being honored, At the University of Southern California, where he earned his she chewed on an idea. medical degree and later headed the school’s Dermatology DepartHours later, when Levan awoke from surgery, his office manager ment, a similar donation funds the Norman Levan Institute for lectured him. “If he thought he had nine lives, he had already gone Humanities and Ethics, encourthrough seven of them,” she aging students to explore new recalls telling him. ways of thinking. Her message was clear: His At Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek time was running out. Instead of Medical Center, another nearly just doling out his money to $6 million donation opened the worthy causes in his will, as he Dr. Norman Levan Center for planned to do, he should give the Humanistic Medicine to foster millions of dollars he amassed compassionate care at the through his lifelong investing 105-year-old hospital. while he was still alive. St. John’s College in Santa “I wanted to see the smile on Fe, N.M., is using a fourth his face. I wanted him to see the $5 million gift to build the buildings that would be built Norman and Betty Levan Hall with his money and the [for] its Graduate Institute of programs that would be started. Liberal Education. . . . Levan And I wanted to nominate him says the advanced degree he for an award,” she explained. earned from St. John’s College She was convincing. Levan “changed my life.” soon began giving away his Levan’s medical career and money. He also began smiling a his passion for studying the lot. Both Carmen and his longPrompted by a friend, Dr. Norman Levan (SFGI74) began giving back to St. John’s College and other causes instead of preparing humanities are as remarkable as time friend, former Bakersfield bequests. His $5 million gift to the college makes possible a new the millions of dollars he has College President John Collins, graduate center on the Santa Fe campus. given away. agree: The giving campaign Levan was born in a Clevecame at the right time. land suburb, where his father, Levan’s wife, Betty, had just Joseph, worked as a toolmaker and his mother, Rose, stayed home died. The childless couple, who met on a tennis court more than a to raise Levan, the youngest, and his three sisters. His parents half century ago, were the centers of each other’s lives. Levan profoundly missed his wife. Her death narrowed his world to his one- divorced and his mother moved with her teenage son to Detroit, where his sister, Goldie, landed a teaching job. It was during the day-a-week medical practice and reading books. Depression, when jobs were scarce. Levan and his mother later His decision to start giving away his money “changed his life,” followed Goldie to the West Coast. said Collins, who also is Levan’s patient. “He is now having a lot A good student whose education was jump-started at home by his of fun.” teacher sister, Levan skipped grades and graduated from high So far, Levan has made four massive donations—each nearly school at 16. He then entered USC as an English major. Teased by a $6 million—to three colleges and a Jerusalem hospital. With each brother-in-law that he would end up teaching like his sisters, or donation he gets accolades, invitations to events and encourageselling newspaper ads, Levan took the USC medical school ment to watch buildings and programs started in his name. entrance exam, passing it with a top score. This was remarkable, Although coy about the size of his wealth, it appears the now since Levan had shunned “boring” science classes and thought 93-year-old plans to give even more. pre-med students were “quite dull.” Each donation is structured to reinforce his lifelong belief that no He acquiesced to the school’s demand that he complete at least a matter what your career is, you must study the humanities to be truly course in organic chemistry and went on to earn a medical degree educated. He is an outspoken critic of his medical profession, which from USC. He served as a medical officer during World War II, he considers dominated by people too focused on science and the with assignments in the Pacific. commercial rewards of healing. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �3 {From the Bell Towers} Launching the Jeff Bishop years served as vice president of the college. Bishop died in July 2007 after a long battle with cancer. Athletic Director Leo Pickens (A78) gave a brief patricia dempsey College board member Ray Cave (class of 1948) was on hand April 22 to christen the racing shell he donated to the college in memory of Jeff Bishop (HA96), who for 20 Ray Cave (A48) christens the Jeff Bishop as Johnnies welcome a new eight to the fleet, (l. to r.): Rachel Ulrich (A11), Brook Pendergast (A11), Margaret Ansell (A10), and Virginia Harness (A11). A teenage bout with acne exposed him to dermatology. That, combined with his wartime experience treating soldiers’ skin diseases, led to his medical specialty. He joined a private practice after the war and volunteered to teach in USC’s fledgling Dermatology Department. When the department expanded, he became its first chairman and full-time faculty member. In 1961, a group of Bakersfield doctors asked Levan to travel to Bakersfield once a week to treat difficult cases. When he retired from USC a few years later, he and Betty, a champion bridge player, moved to Bakersfield. Levan credits his fortune to luck. He said he was required to invest 8 percent of his faculty salary into a university account, which USC matched. He invested another 8 percent privately. “That was when the Dow was 400,” he recalled. By the time he began giving his fortune away, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had climbed to more than 14,000. Levan is similarly humble in explaining his decision to give away his money. With a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his lips, he quotes 19th-century American industrialist Andrew Carnegie: “The man who dies rich dies disgraced.” Levan won’t be disgraced. x Copyright 2009, the Bakersfield Californian. Reprinted with permission. speech, praising Bishop’s dedication to supporting the college and its students. Pickens noted Bishop’s willingness to tow the college’s first eight-person shell to the campus. Bishop also helped cultivate a relationship with The Hodson Trust, which funded an extensive renovation of the college boathouse and helped support the crew program. Bishop also embodied “many of the virtues that rowers admire,” Pickens said—particularly by showing courage in the face of overwhelming challenges. “Jeff loved to compete,” Pickens said. “And perhaps even more than the competition itself, Jeff relished the training and preparation that goes into any successful performance. He was also the most mentally tough competitor I have ever known. Rowers here often refer to that dreaded no-man’s land in a 2,000-meter race, somewhere between the 1,000-meter mark and the 1,500-meter mark, as ‘the house of pain.’ Jeff showed no qualms about willingly pushing himself across that threshold into the ‘house of pain.’ And even though it seemed that in his last years he, without choosing, lived in that house of pain, he never was discouraged or lost heart. He kept his chin up and eyes always looking forward. This is the type of courage rowers admire.” As he poured champagne over the bow of the college’s newest eight, Cave remarked that the tribute was a fitting one, given Bishop’s extraordinary success in raising money for the college. Bishop was the driving force behind St. John’s most recent capital campaign, which raised $134 million. “He kept the place afloat,” Cave said. x Breaking Ground Construction began this summer on the Norman and Betty Levan Hall, the new home of the Graduate Institute of Liberal Education in Santa Fe. A LEED silver-certified building, Levan Hall will be located between the Fine Arts Building and Weigle Hall and will house seminar rooms, offices, and common rooms. Dr. Levan’s gift provided the means for a long-needed home for Santa Fe’s two graduate programs, Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Master of Eastern Classics. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �4 {From the Bell Towers} You can’t go to the Internet to find the kind of laboratory equipment required for the classic, sometimes obscure, experiments conducted at St. John’s. Try finding Hauksbee’s globe or Faraday’s rotating rectangles in a catalog. That’s why the college needs Gary Dunkelberger to make a wide variety of wood and metal apparatus for the college’s laboratory program. Before he joined the college as laboratory craftsman, Dunkelberger worked in Annapolis’ boating industry as a yacht carpenter. He built classic wooden boats from scratch and crafted the interiors of mega-yachts (100 feet or bigger) for clients including the late Walter Cronkite. Laboring in a stressful industry gradually took its toll, and after suffering a heart attack, Dunkelberger pursued a career change. He answered an ad for the lab position at St. John’s, and right from the start, impressed Laboratory Director Mark Daly and tutor Chester Burke (A74) with his craftsmanship and ingenuity. “Gary began making laboratory equipment beyond our wildest dreams,” says Burke. “He listens intently to our requests and then goes quietly into his gigantic basement to work his magic.” Dunkelberger moved into a position held for years by Al Toft (H02), John Cook, and Otto Friedrich. His special talent for woodwork has “raised the bar” for the laboratory program. “He really loves beautiful wood, so we’re going from equipment made of plywood and 2 x 4s to pieces made of cherry, oak, and walnut. If he makes something in brass or steel, he polishes it until it gleams. They’re works of art,” says Daly. Precision is essential to the instruments, Daly says, and Dunkelberger is a perfectionist. “We’re talking about scales of a thousandth of an inch range. Everything has to be precise or the experiment may not work.” A graduate of York College, Dunkelberger worked in the steel industry before moving to Annapolis, and as a self-taught carpenter and machinist, found steady work in the city’s boating industry. One of Dunkelberger’s first tasks was to create a set of Faraday rotating rectangles. These rectangles, of varying perimeters, are wrapped with copper wire. It was Faraday who noticed that when the rectangles rotate in a magnetic field, electric current is induced in them, the amount of which depends upon the speed of rotation and the area of the rectangles. “This is one of the most important principles which we study in the second semester of the junior laboratory and Gary has given life to the phenomena,” says Burke. Making the Faraday rectangle involved looping a length of copper wire around a wooden frame 500 times—three to four hours of work for each one. rosemary harty The Man in the Basement above, Gary Dunkelberger has taken over the job of crafting the unusual apparatus required for St. John’s laboratory program. Left, Hauksbee’s globe, just one example of Dunkelberger’s handiwork, demonstrates principles of electricity. (Dunkelberger made four.) “It was a bit tedious,” he admits. At one point in his life, Dunkelberger harbored “vague dreams” of a life in academe; now that he’s part of a college environment, he takes pleasure in talking with tutors and students about the laboratory program and making their investigations possible through wood, metal, and a lot of patience. As an Annapolitan, Dunkelberger was familiar with St. John’s, he says. “But I was rather amazed at the high quality of the students.” When students in junior laboratory take up Maxwell this { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } coming year, they’ll explore electromotive force and electromagnetic momentum using a model Maxwell devised in his Cavendish laboratory. Dunkelberger used cherry, white oak, and a brass rod to make a beautiful and functional instrument for students to see for themselves what Maxwell hoped to show. Even if—mired in Lagrangian analysis—students don’t notice the fine beveled edges and polished wood, Dunkelberger can’t resist. “Why not add a bit of beauty?” he asks. x —Rosemary Harty �5 {From the Bell Towers} An Exciting Time to Lead a College transaction complete, Uremovich moved to Santa Fe with plans to retire. Early in his business career, Uremovich acquired the 55volume set of Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World, which gave him his first introduction to St. John’s. He enrolled in the Summer Classics, where his first seminar was on Galileo. It didn’t take long for him to become deeply connected with the college. He got to know then-president John Agresto (a fellow fly fisherman) and Robert Glick, then serving as vice president for advancement. Uremovich went from fan to supporter, making a pledge to support construction of the Student Activities Center. He enrolled in the Graduate Institute and joined the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors in 2003. Enrolling in the GI provided a much fuller experience than he could have found reading great books at home. “It was very enlightening for me,” he said. “I had the typical rough spots, as a business person coming out of the real world to the very isolated and insulated world of the seminar. I was more used to telling people things, rather than listening.” Uremovich took a special interest in the history segment. “I took a preceptorial that examined the Greek plays of the time and juxtaposed them against Thucydides,” he recalls. “We went through the war and being a Vietnam vet myself, I found that really insightful.” Uremovich chaired the committee that led the search to name John Balkcom’s successor after Balkcom (SFGI00) stepped down in 2003. At the time, Uremovich was back in the business world, running his own consulting firm, Manalytics. A president was named, but the search was relaunched after the appointee resigned before taking the position. The second search was immensely successful, Uremovich says, putting Michael Peters in place in Santa Fe in 2005. It’s a “pretty exciting time” to lead a college governing board, Uremovich says. “We’re facing significant challenges at dimitri fotos Michael Uremovich (SFGI05) lives in Virginia, heads a business based in Ohio and California, and is on the road at least three days a week. But the newly named chair of the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors—who tried earnestly to retire a decade ago—isn’t too concerned about taking on the role on top of his business responsibilities. After all, his predecessor, Sharon Bishop (class of 1965), led a successful and growing company during her seven years as board chair. “There’s an old saw that says if you want something done, give it to a busy person,” says Uremovich. Uremovich is chairman of the board and CEO of Pacer International, an intermodal and logistics freight transportation services provider. According to the journal Smart Business, he’s widely recognized as a “logistics industry guru, who helped revolutionize the business.” For example, Uremovich served as part of a team that invented the doublestack train, an innovation that doubled a train’s capacity for transporting goods while reducing costs. Reared in Tucson, Uremovich earned a bachelor’s degree in logistics transportation management from the University of Arizona and an MBA from City University of New York, Baruch College. Over the years, he’s been a principal at the consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton and held key strategic planning and marketing positions at companies including Pepsi and American President Lines. In the 1990s, he served as vice president of marketing for Southern Pacific Transportation and president of TSSI (its logistics operating company), where he helped negotiate the company’s sale to Union Pacific. With the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } the college in terms of balancing the things we value about our community with the brutal realities of the outside world,” he says. Even if the economy rebounds in the coming year, some difficult decisions may be in order, Uremovich says. “There’s a great saying in the business world these days that you don’t want to waste a good crisis,” he says. “This is a good time to examine the institutional infrastructure that supports the Program. We can go down this path carefully, and begin with a recognition that some compromise may be required to get the best solution.” St. John’s is in a better position to meet today’s challenges than it would have been when Uremovich first joined the board. The college has strong, stable leadership; the Management Committee effectively guides collegewide decisions; and there’s momentum from a successful capital campaign in which alumni demonstrated a strong commitment to the college. The board itself is one of the college’s best resources. “I’ve been affiliated with many not-for-profit boards, and I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a group of people so singularly dedicated to the idea of the institution and its underpinnings,” he says. Uremovich has another reason for his fondness for the college; he met his wife, Susan, in a seminar on Emerson at the campus. “She ran the crime labs for the State of New Mexico and was periodically intrigued by the college up on the hill,” he says. “Ours was a Coffee Shop romance.”x —Rosemary Harty Rooted in the Program, St. John’s can weather turbulent times, says BVG Chair Michael Uremovich. �6 {From the Bell Towers} Summer Classics Program Draws Devotees The Dueling Gluckmans Santa Fe’s popular Summer Classics program marked its 20th year this summer with three weeks of seminars on topics ranging from the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound to The Godfather. The program was launched in 1990 with a single seminar on Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The following summer, the college offered three consecutive weeks of seminars. Now including both morning and afternoon sessions, the Summer Classics has enjoyed nearly sell-out popularity. Lively, in-depth conversations—in a captivating city—inspire many Summer Classics participants to return year after year. Such is the case with Jon and Stephen Gluckman, father and son, who returned this summer for their second Summer Classics. Stephen discovered the program while exploring colleges in his junior year, and Jon has a colleague and friend who attended the Graduate Institute. For their first summer experience (in 2008), Jon, a high school English teacher in New Jersey, and his son, about to embark on his senior year in high school, decided on two consecutive weeklong seminars: Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and the Mahabharata. They originally planned to fly to New Mexico, but then Tom Waits tickets went on sale. “We’re big fans,” explains Stephen. The plane trip became a music-themed road trip that ultimately took five weeks, with the Waits concert in Birmingham, Ala., and the Santa Fe Opera’s production of Billy Budd among the highlights. Their blog (www.gluckmanvroom.blogspot.com), chronicles their cross-country adventure. At St. John’s, Jon and Stephen shared a suite with two other men, both long-time participants, who shared their seminar discussions on the Aeneid and the Iliad. “[Our] tutors were great … [asking] probing questions that brought the most out of the texts,” Jon writes on their blog, adding: “We made a bit of an impression being dueling Gluckmans in our two seminars.” “Somewhere between a monastery and mountain resort” is how Gluckman Senior describes the Santa Fe campus. “These were truly two of the most inspiring and renewing weeks of the summer.” When they returned home, both felt the lingering benefits of their experience. “I’d always taught somewhat like St. John’s does, but this solidified what I do and honed the way I questioned my students,” Jon notes. “It definitely made me more confident in my classes,” Stephen says. The two hoped to renew their friendships with some of their fellow Classics participants when they returned this July, to read Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers. After their summer in Santa Fe, Stephen is off to Sarah Lawrence. And while Stephen’s unsure of his plans for next summer, his father plans to be back in Santa Fe, he says. “This will become my summer camp.” x —Deborah Spiegelman A Summer’s Journey with Suffering Souls I arrived at St. John’s on a blustery April afternoon to visit the college with my daughter during her junior year in high school. I was immediately taken with the natural beauty surrounding the college, but it was the brief stop at the bookstore that took my breath away. Plato, Aristotle, Dante and Montaigne—these were the books I had longed to read in college. I returned home with my daughter wondering how I could redo my college education. A few years later I happened upon an advertisement for Summer Classics in The Atlantic and immediately signed up for the mailing list. A Santa Fe’s Summer Classics seminar was a bonding experience for Jon The following spring (l.) and Stephen Gluckman of New Jersey. the brochure arrived in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } the mail. After discovering my first choices were filled, I settled instead on The Letters of Vincent van Gogh and the Brothers Karamazov. Soon my books arrived, and I happily plunged into the mysterious world of Aloysha and his brothers. On the shuttle from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, the driver noticed my Brothers K on my lap. He inquired about the book and St. John’s. As we turned onto Camino Cruz Blanca he asked, “Why are you studying about suffering souls?” Why indeed, I asked myself, as I wrestled with my book-laden suitcase up the stairs at St. John’s. I mused, “Aren’t we all suffering souls?” The lunches at St. John’s became an extension of the classroom discussions. Munching on tuna salads, we wondered about Dostoevsky’s own faith as we explored his exquisite discourse on free will and religion in the Grand Inquisitor’s speech. A doctor wondered why many of Dostoevsky’s characters suffered from “brain fever.” Classmates became friends as we delighted in the process of joint intellectual exploration. The refrain was similar: “We do not have anyone to discuss books with back home.” Last summer I had the good fortune to study Plato’s Symposium and the Phaedrus. On the last day of the class a classmate asked our tutor, Eva Brann, whether it is possible to reach transcendence other than through love. Miss Brann smiled. “Ah, you will just have to read Plato’s other dialogues to find out.” With those words in our hearts, most of us will return for another summer of intellectual delights. x —Sophia Koltavary �{From the Bell Towers} 7 A Life-Changing Year It was the summer of 1973, and Jim Jarvis (A75) was getting ready to take a job waiting tables at a Colorado resort instead of embarking on his junior year at St. John’s. After adding up his grants, loans, and personal savings, he came up $500 short for tuition and room and board. “I know it doesn’t sound like a lot now, but it was more than anyone in my family could scrape up,” he recalls. He wrote a letter to Barbara Leonard (H55), then assistant dean, to tell her he was taking a year off. Jarvis had been visiting friends in New York City at the end of the summer, and he stopped at a phone booth in Grand Central Station to call his mother, who had an urgent message for him: “Barbara Leonard wants you to call her immediately.” He reached in his pocket for more change, but didn’t have another quarter. “So, there were my friends and I scrambling around Grand Central, panhandling for spare change.” When he reached Leonard, she was characteristically direct. “What’s this about you not coming back?” When Jarvis said he couldn’t find the money, Leonard replied: “Just get on the train, come down here, and don’t worry about the money.” About two weeks after the semester started, Jarvis learned that the grant to keep him in school came from the Caritas Society. By way of thanks, he picked up his guitar and with Janet Hellner (SF77) on flute, gave a recital for a Caritas luncheon. For more than 40 years, Caritas has been helping Johnnies with emergency financial needs, and over the past year, their support has made a great difference in the lives of students whose families are suffering in the economic downturn. In thank-you letters to the society, students wrote of health crises in their families, foreclosures, and job losses. One student was grateful for the money that allowed her to go to the dentist—her family had no insurance and could not afford the $2,000 bill. “Caritas has always helped students who still come up short when all the financial Dr. Jim Jarvis (A75, third from left and shown with students in his lab) aid has been doled almost missed a year at St. John’s, until Caritas stepped in. out,” says Lynn Yarbro, the organization’s president. Steps in March. What motihe decided on the course for “When we read these letters, we know their burden has been vates the group, says Yarbro, is the rest of his life: a career in a deep admiration for the medicine and research. softened somewhat.” college, its academic program, “The research I’m doing Working with the college’s and especially, the students. now is the research I predicted financial aid office during the “If we can make a difference I would be doing in my junior 2008-09 academic year, essay: studying biological Caritas made $34,650 in emer- for even a handful of students who might not be able to stay complexity,” he says. “It was gency grants to 13 students. at St. John’s in this economy, literally a life-changing year.” Another $2,000 from the then all our efforts are worth Today, Jarvis is a professor society’s Weigle Great Books it,” Yarbro says. of pediatrics at the University Fund helped five students buy More than 30 years later, of Oklahoma Health Sciences Program books. During the Jarvis looks back on the Center, where he specializes capital campaign, the society support he received from in pediatric rheumatology. established an endowed Caritas with enduring gratiAmong his research projects Caritas scholarship to support tude. Instead of waiting tables is a study to determine why need-based financial aid for a at a luxury resort, he settled juvenile arthritis afflicts student. into a wonderful corner room Native Americans at a higher All this is supported by the in Pinkney. He had French rate than other populations, as membership of about 200 and with Brother Robert, who led well as an ongoing investigaby the group’s fundraising his advanced class through tion into the role the innate events: a November Book and Remembrance of Things Past. immune system plays in Author event (this year’s star He studied Darwin with Leon chronic arthritis in children. attraction is novelist Alice Kass and discovered scientific Who knows what might have McDermott), and a benefit ideas that intrigued him. And happened if he’d gone to performance by the Capitol Colorado, Jarvis muses. But because one life touches many others, “there is a room full of medical students right next to me” conducting important research because Caritas stepped in. “It reverberates from 1973 right to the present,” he says. x In thank-you letters to the Caritas Society, Annapolis students wrote of health crises in their families, foreclosures, and job losses. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �8 {From the Bell Towers} News & Announcements BARBARA GOYETTE (A73), vice president for Advancement in Annapolis, was among 26 women selected to receive the YWCA’s Tribute to Women in Industry (TWIN) Award for 2009. The award recognizes extraordinary women who are leaders in their corporations, organizations, and communities. Goyette has been vice president since 2002, overseeing fundraising, alumni relations, and communications at the college. She joined the college in 1994 as director of public relations. Alumna Appointed to DOT Post ANNE FERRO (A80) has been nominated to lead the Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, charged with reducing crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks and buses. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire, Ferro was most recently President of the Maryland Motor Truck Association. Between 1997 and 2003, she directed Maryland’s Motor Vehicle Administration, where she established a strong record in highway safety, regulatory compliance, and agency leadership. SF Alumni Win Fulbright Awards Annapolis VP Barbara Goyette was honored by the YWCA. Two recent St. John’s graduates will be heading overseas thanks to the Fulbright Program. THADDEUS THALER (SFGI09) received a Fulbright grant to study in Russia. Thaler will examine how Russia’s image of Latin America was shaped by film and telenovelas (soap operas) between 1959 and 2009. AUSTIN XAVIER VOLZ (SF09) received a Fulbright English new board members The Board of Visitors and Governors welcomes these new and returning members: KEITH HARRISON (SF77) is professor of law and the chair of the International Criminal Law and Justice Graduate Programs at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N. H. He has served on the Board of Trustees for Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, the Planning Committee for the Emerging Leaders of Color Conference, and the American Bar Association. He previously served on the board from 2001-2007. He received his JD from the University of Chicago. MIKE MILLER is principal of The Arundel Group, as well as a financial consultant at a Washington, D.C., area public utility. Previously, he worked for Florida Memorial College, Africare, IBM, and PepsiCo. Miller earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and an MBA in finance from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He currently serves as a Board Member of the District 30 Democratic Club in Annapolis, jennifer behrens Annapolis VP Honored Ready for a ride: The Senior Gift of the Class of 2009 in Annapolis launched a bicycle-lending program on campus. Thanks to donations from the graduating students, six high-quality Globe bikes (tested above by Carol Partonen, A12; Zach Harrington, A11; and Katie Corder, A11) were purchased to launch the program. Teaching Assistantship. He plans to pursue questions about how a second language is learned and how advanced students accomplish fluency in speaking and writing another language. Allanbrook Honored WYE JAMISON ALLANBROOK, professor emeritus at the Maryland, and is a former board member of International Services Agencies, Africare, and the Sandy Spring Friends School. CATHY RANDALL (A82) ran the Philadelphia and Baltimore offices at Deutsche Bank Alex Brown for 20 years. She served on the firm’s Executive Committee, which handled such items as how to standardize procedures across the branches by comparing and contrasting effectiveness and compliance with firm and industry rules and regulations, and gathering best practices for conducting business. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } University of California, Berkeley, was named an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society. She served on the Annapolis faculty for 25 years. She currently holds an Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowship supporting research for 2008–10. x DANIEL VAN DOREN (A81) received his law degree from Boston University School of Law in 1985, where he cofounded the Public Interest Project, a fellowship program that distributes grants to students for summer work in public interest jobs. Since 1986, he has worked in several of his family’s real estate companies and currently serves as managing director of Van Doren Management Co, LLC, in New York City. He served as president of the New York chapter of the St. John’s College Alumni Association from 2004 to 2009. x �9 {From the Bell Towers} Still Obsessed with the White Whale At the University of Pennsylvania, Mike Kelly (AGI06) was torn between a career in economics and a career teaching literature. Economics won out, and right after graduation in 1972, Kelly landed a job at NASA. One of the college books he kept was a paperback copy of Moby-Dick, a novel he fell in love with as a teenager. “It’s one of those stories you can’t get out of your mind,” he says. In the fall of 2004, Kelly brought that same copy—now patched up with duct tape to keep the pages from escaping— to the Graduate Institute, where he joined other students in a preceptorial on the novel. In a lively class in which each participant had a passionate interest in Ahab, Starbuck, and the rest of the doomed crew of the Pequod, he added to his margin notes, wrote a paper about courage, and left with even more questions about Melville’s masterwork. In part, this obsessive pursuit of the white whale can be pinned on the preceptorial tutor, David Townsend. In response to one of Kelly’s observations, Townsend wrote in the margin: “What would Aristotle say about this?” Even with his diploma in hand in the spring of 2006, Kelly was still grappling with that question, and as soon as he retired, he devoted himself to pursuing it. He applied to the GI to write a master’s essay, and on a Saturday afternoon in April, sat for his oral examination. Any GI graduate who desires to write a paper may do so within two years of graduating. Kelly is one of a handful of students who have taken this step, although there’s no tangible benefit to one who has already completed the degree. GI students can substitute the master’s essay and oral for one preceptorial. “I think the fact that people want to do an essay even after graduating shows two things,” says Marilyn Higuera, director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis. “One: the essay is really serving the purpose it was meant to serve, namely that it provide an opportunity for graduate students to engage in an extended, focused study of some question which arose for them during their time here; the fact that people want to follow up on such questions even though it doesn’t ‘count’ toward a degree drives that point home.” Also, Higuera says, many students are reluctant to give up the rich discussions of GI preceptorials in order to write the master’s essay. Kelly worked for 35 years as a business deputy at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, supporting key projects such as weather and communications satellites. But he never lost his love for literature, and he enrolled in the GI just at the time he was preparing for retirement. “I loved every minute of it,” he says of the graduate program. Soon after he retired from NASA in 2007, Kelly asked Townsend to be his adviser, and he sat in on Townsend’s undergraduate preceptorial on the novel. It was a pleasure for Townsend to take the journey through Moby-Dick with Kelly again, helping him synthesize other ideas from his graduate studies. “Mike Kelly took on Moby-Dick as a genuine lover of wisdom, confronting squarely the need for courage in facing the deepest questions of life and death,” says Townsend. Kelly doesn’t plan to be retired for long. He began looking for a teaching job last spring. x —rosemary Harty Letters The Spring 2009 edition of The College contained a list of the “best” booksellers. You failed to mention a wonderful bookstore, The Symposium, on Hayes Street in San Francisco. It’s a unique store, with great selections, and is owned and operated by two recent graduates of St. John’s. I think they merit a note of recognition. Bookselling is a very difficult business, and I think they would appreciate a much-deserved comment for carrying on the tradition of the Great Books. Doug Head Editor’s note: Robin Dunn only recommended bookstores he has visited personally for “The Love of Books” in the Spring issue. He’ll be sure to visit The Symposium next time he’s in the Bay area, thanks to this tip from Mr. Head, a Johnnie parent. Also, The College heard from John R. Traffas (SFGI75), who chided us for not including Eighth Day Books in Wichita. He has high praise for the store, with a setting that “inspires cordial and wide-ranging conversation,” has free coffee, and offers a good selection of serious books, including “a shelf of Loebs.” Corrections rosemary harty A story on Karen Cook (SF74) in the Spring 2009 issue incorrectly identified the institution for which Cook works. It’s the University of Louisiana at Monroe. A preceptorial paper on Moby-Dick left Mike Kelly with more questions than ever, prompting him to write a master’s essay. In the same issue, a story on Touchstones had the wrong title for Stefanie Takas (A89). She is Touchstones’ executive director. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �10 {Commencement} CELEBRATING COURAGE Commencement Speakers Laud Graduates for Choosing a Different Path by Rosemary Harty (AGI09) I gary pierpoint t was an unlikely coincidence that rain forced Commencement ceremonies indoors in both Annapolis and Santa Fe, but both ceremonies went off without a hitch in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium and Student Activities Center, respectively. For both ceremonies, alumni were speakers, and both touched on the theme of courage in their addresses to the graduates. In Annapolis on May 17, 110 undergraduate students received their Bachelor of Arts degrees, and 39 Graduate Institute students received their Master of Arts in Liberal Arts degrees. Tutor Anita Kronsberg (class of 1980), completing her third term as assistant dean this spring, told graduates not to worry if they fail to remember in perfect detail the paradigms and proofs they studied. Kronsberg’s speech focused on courage—the courage needed to enroll in a college such as St. John’s and the courage required to pursue a lifelong habit of subjecting one’s opinions and beliefs to constant scrutiny. “What is good is difficult, and questioning the opinions we cherish is among the most difficult things to do,” she said. “It requires courage, and when you leave this college it will require more courage, for you will often be without communal encouragement to it. But you will carry with you a disposition to seek out this and other forms of what is good, and this is a resource.” In her address, Kronsberg likened the journey students take through the Program to that of the hero of Homer’s Odyssey—in part because Johnnies spend their four years reading the works of long-dead authors, and Odysseus travels to the Land of the Dead. But while Odysseus made his trip alone, Johnnies journey in the company of their “shipmates” as they encounter strange new things. They draw courage from each other. “The illumination and enrichment of your life through your efforts to coax the dead into a living conversation will be different for each of you,” Kronsberg told the graduates. “Some of you may have heard here what sort of life lies ahead for you, many of you are, just now, overwhelmed by the welter of possibilities. All of you have Left, Annapolis graduates Tabitha Silver (l.) and Jessica Zimmerberg-Helms toast their success. Opposite page: Top, Kevin Andrus and Erin Destito. bottom, Anita Kronsberg (A80) spoke to the value of a Johnnie’s journey “in the land of the dead.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Commencement} “You have practiced courage through the constant practice of making mistakes of various kinds, both publicly and in the presence of an ever-sharper inner witness.” the disposition to enter into the experience of another as far as possible while remaining the author of your own opinions.” On May 23 in Santa Fe, 86 seniors and 21 graduate candidates heard from Dr. Stephen J. Forman (A70), chair of the Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Department at the City of Hope Cancer Center in California. Forman is also the principal investigator for a $15.2 million, five-year National Cancer Institute bone marrow transplantation program project grant and principal investigator of a five-year, $11.5 million Specialized Program of Research Excellence grant by the NCI for translational research studies for Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Forman focused his remarks on the way in which the college has been a continuing presence in his life and work. He explained why he chose his specialty in medicine and why he has devoted himself to working toward a cure for cancer: “When asked about my choice, and the unusual college background that could lead me to such work, I often answered that I chose the most philosophical of the medical specialties as it forces one to confront, daily, the important questions in our life and its meaning, about how we live our life, and our relationship to each other, our family, and community, our country, our world,” Forman said. “In essence, the work has allowed me to continue to think about the same questions that you gary pierpoint teri thomson randall Anita Kronsberg (A80) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 11 �12 {Commencement} “You have learned to pursue truth, an often painful process, which has an inherent integrity, which is never ending and as Socrates taught us, is not always welcome. But it is the pursuit of truth that will enrich your life’s work, deepen your friendships and your love of another human being.” gary pierpoint teri thomson randall have been considering for the last four years. Graduates are not the only ones to benefit from St. John’s, Forman said. Because the college cultivates lifelong habits such as “learning, listening, and the pursuit of truth,” the benefits of St. John’s extend to graduates’ families, co-workers, and communities. When graduates are asked about the significance of their liberal arts education, Forman advised: “. . . I would say that we have helped our young to become lifelong students, capable of anything, who understand listening to be a virtue, who will pursue truth in their work and in their life. Not a bad education.” He congratulated students and their parents for choosing St. John’ and the commitment this education demands. “I do hope that you will remember this day, as we celebrate your graduation, the courage that each of you has demonstrated in coming here, as this is a very daunting place, as it exposes your fears, and, rather than running away, you have remained, and, with the help of the college, you have overcome them. We celebrate the courage of your parents to trust you, and the college to guide and protect you and bring you to this day. Yes, you are ‘Johnnies,’ and so are your parents. And, of course, there is the courage of our faculty, resistant to the educational fads of the day and, like you, not here by accident or casually, who, like you, face their own challenges in learning and teaching in all parts of our community of learning. And, like all of you, I remain grateful and respectful of their role in preserving this oasis of learning.” x teri thomson randall Stephen Forman (A70) Above right, Commencement speaker Dr. Stephen Forman (l.) and Santa Fe President Michael Peters. Bottom right, Tutor David Levine and other faculty members lined up in Santa Fe’s SAC weight room for the processional. Bottom left, parents Ben and Anna Bernanke with daughter, Alyssa, at the post-graduation reception in Iglehart Hall. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Commencement} 13 The Last of the Brocketts Noel decided in his sophomore year of high school that he was headed to Annapolis. “There was never really a doubt in my mind that I was going to St. John’s,” he says. St. John’s brought out their children’s talents, the Brocketts say, and each participated in the life of the college in his or her individual way. Hayden was the waltz archon and editor of The Gadfly. Gillian was devoted to intramural sports and discovered a love for science in the lab program and by working in the college observatory. Noel proved to be passionate about the liberal arts and Georgian culture and helped found a nonprofit organization called OLEG (the Organization for Liberal Arts in Georgia) to support a discussion-based liberal arts program at New Gelati Academy in Tbilisi. He helped create a student club that organized Georgian feasts and a Georgian dance class. Along with other OLEG members, he applied for and won a $10,000 Davis Peace Grant to bring a two-week program, based on readings from classic works, to Georgian youth this summer. Hayden, who met his wife, Mary Townsend (A04), when he was a prospie in her freshman seminar, just graduated from George Washington University’s School of Law and now works at the Department of Justice. Gillian worked at the United States Naval Observatory for a year before accepting a position as a medical researcher at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. She’ll be studying optical instrumentation in a master’s program at the university’s department of System Design Engineering. “I would not have discovered my love for astronomy or astrophysics if not for the relationships I built while at St. John’s,” she says. She also married a Johnnie, Ian McCracken (A04). And after spending most of the summer in Georgia, Noel plans to remain in Annapolis and work on OLEG, with an eye to graduate studies in philosophy in the near future. The Brocketts say that it was a sacrifice to send three children to a private liberal arts college. But as Philip Brockett explains, they believe in two principles when it comes to raising children. “One, we’ve never regretted any money we’ve spent on our children’s education,” he says. “And our other mandate was to do everything we could to ensure our children are independent. College is about launching your kids into the world. And St. John’s was just the right place to launch them.” x Each of the Brocketts (l. to r. Hayden, Gillian and Noel) found a special niche at gary pierpoint Among the graduates who marched across the stage in Annapolis May 17 was Noel Brockett, the third and last member of a Connecticut family to receive a St. John’s College diploma. In the audience were his parents, Philip and Nancy; sister, Gillian (A07); and brother, Hayden (A04), who launched the family’s devotion to St. John’s when he received a college brochure in the mail and made his college decision almost instantly. It’s not unusual for a family to send several children to St. John’s. Children follow parents, brothers follow sisters, and legacies are born. Philip Brockett remembers when his eldest son came home for Thanksgiving during his first year, brimming with excitement about the books, his tutors, and his friends at the college. “He told us St. John’s was home for him,” he says. “On the one hand I was really glad for him, on the other hand, I was a little taken aback that he felt so comfortable at the college. He was so enthusiastic about St. John’s that he became a salesman for the college to his younger siblings.” Reluctant to follow her older brother, Gillian spent a year at the University of Connecticut. By the second semester, however, “she wasn’t satisfied with the educational experience she was having” at the large university, Nancy Brockett says. After visiting her older brother in Annapolis, “she called us up and said she wasn’t going back to U Conn. It just wasn’t the right fit for her. But she did really well at St. John’s.” St. John’s, but they and their parents (Nancy and Philip) share a deep appreciation for the college. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } —rosemary harty �14 {Frederick Douglass} FREEDOM THROUGH EDUCATION by Laurel Pappas (A09) A fter four years of St. John’s it was time to read a bestseller. I needed something accessible, mesmerizing, full of colorful events and characters to snap me out of the aftershock of graduating. I hit on something modern, from 1845: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. As a student, looking ahead usually consisted of checking the seminar list to see what we would read next. As a graduate looking ahead means wondering what I should do. Impressed by the necessity for action in my own life, I was delighted to encounter in Frederick Douglass a man whose genius was so immediately applied to improving the world. Douglass makes his childhood and the challenges of his growth central in his books, and I soon realized that anyone who has sought freedom through education can identify with his pursuit of it. I was reminded that freedom is not merely a liberated body, but a liberated intellect. No Program author is as physically present in Maryland as Douglass. He was born a slave on the Eastern Shore, worked in a shipyard in Baltimore, had a summer house in Highland Beach and made his final home in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His Anacostia home in particular revealed the breadth of Douglass’ curiosity, innovation, and learning. He taught himself the violin, made his own checkerboard, spoke and wrote in German and French, read in Greek and Latin, appreciated the arts and had one of the most modern homes of his time. However, it turns out that he shared more than his renaissance ethic with St. John’s. When our tour guide, Noelle, learned where I went to college her face lit up in a smile. Knowing that her news would delight, she exclaimed, “Douglass loved to play croquet!” As early as age 7, still ignorant of the existence of the free states, Douglass knew the concept of freedom. “I distinctly remember being, even then, most strongly impressed with the idea of being a freeman some day,” he wrote in his autobiography. He wrestled to understand the commonplace brutality of the plantation. He was told that God, who was good, made white men to be masters and black men to be slaves. He recalls, “I could not reconcile the relation of slavery with my crude notions of goodness.” In 1826 Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live with the Auld family. His new mistress, Sofia, began to teach the 9year-old Douglass how to read. The lessons were halted after she guilelessly told her husband that “Fred” was a fine pupil. The resistance of his master awoke in Douglass a “slumbering train of vital thought.” He suddenly understood what had mystified him about the power men had to perpetrate slavery. He saw ignorance at the root. He realized that, “knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” If his mistress’ help cracked the door to literacy, his master’s resistance only reinforced the importance of pressing all the way through. He reflected later that, “He is whipped oftenest, who is whipped easiest.” Douglass was not easily whipped, either by the obstacles keeping him from an education or by the brutality he faced later. The speeches he found in his first book, The Columbian Orator, gave him the means to articulate his own thoughts. “The more I read them, the better I understood them. The reading of these speeches added much to my limited stock of { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Frederick Douglass} chad salecker language, and enabled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts, which had frequently flashed through my soul, and died away for want of utterance.” He had discovered the power of naming. Notably, Douglass also pored over a short dialogue in The Columbian Orator between a master and his freshly captured runaway slave. The master points to the kindnesses he has shown to his slave and insists that the slave explain why he attempted escape. The arguments of the black man sway the master at every turn; in the end, the master emancipates him. Douglass’ and his lifelong devotion to speaking for social justice can be seen as a living out of the texts that first gave voice to his own thoughts and desires. After seven years in Baltimore he was sent to St. Michael’s. When Mr. Covey, the man hired to break him, gave him a serious head wound for being too ill to work, Douglass walked the 12 miles to St. Michaels and sought help from his master. He knew he would receive no aid on the grounds of his humanity, but argued that as property, he would be irreversibly damaged. His master sent him back. Douglass returned to the farm of Mr. Covey and refused to be beaten. He recounts that he and Mr. Covey gripped each other in a cow pen for several hours and that there were no blows exchanged between the men because Douglass neither The Frederick Douglass summer home: Twin Oaks in Highland Beach, Maryland. 410-267-6960 (open by appointment) Frederick Douglass National Historic Site: Cedar Hill in Anacostia: www.nps.gov/archive/frdo/freddoug.html The Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Maryland: www.bdmuseum.com Douglass on the Eastern Shore of Maryland: Douglass was born on the Anthony farm, near the banks of the Tuckahoe River. A historical marker on the Eastern Shore on Route 328 is six miles away from Douglass’ birthplace. 15 In Frederick Douglass, Laurel Pappas (outside the BannekerDouglass house in Annapolis) found a man devoted to education as a means of improving the world. administered nor permitted them. “This battle was…the turning point in my ‘life as a slave.’ It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I WAS A MAN NOW.” Four years later he escaped disguised as a sailor, and his free papers were purchased in 1845 by friends. However, before he was legally emancipated Douglass made himself free through his access to the written word, by gaining the power to name his own thoughts, and by confirming and embracing his stature as a man. His learning was not static. He taught black men to understand and love words, and later, when he was invited by abolitionists to join their circuit, he taught white men to understand and hate slavery. When initially invited to speak he was instructed to tell his story and leave the philosophy to the white abolitionists. Douglass chafed in this role. He later wrote that repeating the same story night after night “was a task altogether too mechanical for my nature. I could not always obey, for I was now reading and thinking.” He wanted to do more than relay the horrors of slavery; he wanted to condemn them. In a nation deeply saturated in its prejudices Douglass persisted and became one of the most gifted orators America has ever known. In reading, I was enthralled by Douglass’ spiritedness. His palpable legacy in Maryland helped me to meet, not simply the force of Douglass’ sentiments, but a man. The bestselling author I encountered did not help me sort out the particulars of what I should do with myself, but his example encouraged me. Douglass is a reminder that a true education, while for its own sake, is toward practical life.* x *“Statement of Educational Policy and Program,” Spring 2006, Michael Dink (A75) { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �16 {The Program} ON FREEDOM “In any account of Freedom the great symbols are chains and fetters. There is no universal and immediately transparent symbol of Freedom as such. The torch and the Statue of Liberty, the Phyrigian cap, the gesture of open and uplifted arms—these all symbolize freedom at best indirectly, by way of some historic or sentimental connotations. But chains—that’s different. They mean, directly, always and under all circumstances, compulsion. Why is this so? I think, because, in the most concrete way, we are never free. We are inescapably bound to the necessities of life, we cannot escape death; we depend intrinsically on everything around us, in the present as well as in the past.” – Jacob Klein, “The Problem of Freedom.” I n an essay he delivered 40 years ago at what was then the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Jacob Klein spoke of both political freedom and the freedom of human beings as “thinking beings and as beings having a will.” The concept of freedom comes up frequently in program readings, from Aristotle to Faulkner. In readings such as the Dred Scott decision, the concept of freedom is made most clear when we’re confronted with its opposite: bondage. The College asked three tutors to think about freedom and write an essay. Not surprisingly, the Program itself came to mind for tutor Jon Lenkowski. Bill Pastille questions whether each individual unknowingly sets up barriers to freedom. And Claudia Honeywell turned to a fictional character, Mrs. Dalloway, to examine freedom through the difficult choices of one woman’s life. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �17 jennifer behrens {The Program} The Being-at-Work of Human Freedom by Jon Lenkowski, tutor, Annapolis As much as is possible, given all of the external exigencies to which we are subject in our daily lives, St. John’s College tries to provide us with freedom from certain sorts of wants and needs, as well as freedom from care and from distraction. The ancient word for this condition is schole, from which we get our modern words “school” and “scholar.” The word schole originally means leisure, as well as the place where leisure activity takes place, therefore suggesting a deep connection between leisure and study, or that study is the proper work of leisure. The liberal arts have been traditionally conceived as the arts of freedom, not only because they depend on leisure, but also because they provide us with certain kinds of resources to help lead us out of ignorance and blindness. In this way the liberal arts can be viewed as liberating. Any liberal arts college worth its salt must subscribe to this view of the liberal arts. But here at St. John’s we go even further than this: Learning can itself be slavish. What I mean by this is that one can become enthralled by any number of great thinkers, so that one takes a fancy to a new way of thinking, or a new view of things, or a new technical vocabulary, and learns it almost by rote, letting it take possession of one’s soul without scrutinizing it carefully enough to see whether it is really worthy of such an exalted status. And then there are all the various methods and procedures and models that one comes across in this or that departmental specialty; these tend to be forced upon the learner as though they were simply the truth of things; and even without this compulsion and enforcement these also often have a tendency to insinuate themselves into our souls surreptitiously and almost automatically. These are all forms of enslavement and un-freedom. And thus it is the task of the liberal arts to be liberating in yet a further way, that is, to help us develop powers of criticism such that we don’t simply and immediately internalize unthinkingly what we read, hear or learn. Thus then the liberal arts as liberating. But all this is in a way only preparatory to another freedom, which is the most essential sort of freedom that we can achieve here. It is perhaps the quintessence of our interior freedom. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �18 {The Program} with it a new responsibility— viz. to seek out those great thinkers who can best help us to formulate questions in just the right way, and help us pursue them and think about them most profitably—for without this guidance we run the risk of missing many things, as well as the risk of trusting in our own abilities alone, and just spinning our own wheels, as self-indulgently delightful as that may be. jennifer behrens This is the freedom of thought, the freedom to be able to think in whatever direction the logos seems to lead us, to follow its pointings wherever they may lead, without fear of reprisal or consequence—to question and interrogate each of these pointings as vigorously as we can at each and every step of the way, and then to be able to say openly what we have learned and what we think. But this freedom also brings Freedom: Comedy? William Pastille, tutor, Annapolis Some years ago I gave a lecture questioning the value of questioning. The Socratic project of radical questioning in the service of the Delphic injunction “Know thyself” had become unsatisfying for me. It seemed that all the questioning I was doing was merely uncovering a host of unexamined prejudices, long-standing beliefs, and inherited errors that had been planted—often without my knowledge—in a hidden part in my soul. For all I could tell, this subconscious network of thought was irreducibly complex; and if that were the case, the Socratic project would never be realized. I could spend my entire life exposing the errors and the ignorance of my subconscious “self” to the light of day, sanitizing its piles of trash, cleaning up its mistakes, patching its holes—and I would be no closer to knowing myself at death than I was at birth. Or, as Schiller once put it, I would “miss” myself for the sake of an unrealizable Socratic project. In fact, it seemed to me then that the subconscious self controls our lives far more than the conscious one. The whole attempt to probe, to question assumptions, and to correct errors is conditioned by the subconscious self, since it is the source of the difficulties that radical questioning seems to uncover, and it retains them until the conscious self happens to light on one of them. Hence, the Socratic project is a sort of selfdeluding servitude to the hidden self: by convincing our conscious self that something is being accomplished by our continual exposure of unexamined assumptions, we conceal or play down the impossibility of the project and the futility of our activity. The subconscious self will never let go, no matter how many errors the conscious self corrects. Seen from this perspec- tive, questioning leads to slavery rather than to freedom. In the question period, my colleague Chaninah Maschler asked, “What is the obsession with freedom? Why is freedom so important that it overrides everything else?” “It bothers me,” I replied, “to think that something else is living my life for me.” “You should be grateful!” she shot back. Everyone else in the room, including me, burst into laughter. *** Of course, I thought that Ms. Maschler had somehow misapprehended my point, but in the days that followed, her “You should be grateful!” kept running through my mind. Soon I realized that it was a signal directing my attention to the fact that I had gotten something very wrong. And it was not long before the problem made itself known. By assuming that the unconscious self was dominant, I had granted it autonomy in its relations with the conscious self. But surely this is a mistake. The unconscious self is evidently not wholly self-determining, since ideas surreptitiously enter it from the outside, and since the conscious self can modify it through Socratic inquiry. So neither the conscious self nor the subconscious self are independent, stable, fundamental beings. Was it possible that there could be a more fundamental self? If so, where was it, and how could I come to know it? It turns out that there is a candidate for this more fundamental self. It is an aspect of consciousness that is sometimes called “the watcher.” Despite the mystical overtones, there is really nothing strange or extraordinary about it, even though for the most part we do not notice its activity. In order to notice it, you need to “step aside” from your thoughts and perceptions. The process for uncovering the watcher is well known in meditative traditions, and is pretty simple: Choose a quiet place { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �19 {The Program} As paradoxical as this formulation may seem, it is— finally—this interior freedom of thought that is the great freedom that we have tried to force you to exercise. Now, having said all of this, let me add a restriction: We tutors are always under the gun. We spend the better part of our waking lives in the service of this college, preparing, and preparing and then preparing again. The things we study are so difficult and so many-sided. A single page of a book may point in a dozen different directions, and we feel obligated—and it is both an intellectual and a moral obligation—to follow up each and every one of these leads. There never seems to be enough time. We always feel rushed and hardly ever feel adequate to the task. Usually we prepare right up to class-time, and almost always go to class thinking: if only we had another hour or two! But once where you can be alone, and close your eyes. In your mind’s ear, recite a line of poetry that you know well. Slow it down progressively until there are long gaps between the words. Then concentrate intently on the gaps between the words. If you do this repeatedly and with persistence, you will sooner or later notice the presence of a constantly active awareness that is always ready to take up content in the form of thoughts or perceptions, but is just as lively when no such stimuli are present. As far as I can tell, it is always the same every time I clear space for it—an empty attentiveness without distinguishing marks. Is this the independent, stable, and fundamental self that grounds the unconscious and the conscious selves? It seems unlikely. Although it appears to have stability, it is hardly self-determining: it cannot resist being filled with content. The conscious self must strive to keep thoughts and perceptions off to the side in order for the watcher to remain in the open. This shows that the watcher is yet another self that dances with the conscious self in a continual interplay of submission and dominance, servitude and freedom. Maybe there just isn’t a fundamental self. *** And yet perhaps we can learn something from the process of bringing the watcher into the open. What if the stepping aside that makes room for the watcher is the right kind of activity, but just isn’t complete enough to clear the way for the fundamental self? What if we need to step aside not only from thoughts and perceptions, but also from the body, the conscious self, the subconscious self, the watcher, our memories, our various identities, and whatever else may be in our makeup—from everything that makes us ourselves? What if only something that total could open up the clearing necessary for the funda- Our classes work because we have trusted you and you have lived up to that trust. Jon Lenkowski inside the classroom something magical happens: the conversation starts and a spirit of fluency takes over where we anticipated only a sort of stuttering and hemming and hawing. And so the class goes on quite wonderfully as though it had a life and spirit of its own. And so it turns out that we were all up to the task after all. And this happens because our students have also been busy, preparing and mental self to appear? What if only something like that could reveal to us the “something else” to which we should be grateful for living our lives for us? Strictly speaking, such a total stepping aside is inconceivable. It would be a complete metastrophe, a turning of our backs to our very existence, a kind of self-naughting. And if an inconceivable experience of this kind were to open a clearing for the fundamental self, then it would also be a supreme paradox: how could we be gone and yet something be left over? It seems likely that the approach to such an experience would be terrifying, amounting, as it were, to a kind of death. And indeed, in religious and mystical traditions where something like this collapse of the self is discussed, it is often treated as a death. Hence the famous dictum attributed to Mohammed: “Die before ye die.” But I wonder what the experience would look like on the other side of the collapse. Would it be like suddenly getting the punch line to a gag that had seemed utterly nonsensical beforehand? *** There is an old Zen joke: A student approaches his master with the question “Master, how can I be liberated?” “Who binds you?” the master responds. “Why no one binds me, master.” “Then why do you want to be liberated?” the master says with just a hint of a smile. Wouldn’t it be ironic if we have been missing ourselves just because we are in our own way; if the divine comedy really is a joke—and the joke is on us; if the best way to step out of our own way is to fall out of it by slipping on the banana peel of being? Wouldn’t it be funny if learning to laugh at ourselves is the real key to ultimate freedom? x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �20 {The Program} preparing again. Our classes work because we have trusted you and you have lived up to that trust by investing yourselves in our common enterprise. You are not our pupils, but rather our co-workers, since we learn from you, as you learn from us. This makes you full partners in this great adventure of the Spirit that is at once the quintessential being-at-work of human freedom. Adapted from a toast given in December 2008 to degree candidates of the Graduate Institute, Annapolis. The Freedom to Be Herself By Claudia Honeywell, tutor, Santa Fe jennifer behrens Thanks to the education and opportunity we have had, our most pressing concern with freedom is often with the highly individual choices that give us the freedom to be ourselves. Yet our personal choices may be difficult for those who love us to understand or even accept. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway gives an interesting example of this. Peter Walsh, who has loved Clarissa for 30 years, does not understand why she rejected him and chose instead Richard Dalloway and a marriage devoid of passion. The loss of personal freedom that Clarissa’s choice entailed is emphasized throughout the novel, beginning with the famous opening line which introduces her only by her husband’s name and limits her autonomy to a frivolous trip to the flower shop. Yet in spite of being defined by her husband, Clarissa has not succumbed, like Lady Bradshaw, to the “slow sinking, waterlogged, of her will into his” (100). In fact, she is more open-minded than she was 30 years ago: “She would not say of any one in the world { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{The Program} 21 Peter realizes that there is a connection between the way now that they were this or were that… and she would not Clarissa’s “emotions [are] all on the surface” (75) and her say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am creativity, her “extraordinary gift of making a world of her that” (8).* own wherever she happened to be” (75). Peter credits Clarissa chose to marry Richard although she knew Clarissa’s detachment with giving her this ability to express herself to have stronger feelings for Peter. As the novel life fully by her presence, to make a world of her own, progresses, her choice appears due to something unfeeling “to sum it all up in the moment as she passed” (174). Unlike in Clarissa herself. Peter would like to condemn her for Peter and Sally Seton, who are diminished in the post-war “this coldness, this woodenness”, but instead he senses world, the detached Clarissa retains her compelling that it is “something very profound” and finds himself on presence. the day of the novel “unable to get away from the thought of Peter and Sally looked for fulfillment in private life, but her… trying to explain her” (76). this option was never open to Clarissa, for private life Clarissa’s lack of feeling is what connects her to demands the feeling that she lacks. Clarissa can only Septimus, her parallel character in the novel. Clarissa, express herself socially, where human relathinks Peter, is “cold as an icycle” (80), tions are more abstract than intimate. She while Septimus, the narrator tells us sees her party as an occasion to get at somerepeatedly, “could not feel” (86). This thing “unreal in one way; much more real quality of detachment, explored through in another” (171) and her party is for her an these two otherwise unrelated characters, end in itself: “it was an offering to is the main theme of the novel. Septimus is combine, to create, but to whom? An driven to suicide because those around offering for the sake of offering, perhaps” him are so threatened by his detachment. (222). Clarissa’s connection is not to indiClarissa avoided Septimus’ fate by rejecting viduals, but to human life as a whole: “in Peter, with whom “everything had to be the ebb and flow of things, here, she shared; everything gone into” (8). By survived. . .she was part” (9). choosing to live “like a nun” with the Claudia Honeywell Until the final lines of the novel, Peter emotionally undemanding Richard, Clarissa thinks of this as Clarissa’s “transcendental Dalloway has ensured that she will not be theory” (152), which, he acknowledges, harassed for her own detachment. “worked to this extent: brief, broken as their actual meetAlthough not an artist, Clarissa thus has a certain ings had been… the effect of them on his life was immeastemperamental connection to the woman of “A Room of urable” (153). But in the novel’s closing line, Peter finds One’s Own” who needs “money and a room of her own if that Clarissa’s transcendence is not just theoretical, it she is to write fiction” (4). In “A Room of One’s Own,” manifests in her being, in her presence in the world. Virginia Woolf suggests that detachment is a truer artistic Through Peter’s experience of Clarissa’s presence, we response than passion. Romance, she says, may have been learn that Clarissa has retained the rare and personal always an illusion: freedom of being herself. “Shall we lay the blame on the war? When the guns fired Clarissa’s power to draw Peter fully into the present is a in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so creative power, akin to the power of the author herself. In plain in each other’s eyes that romance was killed?. . . .Why, “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf discusses the if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it difficulties that women have faced in developing their was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place?” (15). creative powers. Clarissa’s strange choice to marry Richard Although Clarissa’s enigmatic detachment was out of now appears guided by her woman’s intuition of how to place during the pre-war summer of romance and protect and develop her own unique self. Mrs. Dalloway courtship that ended with her choice to marry Richard, it is gives us a woman’s insight into the source of creativity and suited to the realism of the post-war aesthetic. Peter, who encourages us to give up our romantic illusions and learn, once believed that passion was the most important thing in with Clarissa, to “wish everybody merely to be themselves” life, has since learned that it is not passion but detachment (126). that gives “the supreme flavour to existence—the power of * Line numbers are from the Harcourt edition.x taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.” (79). Clarissa can only express herself socially, where human relations are more abstract than intimate. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �22 {Resilience} RESILIENCE in the face of RECESSION by Patricia Dempsey U nemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies—these are unsettling times for Americans. The experiences of these four Johnnies reflect the gravity of a prolonged recession, but they also inspire optimism. Policy analyst Jim Sorrentino (A80) helps people keep their homes. Small business owner Trudy Koch (AGI82) rides out the recession in a tiny Virginia town, helping others along the way. Mandy Dalton (A89) fearlessly ventures into a new career. And in California, where the economy is staggering, therapist Tom Horvath (A75) teaches clients to hang on even when they’re losing everything. “This is A bout Community” Jim Sorrentino (A80) Offers Hope for Homeowners Jim Sorrentino (A80) fondly remembers the movie It’s a Wonderful Life from the days when he ran the film program at St. John’s. When the Depression hits, there’s a run on the bank, and George Bailey offers the cash he saved for his honeymoon trip to keep the Building & Loan and his Bedford Falls neighbors afloat. “Let’s face it,” says Sorrentino, a policy analyst at the Office of Housing and Urban Development. “There are no George Baileys anymore. Lenders, whether they are large or small companies, aren’t interested in the homeowner. Once they originate a loan for a home mortgage, they immediately sell it and get it off their books. Once it’s sold, the homeowner’s ability to stay above water is no longer the lender’s problem. There is no sense of community anymore.” At HUD headquarters in Washington, D.C., an Orwellian concrete building that Sorrentino and his colleagues affectionately call “10 floors of basement,” the water-cooler talk includes terms like “ninja loans,” “subprime,” “trenches,” and “foreclosure contagion.” Working in a windowless office, Sorrentino is one of many anonymous, unsung heroes of the bailout, something of a modern-day George Bailey. He doesn’t hand over his own cash, but Sorrentino was tapped by the Treasury Department in 2008 to help { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Resilience} “There are no George Baileys anymore.” mike gillispie Jim Sorrentino (A80) Jim Sorrentino, outside HUD headquarters in Washington, D.C., is an unsung hero of the Bailout. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 23 �24 {Resilience} of Chicago and after class, this gentlemen craft a plan to funnel Troubled Asset Relief came up to me. He was from a mediumProgram (TARP) funds into the right large mortgage lender. He didn’t exactly hands. The funds provide lender incentives say we [HUD] were wasting our time, but for foreclosure prevention and relief. he implied it. He said, ‘Nice presentation, “My job is public service,” says but I gotta tell you the next big thing is Sorrentino. “I want to help people stay in subprime mortgages. Lenders will look at their homes. What one person pays out, your programs and say, ‘This is too complianother benefits from. In this way we cated. There are so many rules, consumer are in this bailout together. This is about Jim Sorrentino protections, to get an FHA-insured mortcommunity.” gage, so we’re going to get out of the FHA In 2008 Sorrentino was tapped to work and all its verifications.’” for six months in the Treasury’s newly created HomeownAt that time lenders were beginning to eagerly extend ership Preservation Office, assisting in the development of subprime or “ninja” (no income, no job, no assets) loans to the Making Home Affordable program, the federal governhomeowners. “The mortgage business came up with all ment’s attempt to address the housing part of the economic sorts of creative terms to aggressively market these crisis. Today Sorrentino is back at HUD, continuing to subprime loans to homeowners. They refer to subprime work on foreclosure relief through the recently revised loans as ‘nonprime’ or ‘fault A rating’—that is one of my Hope for Homeowners program, administered by the favorites. One lender, Countrywide, called their program Federal Housing Administration (FHA). As a result of this Whole Spectrum. No credit? No problem. We’re Whole program, the percentage of FHA loans is on the rise. “The Spectrum, for everyone, like a big happy family. Thus, the FHA market share dropped dramatically over the years. magic of mortgage-backed securities took flight. The Now we’re on our way to close to 20 percent. By the end of lender could sell the loan in a package very quickly and be the year 30 percent of the nation’s homebuyers will be in done with it. When the loans were off their books, it was not FHA mortgages.” That’s compared to just 2 percent of their problem.” homeowners in 2005-6, he points out. Investment banks and hedge funds bought mortgageIn 1985, Sorrentino, just out of University of Maryland’s backed securities to sell to investors. “Depending on the School of Law, was hired by HUD’s Baltimore field office as amount of risk involved they would package these things an attorney-advisor to assist homeowners facing foreclointo ‘trenches’—pronounced “tra-ah-h-nches.” They loved sure when Baltimore’s slumping steel industry left thouto use the fancy French terminology,” explains sands out of work. Then he went to HUD headquarters as a Sorrentino. “This was all part of the marketing hype, the policy analyst in foreclosure prevention and relief and dealt sales seduction.” with the collapse of the shale oil industry in Colorado in the The lure of easy money attracted not just unsophisticated late 1980s. “Those were regional crises,” Sorrentino borrowers, but highly educated, savvy borrowers who explains. “What we haven’t had for a long time is a collapse thought “their property would appreciate until the end of of national scale. I remember in the late 1980s going out to time,” says Sorrentino. “People were getting fairly complex our office in Denver and driving down street after street loans, an adjustable rate tied to the London Libor rate, and seeing foreclosure signs. Those folks left—they went to terms many of us have never heard of. How is that person, another city. They had a place to go. Now there is no place even a highly educated person, supposed to really underthat is a safe haven financially. So we are all in this stand what kind of obligation he or she has signed?” By together.” contrast, Sorrentino has kept a tight rein on his own Sorrentino first heard the term “subprime” in Chicago finances and only refinanced his home once in the last over a decade ago. “In 1998 I taught a class on a program seven years. “We only took out enough to cover the that required all FHA lenders to evaluate potential homeexpenses of adopting our children,” he says, “and just last owners. I taught this program at the Federal Reserve Bank “Now there is no place that’s a safe haven financially. So we’re all in this together.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Resilience} month we refinanced a second time, for home renovations.” For those like Sorrentino, who have managed their finances conservatively, shelling out tax dollars for TARP bailout funds is a tough pill to swallow. He understands why people who live within their means angrily wonder why their tax dollars should help those who didn’t. “My answer is this is a national crisis,” he says. “Besides, how many foreclosed homes do you want on your street lowering your property values? In places like Detroit there is something we call ‘foreclosure contagion.’ Guys pull up, kick down the door, and remove all the copper pipes from foreclosed home after home. The values deflate even further. We need to all care. We need to pull together to get through.” Though he primarily deals with foreclosure policy, in some cases borrowers track Sorrentino down. Sometimes, they’re referred to him after they’ve complained to their congressman, senator, or even the White House about the lenders’ terms for their restructured loans. If a case looks reasonable, it may land on his desk, and Sorrentino reviews the case with the loan servicer, sees if the lender violated policy, and gets the HUD field office involved to offer housing counsel to the borrower. “I try as much as possible not to be a go-between between borrower and lender –that’s not my job, but I’ve done it on many occasions. I have held onto thank-you letters from borrowers that I have helped out. I hope that as the years went on they managed to get their lives straightened out. I hope I helped them in some way with that.” Now that the percentage of FHA loans is increasing, Sorrentino is home on weekends, no longer putting in extra hours. This leaves him more time to spend with his wife, his 6-year-old daughter and 6-month-old son. It’s a 25 While the recession means slow sales at her quilt shop, Trudy Koch is devoting time to making quilts for good causes. sad irony that the Sorrentinos were able to adopt their son because the child’s mother, who lives in Maryland, could not afford to raise him. In that way, Sorrentino says, “Our baby was a gift of the recession.” Quilts Made With Love Trudy Koch (AGI85) Fosters Goodwill Times are threadbare in Tappahannock, Virginia, a sleepy colonial town along the Rappahannock River. “There are now three ‘cash-to-you’ places in town. This is a bad sign,” says quilt shop owner Trudy Koch (AGI85). “Some weeks I sell not even a yard of fabric.” While sales of fabric and notions at her downtown shop, Water & Queen, have slowed, Koch is rich in time, friends, and energy. The long tables in her brightly lit shop in a rambling colonial house are often filled with customers, neighbors, and friends, who quilt and talk while listening to the radio. Water & { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �26 {Resilience} “The director was so helpful. St. John’s changed my life,” Queen is more than a gathering spot; it’s a stage for a recesshe says. She attended during summers and cooked familysion trend Koch calls a return to service. “Some things in style dinners for fellow GIs to pay for gas for the drive to this depression, and people sense it, are important. These and from her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, where are the things that do not cost money—kindness and free she raised six children as a single mother. “Money was so energy. It’s not about turning a buck. It’s about goodwill tight that during the week when I was in Annapolis, I and service.” cooked big dinners and charged $3 a person,” she says. Koch, who settled here after retiring from teaching, “I would write the menu on a brown paper bag—things like organizes fellow quilters to create “Quilts of Valor,” handfried chicken, corn on the cob, cornbread—and post it. stitched works of art, often in red-white-and-blue and starsWe’d eat at the house where I was staying. The sense of and-stripes motifs, for injured vets of the Iraqi war. “These community was wonderful.” are soldiers who are severely mutilated, legs blown off, Koch creates a sense of community wherever she lives. limbs severed. How good it must feel to drape beautiful Even though she’s a “come-here” in Tappahannock, she’s colors over these injuries, whether in a wheelchair, or over gained acceptance in a town sometimes wary of outsiders. a bed, they can savor the bright, cheery colors.” Koch’s “When strangers walk in the shop I say, ‘Come visit. Let’s group, called the Sting Ray Quilters, is part of a larger put on a pot of tea and talk.’ You meet the most wonderful national movement and ships the quilts to vets in regional people. They tell me their life stories. Some come to quilt. hospitals as well as those across the country and overseas. I don’t charge people anything to use the space. Eventually “Every now and then we get a thank-you letter, but that they will buy some fabric.” isn’t why I make them,” says Koch. “Down in the corner of mine I embroider ‘God, bless this American soldier’ The Fears of a Clown because I feel so deeply for the tragedies of war and how it affects these strong young people. These quilts are made Mandy Dalton (A89) Shifts from Mime to New Media with love.” Koch also creates brightly colored quilts—block square, When people cut back on expenses, apparently clowns are diamond, and Baltimore album patterns, and fancy among the first to go. That’s what Mandy Dalton (A89), appliqués—for those in need who live closer to home. She known as “Mandy the Clown,” was facing when the and fellow quilters, a cross-section from various church economy sank. Like Americans in all walks of life she has denominations in Rappahannock County, reach out to the had to reinvent herself to survive. homeless and others in county shelters and rehab centers. “Around 9-11, back in 2001, the bottom dropped out of The program is called “Project in So Much,” a reference to the event market in this area. That’s how I was making a Bible verse: “. . . for what I do unto brothers that you do most of my money,” says Dalton. “During the next six unto me in so much. . . .” “I donate fabric and we make months special events went into a tailspin. Municipal funcquilts in my shop for the homeless in shelters for battered tions, grand openings, corporate events weren’t women, lap robes for elderly in wheelhappening. People didn’t feel like celechairs at rehab centers, and even tote bags brating. Then there was the sniper scare in lined with cheery fabric for the handiWashington, D.C., and the anthrax capped.” Her group is called “The threats, schools were shutting down. Menders,” says Koch, because “we hope People had the jitters.” Even the buildup we mend hearts and lives as well as fabric.” to Iraq slashed her bookings says Dalton, Koch is no stranger to resiliency and who had numerous clients at Fort Meade, survival. About 30 years ago, then a public an army base in Maryland. “Not many school teacher in Montgomery County, people want to have a party when their Mandy Dalton Maryland, she wrote a letter to the Gradloved ones are going to war.” uate Institute asking for a scholarship. Just as things were starting to pick up “Not many people want to have a party when their loved ones are going to war.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Resilience} again, the recession “knocked my business out of the water,” says Dalton. This past February, she didn’t have a single booking. And one of her corporate clients who owed her money declared bankruptcy. “By the time I would have gone to New York and attended the bankruptcy proceedings to try and collect it, I would have gotten pennies on the dollar. Besides, can you imagine the judge in bankruptcy court, what he or she would have to say about a fee for a clown?” Dalton, who attended professional clown school for two years before attending St John’s, has spent decades cultivating what she calls her clown personae. “There is no pretense. You pull something out of yourself and reveal it. My persona is an overgrown 5-year-old. I’m a rag doll on Red Bull—with red hair.” She’s feisty and resilient, much like Pippi Longstocking, but last winter when she was laid up with a back injury, Dalton hit bottom. “I was flat on my back for three days. Clowning is very physical work. I juggle, I walk on stilts, I goof around a lot and fall a lot. My knees can’t take the stilts anymore, and my back is in bad shape after falling for more than 20 years. My doctor wants me to stop.” Finally, Dalton faced the fact that she had to find another way to make a living. Since then she has transitioned her flair for performance, stunts and stilts into another precarious profession: journalism and its cutting edge of new media. Dalton’s bright red hair stands out on the United Press International (UPI) 27 website, where her footage as a news videographer conducting man-on-the-street interviews appears in the “Issue of the Day” feature. “I’ve always been a news junkie and have had a long interest in video—the production, writing, editing—since high school. I also still love the ability for analysis that I cultivated at St. John’s.” Dalton sought mentoring from a friend who is a production editor at ABC News and informally worked as his personal editing assistant. Then last fall she landed her part-time internship with UPI. “I tell people I’m transitioning right now. At 43 looking for a new line of work means I’ve been facing a lot of unspoken age discrimination. But given the recession and the fact that so many people are looking to career shift, this has been a good time to transition.” Being a news and event videographer adds another dimension to her repertoire as professional clown, drama instructor, and mentor to youth. “The best part is how When bookings for “Mandy the Clown” began dropping off, Mandy Dalton looked to her talents for a new career plan. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �28 {Resilience} clowning and news videography inform each other. They feed one another in a natural way.” For instance when Dalton conducts interviews for UPI, she poses questions that her producer has written on a subject that is breaking headline news. Dalton stops some 50-75 people a day to ask them for 30 seconds of their time to comment on these issues. Her producers may write the questions, but it’s up to Dalton to get people to open up. “Most people walk fast, avoid eye contact, talk on their cell phones, but I have this gesture from my clown training—I keep my mike pointed down and put my hand over my heart. I don’t know scientifically why it works, but it does. People stop and talk to me. From my years of clowning I’m more sensitive and I find this gesture helps. People see my sincerity. I fear becoming robotic, too aggressive, chasing the bouncing silver ball of news.” Some days as a UPI videographer are especially compelling. “It involves writing, creating, observing, listening, storytelling—all the things I love. The Johnnie in me likes to go out and start a conversation with people about random subjects. When [Justice David] Souter was retiring from the Supreme Court, we jumped on it to find out what qualities people would want to see in a Supreme Court Justice. A woman rushed out of Starbucks and said to me, ‘I have to talk to you about this.’” In the future Dalton wants to improvise and create her own questions for her video interviews. “Money is fascinating, especially in a recession. What is the meaning of money ultimately? Have you done any bartering to save money? I’d like to ease into a conversation about money. People want to know how I fare as a clown in the recession. What about the other side? I want to know how they are dealing with money.” She even has already found some people who want to laugh about money. “They are laughing through their tears about money, but who knows, the desire to laugh means that my clowning business might pick up again.” A Lifeline in Times of Stress Tom Horvath (A75) Knows How to Listen Therapist Tom Horvath sees the emotional toll the recession is taking on his clients who come to him for treatment at Practical Recovery in La Jolla, California. One of his clients just lost her home and is coping with Tom Horvath’s clients are struggling through California’s hard times. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Resilience} 29 as treatment. His clients include the anger and doubt as she’s forced to make affluent, as well as those who struggle financial decisions. She and her husband economically and attend free therapy have moved into a rental property, and sessions offered through Practical her mother is paying for the treatment to Recovery’s community program. Both help them get through their crisis. “She groups experience anger and grief related wants to come through this with some to their economic woes, though on sense of honor,” Horvath says. “The bank different scales. “We’ve had clients come keeps squeezing her and her husband. . . in who are under stress because they’ve pressuring them to sign a $50,000 note to Tom Horvath lost a lot of money,” says Horvath. “Their avoid foreclosure and ruining their credit portfolios are not what they used to be.” rating. Even though her husband is a As a psychologist, Horvath has his pulse on crisis-related construction worker and they are breaking even right now, stress. As the author of the book, Sex, Drugs, Gambling they won’t be able to keep up with those payments. She and Chocolate: A Workbook for Overcoming Addictions, he feels it is dishonest to sign the note, since she knows they understands how human beings crave comfort during hard cannot afford it.” times. “During Hurricane Katrina, a time of catastrophe Horvath can empathize with the stress of financial loss. and crisis, there was an increase in substance problems. It Horvath, who has a doctorate from the California School of is a natural response,” says Horvath. “I have noticed statisProfessional Psychology, founded his addiction treatment tics that show that in the last year since the recession, center, Practical Recovery, in San Diego in 1985. Three alcohol sales [nationwide] are up by 10 percent, romance years ago, when San Diego’s economy took a nosedive, his novels have seen a 33 percent increase in sales. This is a business was hard hit. “It was a disaster,” says Horvath, kind of female pornography; women escape into a “Spending is more discretionary here so we felt the receswonderful relationship in these novels. Men tend to steer sion sooner than the rest of the country. Discretionary towards Internet porn in times of stress. The economy spending, which includes counseling, fell dramatically.” In dipping is a factor that is out of one’s control, so that 2006, Horvath laid off four people. “By 2007, I had to put creates a stress. And escape is a time-honored way to deal my own money into the practice to keep it afloat, and I took with stress.” no salary for a year,” he says. In his work Horvath draws on the Johnnie approach to Horvath hired three new employees this spring, and his conversation and listening. As part of SMART Recovery, an business is strong, thanks to a new Internet marketing organization he helped to establish and led as president strategy. As a small provider in a big industry, Horvath had from 1995-2008, Horvath occasionally leads a SMART difficulty competing with larger, well-known treatment Recovery meeting, one of more than 400 recovery discuscenters such as the Betty Ford Center. In May 2008, he sion groups held weekly around the world. “There is a hired a consultant to help build an online presence, and the handbook and like a math tutorial, we work through probinvestment paid off. “Since September 2009, we typically lems,” Horvath says. “The discussion focuses on rational rank near the top in searches for addiction counseling,” analysis of thoughts, feelings, and situations. This is a way Horvath says. “While revenue was down 20 percent three to give back, especially to those who cannot afford treatyears ago, now it’s up 20 percent.” ment. When I’m leading one of these these groups, or With his business on solid ground, Horvath can focus on training the volunteer facilitators, I feel very much like what he does best: counseling clients who struggle with a Johnnie.” x addiction. He has clients from the San Diego area and from around the world who come to his center, which offers both inpatient and outpatient treatment. Horvath says Practical Recovery offers “an empowering alternative” to the traditional view of addiction as disease and the 12-step program “By 2007, I had to put my own money into the practice to keep it afloat, and I took no salary for a year.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �30 {Bibliofile} The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment J.B. Shank (AGI92) University of Chicago Press (2008) By Curtis Wilson (HA83) J.B. Shank’s The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment is an account of changing attitudes and controversies among French thinkers, from the 1690s through the 1750s, regarding the scientific and presumptive moral and metaphysical import of Newton’s Principia. From the start, French reviewers praised Newton’s mathematical achievement in this book but complained of his failure to explain how bodies could attract one another gravitationally over distances through empty space. The Cartesian vortex theory, which assumed transmission of force by contact of solid bodies, seemed more rational. (Truth to tell, “solidity” and “contact” are as problematic as action at a distance.) Other objections, moralistic and metaphysical, were raised later. Was not the metaphysics implicit in Newton’s book, Leibniz asked Samuel Clarke in 1716, conducive to materialism, atheism, and immorality? (See The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence.) At times the controversy turned ugly. Shank follows the twists and turns of this discussion in detail. He focuses on the politics and sociology of it: the “self-fashioning” whereby individual players in the field sought to create a persona that could survive and prosper amidst controversy and the politics of a stratified society. For 42 years, from 1697 to 1739, the ‘perpetual secretary’ of the Académie des Sciences was Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, a gentleman of the Cartesian persuasion. He was succeeded, for still a few more years, by another gentleman of the same persuasion, Dortous de Mairan. For these gentlemen, the correct posture was that of the honnête homme, fair-minded, decent, ready to compromise, ‘rational.’ The ultimate power over the Académie, to be sure, rested with the King’s minister, for the Académie was state-funded, the creature of the monarchy. Yet by 1758, according to d’Alembert, a younger member of the Académie, the Excerpt: On May 28, 1728, a little-known member of the Paris Academy of Sciences rose before the assembly to deliver a paper on celestial mechanics. The academician was Joseph Privat de Molières, and in the spring of 1728, although fiftytwo years old, Private de Molières was still struggling to establish his reputation as a savant. He began his career as an Oratorian priest and teacher, studying mathematics with Father Reyneau at Angers in the 1690s and then serving as a priest and professor of mathematics at the Oratorian colleges of Saumur, Juilly, and Soisson from 1699 to 1704. He had come to both the Oratory and mathematics through a devotion to the writings of Nicolas de Malebranche, and in this way his intellectual trajectory mirrored that of many others in France in the same period. J.B. Shank, The Newton Wars. Cartesian theory of vortices was a dead duck. How had it happened? Shank portrays the change as the result of the self-fashionings and shrewd interventions of two men, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, working from within the Académie des Sciences, and the enfant terrible Voltaire, hurling his witty barbs from the safe distance of Cirey, the home of his learned Newtonian mistress, the { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } marquise du Châtelet. The important result, in Shank’s view, was the emergence of a new public persona, the philosophe, free-thinking, libertine, Newtonian, instigator and agent of Enlightenment. Unquestionably, it is a leitmotif in a highly publicized drama. Is it the whole story? Certain scientific developments, I would urge, can have had an important role in the triumph of the Newtonian program. In 1749 Clairaut showed that the motion of the Moon’s apse could be derived from Newton’s theory, contrary to earlier failed attempts, his own and those of other mathematicians. In 1749 d’Alembert published his Recherches sur la Précession des Equinoxes, showing Newton’s attempted derivation of the precession (in Prop.39 of Book III of the Principia) to be fatally flawed. But d’Alembert then went on to show that both the precession and the nutation (an effect established empirically by James Bradley in 1748) were exact consequences of Newton’s theory. Newton’s failure had been due to his lack of a correct dynamics for rotational motion, which had been responsible as well for his failed disproof of the Cartesian vortex theory of planetary motion. Also in 1749 was published Euler’s Recherches sur la question des inégalités du mouvement de Saturne et de Jupiter. Here Euler introduced trigonometric series, which made it possible for the first time to compute the mutual perturbations of planets systematically and exactly. Newton had had no way of computing these effects. A reasonably accurate table of the perturbations in the Earth’s motion due to planetary perturbation became available in 1758 in Lacaille’s Tabulae Solares. The Earth was the platform from which astronomical observations had to be made, and errors in its position were unavoidably projected into all celestial observations. In sum, by the 1750s a Newtonian program to account for planetary and lunar motions precisely was an up-and-going enterprise, and success could be reasonably hoped for, independent of disputed metaphysical questions. In this race the Cartesian vortex theory was not yet out of the starting-gate. Where to put one’s bets was a no-brainer. x �31 {Bibliofile} Beatrice Hawley Award, and the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Prize. Editor’s note: see the inside back cover of The College for one of Waldner’s recent poems. Each Month I Sing L. Luis Lopez (SFGI69) Farolito Press, 2008 Celebrating Johnnie Poets Trust Liz Waldner (A83) Cleveland State Poetry Center, 2008 Our senses entrust to us the world that the heart minds, and so gives us a point of view, the “sight we hope to see through (to) / Always.” Deeply attentive to form and music, each of Liz Waldner’s poems, written between the early eighties and midnineties, serves as a trust for the mending of that sense of separateness. Ever the stranger in yet another strange place—in subway and orchard, ER and library, cemetery and classroom—they ask: “What is the shape?” of the story. “Who is mindful of me?” and sometimes answer: “Thank you, I have enjoyed / imagining all this.” Trust won the Cleveland State Poetry Center’s Open Book Competition in 2008. Born in Cleveland, Waldner grew up in rural Mississippi and worked in various factory, janitorial, botanical, and museum jobs before graduating from St. John’s. She later earned an MFA at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop. She wrote for 18 years before publishing the first of her six previous books, which have won such awards as the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Longino Lopez’ Each Month I Sing is a collection of poems inspired by the months of the year, capturing the poet’s impressions, observations, and experiences of each month. The book won The American Book Award, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation at Berkeley, which honors works that represent multicultural diversity in American literature. The Colorado Independent Publishers Association also honored the work with an EVVY first-place award for poetry. Lopez, in his 44th year of teaching, is currently at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he has, until recently, served as director of the Academic Honors Program. He received two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, one to study lyric poetry with Helen Vendler at Harvard, and a second to study the literature of innocent suffering with Duke University’s Terrence Tilley. Lopez has published two other volumes of poetry, Musings of a Barrio Sack Boy and A Painting of Sand. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } Poet L.S. Klatt, author of Interloper. Interloper L.S. Klatt (AGI98) University of Massachusetts Press, 2008 Lewis Skillman Klatt teaches literature and creative writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Turnrow, the Southeast Review, Notre Dame Review, Phoebe, and Five Fingers Review. He also published a new essay on the poetry of Walt Whitman in the Southern Review. In 2008, Klatt was named the winner of the University of Massachusetts Press’ Juniper Prize, for which he was a finalist twice before. The prize included publication of his manuscript, Interloper. The poems in this volume unsettle frontiers between disparate worlds so that the imagination is given room to roam: pears become guitars, racks of ribs are presented as steamboats, and helicopters transmute into diesel seraphs. The poetry aspires acrobatically in the manner of prayers and pilots, but adventure throughout the book is viewed as precarious and the will to conquest leads to apocalypse and ruin. The interloper wanders through crime scenes and crash sites as he glosses the landscape—at home and not at home with the America of yesterday and tomorrow. In symbols that scat and ricochet, the interloper scores a new song, one that composes—and decomposes—on the page. x �32 {Alumni Profile} Listening to the Unknown Michelle Vest (SF90) by Deborah Spiegelman “They line up. First the men, then the women, then the children. My first job? Fell in my lap. I was out driving around looking to dig a grave on the outskirts of my family’s ranch. It’s that way, you know. It’s a country unto itself out there. We own miles not just acres. Have for more than six generations. Funny, it was Mexico then . . . it’s Arizona now.” S o begins the dramatic monologue written and performed by Michelle Vest (SF90), part of her one-woman play, Sole Survivors: Journey Across Borders. The speaker is Maria, the adult daughter of an Arizona rancher who starts out with altruistic intentions toward the migrants she encounters on her land but eventually becomes a greedy, hardened “coyote.” Based on extensive interviews with documented and undocumented Southwestern migrant workers, the play is a stirring presentation of the experiences of immigrants who risk everything for a chance at a better life in the United States. “I wanted to look beneath the usual stereotypes and assumptions and explore the more enlivening truths that exist there,” Vest explains. Inspired also by Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” Vest presents four characters: the coyote Maria, and three immigrants: Rosa, Jesus, and Juan. Though their stories are contemporary, the characters are named for the four deportees killed in the 1949 New Mexico plane crash Guthrie memorialized. Rosa, who grew up in a small Mexican village, left her son behind to cross the border illegally in search of work. Juan, also undocumented, tells of how he came to accidentally kill a man who was trying to take his job. Once a professor in San Salvador, Jesus was forced to flee his country during the civil war of the 1980s. He left his family behind to seek political asylum in the U.S., reuniting with them 11 years later. A mariachi band opens the play with a traditional song about immigration and remains on stage throughout as a Southwestern-inspired version of a Greek chorus. Vest moves to stage right to transition from In her play Sole Survivors, Michelle Vest went beyond stereotypes to portray the experiences of migrant works in America. one character to another, changing her shoes or shirt, or putting on a hat—all part of the drama. “A lot of people are mesmerized by this,” Vest says. The shoes symbolize the many connotations of the word sole, as an allusion to the characters’ footsteps across the border and to the notion that the ordeal of migration is a test of individual determinism. The play on words (sole, soul) also underscores Vest’s desire to draw from these stories the common threads of humanity—love for one’s family, hopes and dreams, resiliency, loss— that unite people of different backgrounds and experiences. Since debuting her show in Santa Fe in October 2007, Vest has performed in D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. After a sold-out show last year in New York, Sole Survivors returned to New York in June for a limited run at Stage Left Studio, followed by performances in Albuquerque. Born in Annapolis and raised just two blocks from the St. John’s campus, Vest met Johnnies at her family’s downtown restaurant and in the college library, her preferred homework spot. An early enthusiast of the classics, she developed an aptitude for languages and fascination for other cultures. After a year at Florida State, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } she enrolled at St. John’s in Santa Fe. “St. John’s just happened to be what I needed,” Vest says. “To be with a group of students who shared a similar love [for learning] changed my whole life scholastically. I never knew that education could be so well-rounded and that I could love every aspect of it.” After graduation, Vest attended the Cleveland Institute of Arts’ international program in Florence to study painting. She moved to San Francisco to pursue photography and later worked as a documentary photographer at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. Since returning to Santa Fe in 1997, Vest has shown her photographs in a number of galleries around town, and her paintings were included in the 2005 New Mexico Women in the Arts Juried Show at the Museum of Fine Arts. Vest found her way to performance via dance. Physical movement, she speculates, triggered talking, which led to acting. Keen on developing a one-person show, Vest plunged into a yearlong workshop taught by Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, artistic director of Project Life Stories (and now the director of her show). One assignment—to deliver a short monologue based on an interview— changed Vest’s life. Talking with her housekeeper, a native of Mexico, Vest was struck by both the differences and commonalities of their lives. Motivated by the workshop’s enthusiastic response to her monologue, Vest began collecting more stories, including that of a man she had known while working in a San Francisco café. He served as inspiration for her character Jesus. The former professor was now the cleaning person, while she, a college graduate, was “taking money and selling muffins.” Her experience in the Program, with its emphasis on dialogue and careful listening, greatly influenced the spirit of Sole Survivors, says Vest. St. John’s “was a safe place to admit that you didn’t know something, and also to affirm the importance of wanting to know.” If her play is part quest for knowledge, she has found a grateful audience. “They tell me that I did a great service [by telling these stories],” Vest says. “They are listening.” x �33 {Alumni Notes} 1932 1945 HENRY SHRYOCK, JR., is a member of the Cosmos Club of Washington, the Wilderness Society, the Census Alumni Association, Nature Conservancy, Population Connection, So Others May Eat (SOME), and the Union of Concerned Scientists. EDWARD MULLINIX reports: “In recent months, I have been heavily involved as a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery, which has been working with the University of Denver’s Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal system on a project seeking reforms to reduce the out-ofcontrol cost of civil litigation in the United States. Our final report, released to the public on March 11, 2009, puts out a series of proposed principles for nationwide discussion—built around the most significant principle, which calls for radical reduction of the pretrial discovery procedures currently permissible. The report has been the subject of widespread publicity in the general media and in law-related media.” 1937 A retired dental surgeon, HAROLD BROOKS writes that he and his wife, Norma, will be married for 72 years on Nov. 26, 2009. They live in sunny Sebastian, Fla., and are in good health. 1942 ERNEST HEINMULLER has published a new book, A Different Focus. It’s available at the college bookstore, on Amazon.com, or in the library. The poems are from 1938-2008, including some haikus he wrote his freshman year. 1943 “How nice to see the names of so many members of the classes of 1940 through 1944 in the capital campaign report,” writes MARTIN ANDREWS. “They evoke vivid and happy memories. In recent years, the enchantment of St. John’s has even expanded for me by the good fortune of meeting and getting to know the incomparable Eva Brann.” BURTON ARMSTRONG has been living in Charlottesville, Va., since 1982. He recently became a great-grandparent to Henry Burton Alt, age 1. “For the old bod I do tai chi (after a fashion) and walk (slowly). For the rapidly disappearing gray cells, I write stuff for judges (incredibly technical and boring), play mediocre bridge, and read, most recently Crime and Punishment with great pleasure and American Pastoral with lesser pleasure. We travel lazily, mainly on cruise ships, today’s best travel deal. Am in the hands of doctors literally from head to toe, but hey, if I weren’t, I probably wouldn’t be writing this. Just the same, old age should happen to younger people,” writes GEORGE BRUNN. 1946 PETER WEISS, in his capacity as president of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, addressed the Nonproliferation Treaty Conference at the United Nations on May 5 and gave a lecture on “The Legal Obligation for Nuclear and General Disarmament” at a Peace Through Law Conference in Berlin on June 26. “I have also decided to try my mind at topical poetry in my retirement,” says Weiss: If you’re feeling kind of blue/But not unhappy through and through/Is what you’re having a depression/Or, you hope, just a recession? 1950 THOMAS MEYERS writes: “I have become one of those old men I used to see at Homecoming when I was a St. John’s freshman. I recall meeting a very nice gentleman who had been graduated from St. John’s when I was but 6 years old. Wow! I may not be as gentlemanly as he, but I have made it to 87 years. And counting!” 1955 HAROLD BAUER has taken his life’s activities beyond the world of music, the world in which he has spent most of the past 50 years. Painting (mostly oils) has become a major area of concentration. He regularly takes classes at the Evanston Art Center in Illinois, where in addition to being a student, he also serves as president of the Board of Trustees. He also has become an involved Rotarian. He was first attracted to the Evanston morning club by their extensive involvement in international humanitarian outreach and now will become the chair of that committee. He felt a strong need to “do something” for the severely needy of the world, and this seemed to offer a window into that possibility. He’s { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } wondering if the 55th anniversary year is going to bring classmates back to Annapolis in 2010. JOHN GORDON retired from film and video production in 1997 and is happily engaged in designing landscapes and gardens in Maryland. Most recently back to school in the landscape architecture program at the University of Maryland, John has taught landscape design at the USDA graduate school for two years. Having previously traveled widely as a documentary film cameraman, John and his wife, Jenny, will be in Italy this summer on a tour led by a landscape architect. “Anyone need a Renaissance parterre garden designed?” he asks. 1957 MARCIA DEL PLAIN REFF reports that she and her husband, Martin, are continuing to enjoy life in Naples, Fla. Marcia is in her third year as president of the Naples Orchestra and Chorus. She was playing the violin in the orchestra but taught herself to play the viola and made the switch last season. Marcia also enjoys teaching bridge classes at the local duplicate club. Her son, MICHAEL O’MAHONY (A77) also lives in Naples. The Reffs enjoyed a visit in May to Annapolis to visit sister PAULA DEL PLAIN BINDER (class of 1959). 1959 ROBERTO SALINAS PRICE writes with an update and some Homeric musings: “A new life begins for me with the loss of my friend, mistress, wife, of more than 50 years, but, in the meantime, before we meet yet again forever, I continue with my Homeric researches. I am �34 {Alumni Notes} currently writing ‘Homer, from Scholion to Myth,’ in which I hope to show how ‘myth’— nonsense data about this or that— developed from a lack of tutorial guidance in Homeric thinking.” 1960 JOHN LANE is doing some community work in retirement. He is the vice president of the Cascades Homeowner’s Association, with 6,500 households, the largest HOA in Northern Virginia. He is vice chairman of the Loudon County Board of Equalization, which hears taxpayer appeals on assessment. He has acquired a real estate license and is a practicing realtor in Great Falls, Va. “Retirement has turned out to be a short time,” he says. “Life is good.” PETER RUEL writes with hopes to attend the 50th reunion of his class. He also noted that the University of Chicago held a “spring weekend” devoted to Darwin: “How could we pass that up? Darwin, Freud, and Einstein: three fascinating authors for the senior year at St. John’s.” 1961 As part of a featured exchange titled “Life Without Lawyers” in its May 14, 2009 issue, The New York Review of Books published a letter by HARRISON SHEPPARD. Sheppard’s letter, criticizing the book of that name by Philip K. Howard and its review by Anthony Lewis in the publication’s April 9, 2009, argued that both the book and the review failed to identify the root cause of abuses in American legal education and practice attributable to the dominance of an adversarial “war-making” model as opposed to a “problem-solving, peace- Ahead of the Pack C HAMMEN (class of 1944) has been running in races all over the country. “There was a big runners’ weekend in Tampa, Feb. 28 to March 1, the Gasparilla distance classic, with thousands of runners from all over the U.S.,” he writes. In the 5k race, Carl won the M85-89 division, and his wife, Deborah Kazor, finished twelfth in the F55-59, which had 276 women. This summer, they were busy training for the National Senior Games this August in Palo Alto, Calif. x ARL making model” of the kind Yale Law school Dean Anthony Kronman identifies as the “lawyer-statesman ideal.” Sheppard maintains his solo civil law practice in San Francisco while continuing his nonfiction writing and editing. His last published book was Too Much for Our Own Good: The Consumeritis Epidemic. He is now editing the manuscript of a distinguished physician concerning the need to separate the teachings of dogmatic religion from reasonable moral judgments, and a second manuscript relating to the early career of Elvis Presley, written by a woman who, as a teenager, had dated Presley. 1962 JERRY BRENNIG reports: “I continue to work at the Department of State, now 12 years since I retired from the Foreign Service. The long commuting time is definitely a downside, and I would like to give more time to my garden, but I work in the bureau that covers Pakistan and Afghanistan (and India, too). There is no lack of daily stimulation and the satisfaction of being involved with central concerns of our country.” 1963 “After more than 30 years in advertising, I am now retired and enjoying as many weeks on Cape Cod as the weather will allow,” writes JED STAMPLEMAN. “I am also participating in the monthly seminars held by the New York alumni chapter. I went through a bout of cancer but I am doing fine, and the doctors are happy with my recovery. Best to all at St. John’s.” WILL DAVIS, retired from his longtime work as chairman of the Board of the Berklee College of Music, continues working for Credit Suisse from his office in Holderness, N.H., where he and JESSICA HOFFMANN DAVIS (class of 1965) now live most of the time. Jessica retired from Harvard in 2004 to do more writing and has completed three books so far. They enjoy visits from their three sons and their wives and their three sons’ three sons. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 1965 TOM EATON is retired at age 67. He has served as class captain and an alumni interviewer for a number of years. Additionally, he set up a small library fund in his mother’s name in Santa Fe and was able to persuade three of his students to attend St. John’s. In the “better late than never” category, MICHAEL WOOLSEY writes: “Forty-four years removed from St. John’s and five years into retirement, I received this May a Master of Liberal Studies degree from the University of Minnesota. My thesis title is “The Limits of Liberalism: A Study of Liberal Disillusionment in the Twentieth Century.” The thesis relies heavily on the political thought of former tutor Leo Strauss and former deans Scott Buchanan and Jacob Klein.” 1968 “At the prompting of my children and grandchildren, I’ve entered the brave new world of Facebook,” confesses SARAH FISHER (A). “It’s fun, but I wonder if I can keep up? Time for reflection and consideration doesn’t seem to be part of the picture.” DEAN HANNOTTE (A) has created a new website devoted to the 20th-century philosopher Paul Rosenfels. It makes available for free all of Rosenfels’ writings as well as numerous contributions from his many students around the world. Visit the Paul Rosenfels Community at www.rosenfels.org. ANTIGONE PHALARES (SF) reports that the Sacramento-area seminar group has received a most welcome influx of a number of local and not-so-local St. Johnnies: “Most meetings have been �35 {Alumni Notes} held at TOM (HA94) and Marion SLAKEY’s home and also at other members’ homes. I became a grandmother December 17, 2008. Iris Aurore Marie Wastyn Moore at three and one half months has three passports: Peruvian (she was born in Lima); has an American mom (my daughter) and a U.S. passport; and a French passport from her father (who is French). When a child is born, so is a grandparent! It’s lovely being a parent once removed. I’m still teaching middle-schoolers at a public school in south Sacramento. I have 13 more years to go to get to 30 [years]!” 1969 The Before Columbus Foundation awarded LONGINO LUIS LOPEZ (SFGI) the American Book Award 2008 for his latest book of poetry titled Each Month I Sing. The book also won first place in poetry from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. 1970 DAVID DEBUS (SF) finished a bachelor’s degree in English at UCLA, and after three years as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War working at a United Methodist Church with street kids, attended the Claremont School of Theology: “I never had a ‘call’ to be a pastor. Then I entered doctoral studies at the United States International University in San Diego (now called Alliant International University) and received a doctorate in clinical psychology. I stood for the test in 1980 and passed the first time. After many years in private practice and as the clinical director of a therapeutic community for schizophrenia founded by Moira Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., I enrolled in music at University of San Diego for studies in music.” RONALD FIELDING (A) retired from OppenheimerFunds on May 20. “Three days later my wife and I took off for a three-week trip to Europe, starting in Barcelona, cruising the Mediterranean Sea with 74 other guests and three professors on a small (and 30 percent empty) cruise ship and ending in Greece. Surely the highlight for me to report to Johnnies was entering the huge so-called Treasury of Atreus, but really the Tomb of Agamemnon, just outside the walls of Mycenae. It’s quite amazing how the Greek legends and Homeric poems seamlessly merge into Greek history, from Perseus to the present. We have sold our residence in Rochester and established residency in a beach house on Kiawah Island, just outside of Charleston, S.C., though we will get a much smaller summer house in Rochester to evade the hot, humid summers here. I will be back on the Board of Visitors and Governors in July, as well as a small insurance company board, Plato Proves Useful J EFF HUME-PRATUCH (A79) writes that she and her husband, Tom Pratuch, recently completed the adoption of their daughter, Meredith, after a long foster relationship: “We are ecstatic! Currently, I am working as an editor for a publisher of scholarly journals. I’m convinced they hired me because in my first week as a temp, I caught the author misquoting Plato, Hegel, and Descartes. Who says the Program won’t help you get a job?” x a tiny mutual fund board, and the International Museum of Photography board. Plenty of stuff to keep me busy between trips hither and yon. And I need to attend Summer Classics again, too.” MARTIN ROSENTHAL (SF) recently published a novel, The Cult Teacher, using the penname Phillip Ahtmann. There is a chapter which takes place at St. John’s Annapolis is 1966. It is available at www.amazon.com or at www.theCultTeacher.com. 1972 HAROLD ANDERSON (A) writes: “I live outside of Washington in Greenbelt. I am currently a member of the core faculty for the Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability graduate program at Goucher College (where I teach cultural documentation). I also teach cultural anthropology at Bowie State University. But my main (pre-) occupation is as a contract ethnographer. And I have completed ethnographic studies of communities in the United States and abroad. Currently I am working a project for exhibition at the new Prince George’s County African American Museum and Cultural Center of North Brentwood. The project is titled “The Arts of Praise” and it aims to document aspects of how people celebrate and perform their faith in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Products of this project include transcriptions of oral histories, audio, still photographs, and video for exhibition at the Prince George’s County African American Museum.” EVAN (A) and Jane’s son, Matthew Dudik, will arrive as a freshman in Annapolis this fall with lexicon in one hand and French horn in the other. His { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } twin is studying bassoon and German in Vienna in a gap year before deciding about this or that college/university. Elder brother Graham appears to be in his senior year at Portland State University. Empty nests rule! Jane is thinking about post kids. Evan is running his strategy/operations management consulting firm including recent projects with Daimler and Novartis. In between saxophone, painting, art history, he is working on a book with the working title “Thinking Independently.” He’s also finishing up his second term on the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors, having raised enough hackles for six or seven years. 1973 MICHAEL AARON (SF) was named the Director of Banking and Financial Markets, Growth Markets Unit, IBM Corporation in 2009. In this role, he is responsible for the Banking and Financial Markets Industry vertical business in the growth markets, which cover AsiaPacific, Latin America, Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as Africa and the Middle East. Michael considers his St. John’s education to have been an important step in his developing the capabilities to deal with this type of executive role, as it requires constant reading, analysis, informed judgment and the ability to communicate—listening and speaking. It is also useful to know how to read very long books on very long flights of up to 24 hours. Michael remains married to Danuta (30 years this August) and has two sons, Daniel and David. The Aarons live in Sydney, Australia, close to Bondi Beach. MARY L. BATTEEN (A) was chair of the Oceanography Department at the Naval Postgraduate �36 {Alumni Profile} Seeking a Balance Jazz Producer A.T. Michael MacDonald (SF76) by Nathaniel Roe (SF08) M nat roe ichael MacDonald (SF76) brews another cup of coffee in AlgoRhythms, his mastering studio tucked away in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. He recounts how his journey—from a new graduate with no career plans to a music producer who has recorded jazz legends including McCoy Tyner and Tito Puente—began on a bicycle. “My gift to myself after graduation was a cross-country bicycle trip,” MacDonald recalls. “I ended up getting injured and had to come home early. I remember sitting in an Amtrak dome car going through Montana, just looking at the stars and soul searching. I asked myself, ‘what would I really love to do?’” With time to think about his future, MacDonald decided to become a recording engineer because it combined his love of music and knack for science. Michael MacDonald records jazz legends in his “After this epiphany, I moved to brooklyn, N.Y., studio. New York to break into the recording business.” MacDonald is best known as a virtumaybe I could help you.’” osic jazz producer; numerous AlgoRhythms The record executive didn’t understand sessions have garnered Grammy nominathat the old friends meant they were happy tions. His live recordings at the Village with each other’s work. At the end of the day Vanguard are considered among the best in MacDonald got a pink slip. Hersch sorted the celebrated jazz club, a space that out the situation, and the duo finished demands masterful microphone placement recording together. “We still laugh about and sense of musical balance. In addition to that today.” Tyner and Puente, MacDonald has worked When he arrived in New York City in 1977, with legends such as Hank Jones, Roy MacDonald began at the bottom of the Haynes, and John Scofield. He has recorded ladder, as an intern at Skyline studios. Since two Grammy-winning albums with McCoy then, changes in technology have meant Tyner, who is most famous for his early work radical changes in his industry. “Because of in John Coltrane’s band. the Internet, most people today consider One of MacDonald’s most lasting music to be a free commodity. This demorelationships is with renowned pianist cratic approach can be really great, but let’s Fred Hersch. “When we work together, we say McCoy Tyner wants to record another don’t have to talk about sound anymore,” big-band project. That recording requires a says MacDonald. “We know exactly how certain minimum dollar amount. If the we want it to be.” people investing the money don’t break even During one recording session with in record sales, they are less likely to fund Hersch, a record company executive came the next record. And so Tyner will have to to sit in. “Fred and I argue to entertain scale back the big band to a trio, so the each other,” says MacDonald. “When Fred listener won’t get the full effect.” came into the control room and said ‘this The availability of inexpensive quality sounds awful, can’t you do anything right?’ recording technology has similar drawbacks. I replied, ‘If you knew how to play piano, “I’m really hard pressed to find jazz record{ T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } ings recorded today that are as good sonically as the golden age, when Sinatra was recording. [Producers and engineers] had limited technology, but they had great ears and great training. There’s no technology shortcut for that.” As an adjunct engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, MacDonald trains budding recording engineers and producers by emphasizing the basics and systematically limiting the tools they can use to complete assignments. His goal is to produce engineers who rely on knowledge and instinct. In his courses, MacDonald incorporates the St. John’s approach to questions. “A student wanted to know how and why VU [volume] meters were invented,” he says. “I scoured up the original 1933 Western Electric white paper and held a class discussion.” When no one had questions, MacDonald picked out a detail and stumped the class by saying, “I don’t understand what this means.” In the ensuing discussion, “we gained insight into a real engineering problem and how the pioneers of audio solved it.” The Program, and language tutorial in particular, has helped shape MacDonald’s outlook on recording. “What I learned in language class is what has carried me most through my recording career,” explains MacDonald. “I’m really a translator. Sound is a three-dimensional physical phenomenon that changes from moment to moment. I’ve got to carefully capture and then translate it into a series of ones and zeroes and somehow reconstruct something that resembles the original.” When translating Baudelaire, literally rendering a word will likely obscure the poetic qualities of the French. By the same token, focusing only on the lyrical qualities of words can make a translation vague. MacDonald looks at recording the same way. “When translating, something is always lost. To focus on one part, you necessarily lose something else. If I make the vocal sound a little more present, will that affect the right hand of the piano? It’s always a balance. Asking the questions of translation has always served me well in recording.” x �{Alumni Notes} School in Monterey, Calif., from 2001-2008: “I am now on a yearlong sabbatical at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University. I am writing a textbook called Exploring Ocean Physics, which I hope will excite future scientists to explore the important roles of ocean physics, from helping us understand climate change to taking better care of our earth, which is really the Ocean Planet.” SUSAN MARTIN DRESSEL (SFGI) retired in June 1994 from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she had served as Division Leader for Information Services. Six months later, Susan’s husband, Ralph W. Dressel, died. After a couple of years, Susan relocated to Albuquerque to be near her son and daughter. In July 1999, Susan bought a lot in a development on the Rio Grande and retained an architect and construction boss to build a Tuscan-style villa “on spec.” About three months before construction was to begin, Susan met Donald Myers, a retired lawyer and judge, accomplished pianist and certified flight instructor. She soon realized she did not want to manage a construction project, sold the lot, and left for a winter on South Padre Island with her new friend. They are now married and living in their mountain home on wooded acreage bordering the Cibola National Forest, where they both enjoy hiking and birding. Although back surgery required her to give up skiing and white water kayaking/rafting, Susan is happy to be traveling, golfing, and dancing with Don, and spending snowy months in warmer climes. And she is grateful to Don for his willingness to relocate in New Mexico near her family “At our ages, a loving family support system becomes increasingly important. Retirement brings many advantages that help compensate for the aches and pains that come with advancing years.” She would be happy to hear from any GI alumni. 1974 DAPHNE KAPOLKA (nee GREENE, A76) and GERRY KAPOLKA (A) are celebrating their 35th anniversary. Gerry writes: “I am now Dean of Academics and chair of the English department at Santa Catalina School in Monterey. Daphne is senior lecturer in physics at the Naval Postgraduate School, also in Monterey. Our daughter, BASIA (A01) is in Chicago about to produce a play she has written based on The Jinx, by Teofile Gautier. Our older son, Andrzej, is a computer game designer for Three Rings in San Francisco. Our younger son, Marek, will be a junior at San Jose State University.” MARGARET SANSOM (SFGI) reports: “I am enrolled in The Ultimate Game of Life, a highly effective teleconferencing coaching program led by Jim Bunch. As a result of participating in the program, I have lost 40 pounds, amped up my fitness level, and completely remodeled my house, a project that I had been just contemplating for the past five years. Because traveling is my passion, I have been to Paris for five months in 2005, to Great Britain in 2006, Alaska in 2007, and Zion, Bryce, and Yellowstone in 2008. Next on my list is a Greek isle cruise in 2011. In the meantime, I am going to stay home and enjoy my home for a couple of years and concentrate on getting the funding at a functional level for the scholarship foundation that I head. Scholarships are awarded to people who have been out of high school for a few years and have finally realized that they need further training/education in order to fulfill their dreams.” 1975 BOB SHIMIZU (SF) has recently released a new CD of jazz for his quartet, Bob Shimizu and Signal Strength. “Cuchillero” is available online at www.signalstrengthband.com. 1977 CLIFF ADAMS (A) has been living in Germany for nearly eight years and has been married to a German woman since July 3, 2008. He worked for Amadeus, a travel services computer company as a software test engineer from 2001-2006 and is now a self-employed web programmer in Erding, just outside of Munich. Cliff has been working on various Mideast peace projects in connection with participating in Landmark Education (www.landmarkeducation.com) programs. The most recent one is www.israelpalestineproject.com. He has three grown children living in New York. 1979 LESLIE W. WESTMORELAND (SF) writes: “I’m a deputy attorney general in the Appeals, Writs, and Trials section of the Criminal Law Division of the Attorney General’s Office of the California Department of Justice. (That’s a mouthful—I’m a trial and appellate prosecutor.) Married to Carmen Milagros Delgado (de Puerto Rico), a criminal defense attorney. Living in Fresno with too many little dogs, and near our two grandchildren. Classmate LAIRD DURLEY (SF79) surprised me recently by dropping by. It seems he lives about one mile away. I’d love to hear from anyone who’d like to say hey.” { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 37 OWEN GOLDIN (SF) lives in Milwaukee, Wis., with his wife, Miriam Sushman, and their daughter Esther, 5. He teaches philosophy at Marquette University. His translation with notes of Philoponus’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics 2 is scheduled to be published soon by Duckworth Press. BEN HAGGARD (SF) divides his time between Santa Fe and Berlin, and divides his energies between Regenesis (an ecological consultancy he helped found 12 years ago) and painting. After 27 years, he and JOEL GLANZBERG (SF84) are still working together, these days as principal designers with Regenesis and contributors to the blog: www.edgeregenerate.com. Ben shares an apartment in Berlin with his partner, Joe, who plays French horn with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester. Photos of Ben’s paintings can be seen at www.benhaggardstudio.com. He’s planning to attend Homecoming in Santa Fe. MARILYN L. SCHAEFER (SFGI) is glad to see “growing links between St. John’s and Shimer College,” as reported in the Fall 2009 issue of The College. Her sister, Susan Schaefer, graduated from Shimer in the mid-1960s, and Susan and her friends are very enthusiastic about the college, she says. “There seems to be a natural compatibility among grads of St. John’s, Shimer, and the University of Chicago.” TONY WATERS (A) is a professor of sociology at California State University, Chico. He is married to Dagmar Waters, and they travel back and forth to her native Germany frequently. They have two children, both of whom are college students at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. His recent books include When Killing is a Crime (2007) and The Persistence of Subsistence �38 {Alumni Notes} Agriculture: Life Beneath the Level of the Marketplace (2007/2008). 1980 “As of January 1, 2009, I am now vice president for international programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation,” reports TOM G. PALMER (A). “I remain a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. At Atlas I direct field operations to promote libertarian values worldwide, along with active programs of book publishing, websites, video production, summer schools, and more in 15 languages. Since the start of the year I have given lectures, held conferences, appeared in the media, and organized new ventures in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Malaysia, Indonesia, the UK, and Brazil and on Thursday I depart for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. I’ll be quite busy with summer schools and site visits throughout the summer and fall, as well as with additional programs, including delivering papers at academic conferences in Germany, France, and Italy. My book Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, will be published later this month. I am keeping busy, and there is not one single day during which I do not draw on my education from St. John’s, which not only provided me with a good springboard to my further education, but continuously informs how I understand the world and the choices I make.” ANGEL ANN PRICE (SF) writes: “For six months, I’ve left my plum position at the US EEOC (federal sector appeals and training team) for a detail as a Special Assistant US Attorney for the District of Columbia. I’m prosecuting misdemeanor domestic violence cases and have seen more of the inside of the courthouse, tried more cases, and signed off on more witness vouchers in the past few weeks than in almost 15 years of practice. The opportunity to speak on behalf of the community comes often, but with only a moment to be heard. The theme of the season is the split-second rhetorician.” December 2008 brought some dramatic changes for JIM SORRENTINO (A): “I began an inter-agency assignment to the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Stability, in the Homeownership Preservation Office, created as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It’s exciting, dynamic and challenging—not words one usually associates with large government bureaucracies. Two weeks or so after I began the job at Treasury, our adoption agency contacted us. And on December 31, we brought home our new son! Vincent Sorrentino was born in mid-December, in Baltimore. He is a healthy, happy, hungry little boy, and he is a delight to us all. Although it seems a little crazy to become a father (again!) at 49, I recall something Brother Robert said to me after meeting my daughter, Sophia (who was not yet three), at Homecoming in 2005: ‘Children complete life, don’t they?’ The answer, once again, is yes.” 1982 ADRIEN HELLER (A) has been in Shijiazhuang, People’s Republic of China for the last three years, teaching English and doing art. 1983 JACK ARMSTRONG (SF) writes, “I’ll be driving from Philadelphia to Los Angeles this summer with my son, Michael. Really looking forward to it.” Arugula and Wild Turkeys J L. BUSH (SF84) and his wife, Elizabeth, are savoring summer in Blacksburg, Va. “She has her garden going with the usual garden herbs, tomatoes, peppers, pole and bush beans, basil, fresh arugula, and other greens. I am trying to do more fly fishing and get out to the Blue Ridge for morel and wild turkey hunting as often as possible. I am also trying to utilize the wondrous natural qualities of the area such as the New River for canoeing, rafting and small mouth bass fishing, and the Appalachian Trail for hiking, camping, and trail running whenever possible. We both are beginning to think about a house design for some property we have in Ellett Valley in Montgomery County. I am reading Russell Banks and Cormac McCarthy as well as Grant’s autobiography. Our grown boys are well and prospering, and we would love to hear from or visit with old friends. We have made contact with Robert and CHARLA ALLEN (SF79) since they moved back to the Smokies near Asheville and hope to see their new house and both of them soon. I am running for local office this summer for Town Council and so that will keep me occupied and engaged in local politics.” x OHN { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 1984 PETER GREEN (A) is living in New York’s Washington Heights and loving New York. As a world news reporter at Bloomberg News, he was off to Prague in June to interview Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president, and then wander around the East for a few weeks. He’s looking forward to Homecoming. TRISHA (FIKE) HOWELL (SF) has been focusing recently on a healing and life coaching system she developed called Lifonics (www.Lifonics.com) She also continues to write books and screenplays and hopes to resume her acting career soon. Before a year hiatus, she was appearing in many plays and low-budget films. Trisha welcomes hearing from classmates at Trisha@TrishaHowell.com. DENNIS ROBERTS (SFGI) retired from the Associated General Contractors of New Mexico Building Branch after 40 years of service. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of New Mexico. MARK POTHIER (A) writes: “ANNIE KEZAR (A) has been tireless in keeping our class engaged and happy.” 1985 L. JAGI LAMPLIGHTER WRIGHT (A) reports: “My first novel comes out from Tor (a major publisher of science fiction and fantasy) this August. It is the first of a trilogy. A fantasy story set in the present day with humor and mystery, it is a sequel of sorts to Shakespeare’s Tempest. The series is called Prospero’s Daughter. The first novel, coming out in early August, is Prospero Lost.” �39 {Alumni Notes} 1987 PEGGY O’SHEA (A, SF05) was married to Susan Unger in Massachusetts on January 2. RAY ANDRE WAKEfiELD (A) has published The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice. Wakefield is associate professor of history at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. 1988 JANA GILES (A) will be starting as an assistant professor of 20thcentury British literature at the University of Louisiana at Monroe in fall 2009. Her specializations are modernism, postcolonialism, and aesthetics. She would love to have any visitors, so please let her know “in the unlikely event” that you are passing through Monroe. 1989 Having never run before in her life, SARA CATANIA (A) ran the LA Marathon on May 25 to raise money for AIDS Project Los Angeles. Details are available at www.laobserved.com/runon. GEORGE TURNER (A) is working half time to make room for “more fun and family time.” He’s training for the California International Marathon on December 6 in Sacramento, with hopes of qualifying for Boston, “the runner’s Mecca.” “Other than that,” he writes, “same house, same spouse, kids another year older. Life is good.” Dante Meets the Zombies K PAFFENROTH’s (A88) zombified version of Dante’s Inferno, is now available as a limited edition hardback from Cargo Cult Press (www.horror-mall.com). In it, the Florentine stumbles onto an infestation of the undead, and the horrors he witnesses there—people being burned alive, devoured, decapitated, etc.—are what later inspires his epic poem. x book of poems will be published by Salmon Poetry (Ireland) in April 2010. IM 1990 GRAHAM HARMAN (A) has been named Associate Vice Provost for Research at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. His fourth book, Prince of Networks, has recently been published by re.press (Melbourne). His next book, L’objet quadruple, will first appear in French translation with Presses Universitaires de France (Paris) in 2010. 1991 JULIE RENNINGER PASS OBER (AGI) writes: “I am a humanities professor and painter, and I retrain thoroughbred racehorses. My paintings and horse tales/tails are all at my blog: www.honeysucklefaire. blogspot.com. My painting, Smoke, was juried into Pennsylvania’s Art of the State 2009. This is my third year accepted into this show. Horses, art and family consume me!” 1992 ANNE ASPEN (née BOYNTON, SF) left her senior city planner position at the City of Fort Collins in January for a project manager position at the city’s Downtown Development Authority. “It allows me to focus on what I love most: architecture and our downtown. We’re doing a lot of exciting projects here, and I’m learning some new tricks. Family life is fulfilling now that the kids in our life finally moved here from Santa Fe. Unfortunately, Jane and I don’t have ready excuses to visit Santa Fe anymore, though.” 1993 ALEX and VANESSA ELLERMANN (AGI, A) are expecting their third son in March. Alex is flying for Delta and with the Navy Reserve, and Vanessa is practicing law in D.C. They live in Kensington, Md., and don’t get to Annapolis nearly enough. John Abraham Kelley, the first child of Genevieve and OWEN KELLEY (A), was born with a shout on September 11, 2008. They still live in Greenbelt, Md., and Owen still works at NASA. NANCY MARCUS (A) has moved to Cleveland and joined the law firm Berhmen, Gordon, Murray and DeVan, the firm that put Mapp v. Ohio on the map, and has had a number of other historic successes. Her practice includes trial and appellate litigation in the areas of constitutional law, civil rights, torts, criminal defense, and LGBT rights. Ernest Marlowe Strautmann was born in May 2008 to Jacob Strautmann and VALERIE DUFFSTRAUTMANN (SF). Valerie’s first { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 1994 “My wife, ELIZABETH (RHODES) FARLEY and I (both A), are happy to report the birth of our third child, a boy. Samuel Duncan Farley was born on April 5, 2009,” writes DAN FARLEY. “Our other two children, Hannah (11) and Dylan (9), participated wonderfully in the birth of their brother and are now doting siblings. We are now measuring our lives not solely with coffee spoons, but also with diapers again! We have also recently relocated to Eugene, Ore., and invite any Johnnies in the Northwest in particular to contact us and come and visit if possible!” BEN FELDMAN (A) was married in January to Chaya Bracha Silver from Israel/ N.Y. “I have continued to work in New York as a master’s-level psychologist, providing services for developmentally disabled individuals. Now, I am getting ready to move, in August with my wife to Cleveland, Ohio, so I can pursue a PhD in Experimental Psychology, specializing in developmental disabilities research, at Case Western Reserve University. I will begin by helping to run a research study on Prader-Willi Syndrome.” 1995 HEIDI OVERBEEK (A) lives in the East Mountains outside of Albuquerque and loves it. “My partner, Cindy, and I have a 14-year-old son named Ashante who we adopted five years ago. I work as a labor and delivery nurse and am (leisurely) looking at grad schools to become a nurse �40 {Alumni Notes} the company and spending my weekends with Karen. Life is good.” Business Leader P KATZ (SF95) was the subject of a cover story in Milwaukee’s Business Journal. Katz is founder and principal of Phillip Katz Project Development, a Milwaukee-based design and management practice. An architect, Katz was among the journal’s picks for Milwaukee’s top 100 “movers and shakers.” x HILLIP practitioner. I’m a ‘master gardener’ for the county and try to live in my garden!” CRAIG SIRKIN (A) reports that he and his wife, Wendy, are happy to welcome a new addition to their family: “Sarah Isabelle was born on March 10, and due to a very short labor was born at home with me acting as midwife and her older brother, Isaac, sleeping peacefully in his room. Everybody is happy and healthy.” “Our impending exodus from Mobile, Ala., has been nudged along by the economy, thanks to which my first small business venture—a coffee house across from the university—has come to a close,” writes KIRA ZIELINSKI (SF). “Not allowing business failure to equate with personal failure has been a tremendous emotional education for me as well. But I’m learning that although it’s quite possible that we are responsible for the entire world economic collapse, I’m learning to be OK with that. I’m looking forward to some time to catch up on life—reading, continuing our home improvement saga, getting back into music, and putting a match to the contents of no less than 15 filing cabinets. Despite all the tumult, my wonderful Nathan is still my fiancé, and our pre-marital counselor allows us to return each week and invent new psychoses.” 1996 “I am in Vermont,” writes CHERYL HENEVELD (AGI), “sometimes leading discussion groups for the Vermont Humanities Council. Taking a mythology course from the nearby state college. Re-reading the Odyssey—keep learning the St. John’s way! Come for a visit.” JEFFREY A. PALMER (A) married MARGURITE T. PFOUTZ (SF03) in Pittsburgh, Pa., in a wellexecuted elopement. 1997 DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) was recently married to Karen Litsinger. They live in Bethesda, Md., and Dominic’s board game company, North Star Games, is going strong. “We now have six people working for North Star Games with product in Target, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and many other locations,” he says. “I’m having a lot of fun growing VAN CUNNINGHAM (SF) writes, “Mom graduated from the GI a few years ago, Stella’s 9 1/2, Rockstar is a scaredy-dog, we are 7 miles from the ocean until we figure out which mountains to head to.” JACOB CURTIS (SF) and DAYNA SIMS CURTIS (SF98) announce the birth of their second baby, Atticus Hamilton: “Big sister Clio is adjusting well, we are feeling very blessed with a boy and a girl.” BRENDA JOHNSON (AGI) has completed the docent training course at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Md. She is enjoying taking some of the 28,000 school children who visit every year through the museum. JESSICA CAMPBELL MCALLEN (SF) writes: “Lowry, Isaac, and I welcomed Patrick Oliver with so much love on February 1, 2009. He was 6 lbs. 13 oz. and 19 1/2 in.” JILL NIENHISER (SFGI) completed a two-year acting program at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Washington, D.C., in December. She appeared in The Houseguests and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in April, and will perform this summer with Kaleidoscope Theatre in a two-person production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for schools and libraries. NATHAN SCHLEIFER (SF) reports that his second son, Elijah, was born June 16, 2008. 1998 STEPHEN CONN (SF) reports: “On the literary front, I recently had my 10th published letter in { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } Mojo Magazine, and to top it off, I am studying for my MFA in Screenwriting at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Any Johnnies who feel like a nice Italian dinner in North Beach, feel free to come on over!” RICK FIELD (SFGI) and his wife Jessica welcomed twin girls into their lives on August 2, 2008. The elder child, by two minutes, was named Grace Apollonia, and the younger, Alexandra Electra. Both girls love to hear books read aloud, and they enjoy various types of music. DORA JACOBS (A) and WALKER STUMP-COALE (A00) will both begin law school at the University of Baltimore in August. Their son, Mac, is now 11 months old and their daughter, Isabel, is almost 2 1/2, so things will be crazy at their house for a while—but not too crazy to catch up with old friends, particularly if there’s advice to be had about managing full-time school and a young family. Use dorajacobs@hotmail.com or walkerstumpcoale@ hotmail.com to drop a line. 1999 Having completed seven years of formation at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Neb., BRIAN T. AUSTIN, FSSP (A), was ordained to the sacred priesthood on May 30 in Lincoln, Neb., and sang a Solemn High Mass of Thanksgiving on June 6 in Philadelphia. The Rev. Austin is a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a clerical Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Rite, founded in 1988 by His Holiness John Paul II for the sake of fostering the ancient Latin Liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. �41 {Alumni Profile} Nurturing a Love for Learning Melanie Jago Hiner (A81) by Rosemary Harty bruce weller A t nine years old, Melanie Jago Hiner (A81) was a curious bookworm attending a progressive school in Chicago. “Our social studies teacher told us we could study anything we wanted, as long as we could explain why,” she recalls. “I decided to study the Mongolian invasion of China. I made a scale model of the Great Wall and loved every minute of it.” While her social studies teacher encouraged independent thinking and creativity, her math teacher frequently gave timed tests that made Hiner so anxious she suffered from stomach aches. “I came to loathe math,” she says. “And I almost didn’t come to St. John’s because the Program included four years of math.” Hiner made the leap and discovered she loved mathematics. Her experiences at St. John’s—learning through dialogue, being a part of a community, delving into difficult and unfamiliar subject matter—helped to shape her ideas of what education could be. She enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Delaware, focusing on cognition and instruction, and finished the coursework required for her doctorate. In 1995, at the prodding of her 7-year-old son, Hiner founded the New School in Newark, Delaware, using St. John’s College as her model for helping children and young adults become lifelong learners. The school’s motto: “Education for the courageous, inquisitive, and independent-minded.” “The ‘radical inquiry’ of St. John’s is very much at the heart of what we do,” says Hiner. “We’re always challenging the kids to think deeply about things.” Hiner started the school in the basement of a women’s club with $1,000 and seven students. Now housed in a historic home with an acre of land, the New School has about 40 students in kindergarten through grade 12. Students vote on the governing principles of their school and decide individually what to study and how to study it. “Children learn to listen to one another and learn from another. We’re not hierarchical. There are no experts—just like at St. John’s, the teacher is a fellow learner.” So far, three New School graduates have matriculated at St. John’s. One of Hiner’s Her own experiences in the classroom led Melanie Jago Hiner to create a school that fosters creativity and wonder, in the spirit of St. John’s College. first students was Molly Roach (A09). “It was more like a family than a school,” Roach recalls. “I was used to being told what to do, so at first, I had a little trouble adjusting to the self-directed aspect of the school.” At the New School, Roach enjoyed learning through conversation. Hands-on projects such as sewing gained time alongside reading and studying mathematics, and in time Roach began to thrive with her new freedom. Her senior thesis explored the concept of paradise, focusing on the Persian root of the word as enclosed garden. As part of her project, she transformed the school’s meeting room into a “paradise garden,” with plants, a bench, and a fountain. “If I had gone to a traditional high school and had all the pressures about test scores and college applications, I would have been miserable because I would have wanted to please everyone,” says Roach. “I wouldn’t have known anything about what I was actually interested in.” The New School restricts students choices in a way, because students are strongly encourage to seek out things that are difficult and they’re required to explain their choices. The ultimate goal, says Hiner, is creating self-reliance and perseverance in students. “We talk to them about Plato’s discussion of the soul—if you’re just drawn along by the evil { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } horse to things you merely enjoy doing, you’re not going to get anything worth doing done,” Hiner says. On Wednesday nights, Hiner leads seminars for New School parents and community members. Readings from The Wealth of Nations, Democracy in America, and Pascal’s Pensées have been recent choices. Hiner has also developed an informal continuing educational program for adults. She mentors adults who want to structure their own program of self-education. Along with devoting herself to offering a St. John’s-inspired education, Hiner is moving into community organizing. Last year, she created a nonprofit called Omnia Humanitas, aimed at encouraging individuals and communities to pursue “integrated, sustainable lives” that include lifelong learning, community involvement, and environmentally responsible lifestyles. The school and nonprofit organization together allow Hiner to introduce the concept of “the examined life” to those who haven’t read Plato. “To be fully engaged in what you’re doing, to take time to develop neglected aspects of your life, to keep asking important questions—that’s what it means to live a productive life,” she says. x �42 {Alumni Notes} MICHAEL HOKENSON (SF) has been spending the last several years creating a fund to provide loans to microfinance institutions (“MFIs”). The Minlam Microfinance Fund lent money to 10 MFIs, which created more than 18,000 new loans during 2008 in emerging markets from Peru to Azerbaijan. These loans are intended to help small businesses grow and boost household income for poor families, which is linked to higher investment in education, nutrition and health. The institutions have loans with more than 400,000 women. He continues to live and work in New York City. 2000 Here’s some news from JASON (AGI) and SUSIE SALINAS (AGI99): “Susie and I will celebrate our ninth anniversary on June 10. I just finished three years in Annapolis, where I taught English at the Naval Academy. This week we moved back to San Diego so I could return to flying helicopters for the Navy. Susie has been busy raising our two boys, Henry, 4, and Sam, 2.” 2001 After five years of living in Santa Fe and working in the art gallery scene, BRENDAN BULLOCK (SF) moved back to New England and has been in Portland, Maine, for the last two years. “I’ll be moving to Rockport, Maine, shortly to begin a summer-long position as a teaching assistant at the Maine Media Workshops, an incredible institution for photographic learning,” he says. “I’ll be working alongside some of the best photographers working today, teaching both seasoned professionals and young children getting involved with photography for the first time. That aside, I’ve been getting in plenty of good fishing with fellow Johnnie GEORGE DEANS (A02), who, incidentally, is now working as a stonemason, has just bought a house and will be getting married to his fiancée, Ludmila Svoboda, in September.” 2002 AMELIA ADAMS (A) begins her residency in Orthopedic Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis this June. BENJAMIN ANDERSON (AGI) has received a three-year David E. Finley Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. “This will support completion of my dissertation (Bryn Mawr, History of Art) on images of the Ptolemaic cosmos in the early Middle Ages,” he says. “At present I am traveling about the near East, researching late Roman and early Islamic monuments, but will spend most of the next two years in Munich before returning to D.C. for the final year of the fellowship, insha’Allah!” ISABEL CLARK (A) writes: “I’ve moved to Austin, Texas, and am working for Whole Foods Market on the new healthy eating team at their global HQ. Before the move, my partner, Brian Ambrose, and I went on an epic cross-country adventure for several months (detailed in the archives of brianandisabel.com). I also have a new website with recipes, articles, and materials from my previous work doing wellness counseling at forkbytes.com.” AMANDA SIMONE KENNEDY FINNEY (SF) graduated from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in Dallas, Texas, with a Juris Doctor on May 16, 2009. 2003 CHELSIA (WHEELER) HETRICK (SF) was married May 24, 2009, to Erik Hetrick, whom she met while doing her first tour as a foreign service officer in Rangoon, Burma. They are scheduled to finish their tour in Burma this September, then move to Johannesburg, South Africa, in October. SEAN MCLAIN (A) writes: “I have been living in Abu Dhabi for the past year and a half, and writing editorials for a new English-language daily here. I never expected I would end up in the media. However, in retrospect, getting paid good money to tell people what I think is pretty much the ideal career. Called to Virginia J USTI SCHUNIOR (A99) recently graduated from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta and in June was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church at the Cathedral of St. Philip. “I’ve accepted a call to Christ Church in Old Town Alexandria and will be moving up to Virginia to begin work in July. I hope to make the reunion this fall and catch up with class of ‘99. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } The UAE is a fascinating young country. In 37 years it has gone from a collection of desert emirates under British mandate to a thriving hub of commerce. There are innumerable growing pains from such rapid growth, and one of the most rewarding aspects of my job is to try to make sense of the country to the world and vice versa. I don’t know if I could do this forever, but it is certainly a rewarding pit stop on the way to whatever future lies ahead.” MARGURITE T. PFOUTZ (SF) married JEFFREY A. PALMER (A96) in Pittsburgh, Pa. They then ran away together to Portland, Ore., with their cat and some books. MICHAEL WALDOCK (SFGI) and JOHANNA OMELIA (SFGI02) have launched Ailemo Books in Oregon and just released their first title, Voyage 185: A British Gentleman’s Extraordinary Adventures Abroad by Thomas Hughes Jackson. 2004 ENJOLI COOKE (A) will begin optometry school at Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University in the fall. “It is a four-year program without a required residency, so I will (hopefully) be a practicing optometrist in four years and two months!” ANNIE ROLLINS (née BAILY) and DUSTIN ROLLINS (both SF) are currently living and working in the Boston area. Dustin recently finished his MA in Philosophy at Boston College and works as adjunct faculty at several New England colleges. Annie finished a master’s in teaching at BU and just wrapped up her first year teaching senior English in a regional high school. They have purchased an old colonial house �43 {Alumni Notes} north of Boston in the Bradford area and are looking forward to beginning a family. “Best wishes to our classmates, and give us a holler if you are in the area,” they write. 2005 SAMANTHA BUKER (A) plans on hosting musical après-midi in her Baltimore garden all summer long. First on the performer’s list, JAMES PEARSON, cellist (A05) was well received for his Bach Suite #3 in C. All nearby musical alums are invited to showcase their talents. When not inviting musicians to drink her wine and gorge on rich, buttery desserts and decadent fruits, she praises or pans them in writing for the Baltimore City Paper’s rated Best Local Music Blog: Auralstates. Read her posts right here: http://auralstates.com/ author/sbuker. While this music critic stint takes her round to the nation’s top orchestras, it doesn’t pay the rent. So she rounds out her day by delving deep into Federal Reserve mayhem and all sundry things sociopolitical and economic for Agora Financial— particularly enjoying her status as roving reporter for their Libertarian-leaning rag Whiskey and Gunpowder. After two years of post-bac coursework, JAMES HARRISON (A) will be starting medical school at the University of Philadelphia this fall. “To old friends and classmates, all are welcome if you’re passing through Philly.” CARLY ROSE JACKSON (SF) began a master’s program in journalism in September 2008. She lives in Boston, goes to school, interns at a local weekly, and like everyone else in the universe has a blog. Cross your fingers that newspapers will still exist in 2010 when she graduates. ALEXIS SEGEL (SF) is happy to be through the first year of her Master of Fine Arts program at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. She will continue her studies in Italian at Middlebury this summer, and hopes to see some Johnnies at her master’s recital in spring 2010. 2006 DANIEL GRIMM (SF) writes: “I own and operate Fishbar on the Lake, a seasonal seafood restaurant in Montauk, N.Y., the last town in the Hamptons. My partner, Jennifer Meadows, is the executive chef. The restaurant overlooks Montauk Harbor and serves seafood right off local boats, many of which dock right in front of the restaurant. Pictures of the view are available on our website: www.freshlocalfish.com. Everyone is invited to come!” MADELINE MAHOWALD (SF) will begin a post-baccalaureate premedical program at Bryn Mawr College in May. CARRY ROSE (A) and her fiancé, Jacob Brown, will be having a baby in November, their first child. KELLY KEENAN TRUMPBOUR (AGI) was recently named senior director of Running Start, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring high school and college women to pursue political office. 2007 BRENDAN GREELEY (SFGI) has completed primary flight training at NAS Corpus Christi, Texas. He will fly the T-45 (Navy Planning and serving in the Volunteer State W ILLIAM GREGORICUS (SFGI00) is a senior policy advisor in Tennessee Governor Bredesen’s Office of Planning and Policy. His main charge is the coordination of the efforts of the Governor’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, a 15-member group, appointed by the Governor to examine ways to reduce juvenile and adult recidivism and improve public safety and serving as the deputy to the director of the Governor’s Tennessee Recovery Act Management Office. Prior to joining the Bredesen administration, he served under Governor Bill Richardson with the deputy cabinet secretary for Children, Youth and Families, with responsibilities for the Juvenile Justice Division. You can find him on Facebook. x Strike Jet Trainer) at NAS Kingsville, Texas, where he will earn his “Wings of Gold.” CHELSEA STIEGMAN (A, now Chelsea Ihnacik) has been married for more than a year to Ryan Ihnacik, her boyfriend since high school. She’s managing a Starbucks at the Annapolis Mall and planning to go to law school in the fall of 2010. In good weather, she may be spotted traveling through town on her new scooter. 2008 and helping a student-initiated fundraiser to help save the Javan rhino.” 2009 DALTON LOBO DIAS (A) is working this summer as an e mergency medical technician and will be starting his premedical post-baccalaureate program at Bryn Mawr College in the fall. x What’s Up? Last May, DON BRIGGS (AGI) was a panelist for the National Association of Homebuilders Green Building Conference on “Valuing Green Buildings” in Dallas, Texas. The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in November; deadline for the alumni notes section is October 10. ALEXANDRA SCHWAB (A) has been teaching sixth-grade math for the past year at The Pingry School in New Jersey, where she will be next year, too: “My non-math-related adventures this year included vocal coaching for our high school production of Les Misérables, backup singing for the middle school’s Godspell, Alumni will also be sent a call for classnotes via e-mail in September. To see the last mystery picture identified, visit the online community at www.stjohnscollege.edu, click on Alumni. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; rosemary.harty@sjca.edu �44 WILLIAM DARKEY, CLASS OF 1942 William Darkey, tutor emeritus, died in Santa Fe on June 22, 2009, at the age of 88. He will be remembered by friends and colleagues for contributions that made a tremendous difference in the life of the college. He was among the first students of Barr and Buchanan’s New Program, and he spent a year as a tutor right after graduating. As a founding faculty member and dean in Santa Fe, he helped create and foster a new St. John’s College community in the high desert. As a lifelong learner and encouraging teacher, he inspired others with his passion for ideas. Mr. Darkey was active on campus when Victoria Mora, Santa Fe dean, arrived as a tutor in Santa Fe. “He had such a lovely, understated way of drawing our attention to the important things in faculty meetings,” she recalls. “He had a quiet, Mark Twain-like wit. He loved the college and he loved the Santa Fe campus. He had a fascinating view of how the landscape and light on this campus added to the student experience of the program, their starkness confronting the students with themselves as profoundly as the books do.” Mr. Darkey’s lecture on translation remains fresh and relevant to the work of the college today, Dean Mora said. “It is used widely in language classes to help students see what a powerful and rewarding experience a simple translation can be. Bill saw meaning in the everyday and familiar; what better wisdom does a lifelong dedication to this program have to offer?” {Obituaries} He was also appreciated for his quiet humor. “He loved music, poetry, and literature,” says tutor emeritus Sam Kutler (class of 1954), who was a student of Mr. Darkey’s. “He was one of the founders of the Key School here in Annapolis because he cared about education at all levels.” Mr. Darkey was preceded in death by his wife, Constance (SFGI85). He is survived by his stepson, Peter Nabokov; his daughter, Catherine Darcy; and a grandson, Aaron Darcy. BRIAN WALKER (SF90) by David Marquez (SF90) William Darkey will be remembered for his quiet, Mark Twainlike wit, says Santa Fe Dean Victoria Mora. Raised in Western Maryland, Mr. Darkey attended St. John’s on a scholarship and, before graduating in 1942, was offered a faculty position. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1946 and then, upon his honorable discharge, pursued a graduate degree in English literature at Columbia University. Noted poet and professor Mark Van Doren was both a mentor and good friend. Returning to St. John’s in 1949, Mr. Darkey joined a cadre of tutors who helped build the college’s reputation, including intellectuals and refugees from Europe such as Eva Brann and gifted composers such as Elliot Carter. At the new campus in Santa Fe, Mr. Darkey served as dean from 1968 to 1972 with “imagination, diligence, and perceptiveness,” former president Richard Weigle wrote in one of his memoirs. A dedicated teacher and proponent of the St. John’s Program, Mr. Darkey was known for his intellect, his gentle manner in the seminar room, and his ability to bring out different points of view. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } As his classmates, much of our appreciation of Brian is framed in our shared experience of St. John’s College. To us, Brian’s life is not a series of accomplishments and milestones, especially given that he, like us, chose to attend a college without the usual yardsticks of letter grades, midterms, multiple choice tests or final exams. His decision to follow an ancient method of learning based on the simple and complex tasks of reading and conversing and also to lead a life full of complexity, beauty and creativity is proof of his deep inspiration and feeling for the world. Our Brian Walker was, without a doubt, the exemplary “Johnnie.” To list Brian’s accomplishments is a little like trying to trace the course of a stream from its mountain origins as it grows to a river and onward to its ultimate union with the greater sea, and in that course, name all of the ways that gift of water affects the places and creatures it touches as it passes. It is better then to say at least some of the things Brian was to those of us who knew �45 {Obituaries} him. Above all else he was our friend: a whirl of life, joy, sarcasm, wit, hilarity, sorrow, vanity, appreciation, generosity, empathy, deep understanding, profound imagination, grammatical knowledge and a boundless well of love for life and all that was a part of it. He was a poet and a creator: the very highest honors one could take from the college Brian chose. It was his ability to use wit and sarcasm that kept his feet firmly planted on the ground. His cock-eyed view of pretentiousness when he encountered it and the way he could cut to the quick of any situation to reveal its true form told all of us that here was someone who could see through the most carefully crafted constructs. This was a power to be reckoned with and respected. For many of us, it was Brian who would give voice to what we were all thinking, but could not diplomatically express. He was a master of creating the world as he saw it and in such completeness that those of us around him could not imagine it not being so. In this way a big green Ford pick-up became both chariot and limousine, and a student flat with bad plumbing could become a banquet hall fit for tasting the world’s finest champagnes. Those of us around him happily engaged in his world view not out of dissatisfaction with the world as it was, but because what Brian brought out in each of us was the hope and the belief that the world would be just as we all imagined it could be: full of poetry and low humor, music and guffawing, crassness and beauty, and throughout all, love. It is no coincidence that all who met Brian in those years at St. John’s, and I am certain in those years before and after, are unable to forget him. This is because he is one of those rare individuals who those of us fortunate enough to have as a friend know that because of him our view of the world and of our own lives will never be the same. As he departs it is undeniable that any honors and accolades that Brian may have collected during his time here are only dim reflections of the light he shared with us. IRA MILLER (AGI07) Ira Miller, a retired general surgeon whose passion for the classics brought him to St. John’s, died in March at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 78 and had prostate cancer. Dr. Miller was on the staff of several hospitals, including Suburban Hospital, where he chaired the surgery department from 1991 to 1993 and served as chairman of the medical staff from 1993 to 1995. A native of New York, he received a bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia University in 1951 and a medical degree from the University of Buffalo in 1956. During retirement he came to St. John’s to continue his education. “Ira’s years at St. John’s were a very rewarding time after his retirement from surgery,” says his wife, Barbara. “He was very grateful for the opportunity to study the works of many of the thinkers whose writings he had glossed over as an undergraduate. His studies at St. John’s enhanced his abilities as a discussion leader in the Great Books program, and led to his developing courses on the Iliad and the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides.” PATRICK PATRONE (SF78) Patrick M. Patrone, M.D., died suddenly at his home in Hopkins, Minn., on April 16, 2009. He was 51. Born in Izmir, Turkey, Dr. Patrone spent most of his early years in Fairfax, Va. After graduating from St. John’s, he earned an MS in physiology from Georgetown University, and his medical degree from the University of Virginia. He completed his residency in pathology at the Cleveland Clinic and did a fellowship in pediatric pathology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He practiced pathology at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia before moving to Lancaster County, where he worked as a pathologist at Lancaster General Hospital for nine years. He also worked at Reading Hospital and most recently at Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol, Pa. He was a fellow of the College of American Pathologists. JOHN M. ROSS (A69) John Maxwell Ross died April 6, 2009, of natural causes at his home in Seattle. After graduating from brian walker { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } St. John’s he served for four years in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he was stationed in St. Louis, Mo. He eventually settled in Seattle, where he spent the next few decades pursuing personal and professional interests. An accomplished author of technical books, Mr. Ross also pursued other writing projects, including a planned study of the writings of E.B. White. He combined his Coast Guard radio engineering experience and his love for music and folklore to serve many local organizations, including KRAB Radio, Northwest Folklife, and the Seattle Folklore Society. A dedicated archivist, Mr. Ross was deeply committed to preserving the musical heritage of the past in new and different media. He also enjoyed collecting local Pacific Northwest wines and making homemade apple cider with members of the Northwest Cider Society. He served on the Wallingford Community Council. ALSO NOTED: RICHARD FRANK (CLASS OF 1949), MAY 5, 2009 CHARLES WYMAN GROVER (CLASS OF 1948), MARCH 19, 2009 STEVEN KEY (A74), MAY 26, 2009 ALVIN LEVY (CLASS OF 1938), JAN. 22, 2009 WILLIAM SPRANKLE (CLASS OF 1951), FEB. 7, 2009 KEVIN STACEY (A75), MARCH 23, 2009 BOWEN WEISHEIT (CLASS OF 1940), APRIL 29, 2009 JOHN WINSLOW (CLASS OF 1933), DEC. 28, 2008 �46 {Croquet} Johnnie vs. Johnnie: Showdown with Santa Fe F aced with another Sunday croquet match this spring (Navy had a scheduling conflict), Alumni Director Jo Ann Mattson (A87) hit on an idea: why not fill the empty Saturday with a Johnnie vs. Johnnie, East vs. West match? When enough Santa Fe students took the challenge, Mattson made it an official part of the weekend. Since Sunday drew the largest crowd ever— about 3,000 people—the informal and intimate Santa Fe vs. Annapolis match was the highlight of the weekend for many. “This is what croquet was like in its early days,” said Mattson, her picnic set up on the edge of the playing court. “Look at all the students here.” Students who made the trip from Santa Fe, along with transfers to Annapolis, gathered under a tent where they proudly displayed the New Mexico flag. Other students lounged on blankets in the sun and did homework or read as the games went on around them. “I’m not really following the game,” confessed Gina Russom (A09), who spent her first two years in Santa Fe. “But it’s nice to have a little bit of Santa Fe here in Annapolis.” Even though Santa Fe’s team included six former Annapolis students who transferred to Santa Fe, Annapolis prevailed 3-0. And though the Santa Fe players practiced a couple of times a week, it can’t be said that either team took things too seriously on Saturday. Santa Fe’s team was led not by an Imperial Wicket but by a “Grand Marnier.” Another player donned a clown’s outfit for part of his match. Along with their nicknames (“Drunken Alex” and “Fried Smokra” among them), the Santa Fe competitors printed a quote from the Roman poet Claudian on their red shirts: “It is no victory unless the vanquished admits your mastery.” But on Sunday, it was all business. Perhaps it was the spring warmth after a dreary, bad-news winter that brought such a large, enthusiastic crowd to campus for Sunday’s match. Dressed as Vikings (costumes chosen to hint at domination of the seas), the Johnnies triumphed 4-1 over Navy. Imperial Wicket Micah Beck was well pleased with the victory, although he and his partner lost their match. Perhaps the large crowd had something to do with it, he ventured. “There were alumni lining the sidelines watching,” he says. “We had some nervous jitters to work out.” The following weekend the Johnnies closed out their croquet season by bringing { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } home another trophy, as winners of the National Intercollegiate Championships held April 25-26 at the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The Johnnies were among the top seeds going into Sunday’s play, and they won all of their six-wicket matches. Teams were fielded by institutions including the Naval Academy, Bard, Haverford, Davidson, and SUNY-New Paltz. x �{Croquet} Opposite page: Top right, Santa Fe players consider their choices; Bottom right, a quote from Claudian on a Santa Fe t-shirt; left, Gina Russom (A09) watches the action. Above: clockwise from top, fierce Vikings face off against the nattily dressed midshipmen; the Annapolis cup awaits the victor in the alumni tent; the Santa Fe-Annapolis match was like the “old days” of croquet; Elsabe Dixon (A11) and Joao Fernandes (A09) join the swing dancers. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 47 �48 {Alumni Association News} CALENDAR Alumni, it’s time to come home to Annapolis and Santa Fe this fall! ANNAPOLIS Friday, September 25 4-8 p.m. Registration 4:30-6 p.m. Alumni/student networking and welcome reception, FSK Lobby 5:30 p.m. Class reunion dinners/receptions 8:15 p.m. Homecoming Lecture: “Don Quixote and the Law,” by Pedro Martinez-Fraga (A84) Saturday, September 26 8:30-noon Registration continues 10:30 a.m. Seminars, children’s story hour and seminars noon Family barbeque/ class reunion luncheons 2 p.m. Freshman chorus, revisited 3 p.m. The Mitchell Gallery’s “Tools in Motion” exhibit; Soccer Classic 4 p.m. All-Alumni Meeting/awards assembly; book signing 5-7 p.m. Cocktail party/birthday celebration 7:30 p.m. Alumni banquet 9:30 p.m. Alumni ball; rock party SANTA FE Friday, October 9 4-8 p.m. Registration 4:30-5:30 p.m. Alumni/student reception 5:30 p.m. Class reunion receptions 6 p.m. GI welcome reception 8 p.m. Homecoming lecture 10 p.m. Movie Sunday, September 27 11 a.m. Presidents’ Brunch CROQUET St. John’s vs. the U.S. Naval Academy Saturday, April 17, 2010 Raindate: Sunday, April 18, 2010 PIRAEUS, Alumni Continuing Education Thursday, June 3, to Sunday, June 6, 2010. Saturday, October 10 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Registration 9:30 a.m.-10:15 a.m. State of the college 10:30 a.m.-noon Seminars and children’s story hours 12:30 p.m. Picnic 2 p.m. Hike to Atalaya 2-4 p.m. Bocce tournament and Italian lawn party 5 p.m. Speaking Volumes lecture 6 p.m. Collegewide Art Show 7 p.m. Homecoming dinner 9 p.m. Homecoming dance Sunday, October 11 11 a.m. President’s Brunch Seniors and alumni came together for a reception at the Paca Gardens before Commencement. L. to r.: Jessica ZimmergbergHelms, Carol Freeman (AGI94), and Alexandra Munters. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Alumni Association News} A Day in the Country E ach May Sharon Bishop (class of 1965) welcomes Washington-area alumni to her home in Winchester, Va., for an annual “Day in the Country,” featuring a picnic, tutor-led seminar, and an opportunity for Johnnies to frolic in the sunshine. This year, the popular event had one of its best turnouts since Bishop began hosting about six years ago. About 50 participants attended the event, held on Memorial Day weekend. Tutors Eva Brann (H89) and Peter Kalkavage led the seminar, on Book 10 of Augustine’s Confessions. Each group talked for an hour, then Brann and Kalkavage switched groups. Kalkavage’s opening question was: how does Augustine lay out the difference between the inner man and the outer man? The discussion focused on memory as the medium for inner man. Brann concentrated on the chapter as “first phenomenology.” Bishop provided a catered lunch (salad, grilled chicken, salmon, lemon squares, chocolate mousse) paired with wines from alumni winemakers: Hawk’s Crest, from Warren Winiarski (class of 1952); Frog’s Leap, from Larry Turley (SF69); and Sanglier Volant, from the vineyard of the late Jeff Bishop (H96), the college’s longtime vice president for advancement. After the seminars, some alumni played croquet, bocce, and badminton; others lounged under shady trees and talked. Bishop’s bearded collies, Brie and Sunshine, participated in every activity. Ymelda Martinez-Allison (A74) and her husband, David (A73), were among those who made the trek. “The Day in the Country was fabulous,” Martinez-Allison said. “We had lovely weather and a great time of socializing. The luncheon was absolutely delicious, and the seminar discussions were lively and fruitful.” “Thanks to Sharon, it was an absolutely perfect day,” says Jo Ann Mattson (A87), director of Alumni Relations. “It was such a generous gift to her fellow alumni.” “I enjoy hosting the event,” says Bishop. “I love having the house in the country, and I enjoy sharing it. And, we had great weather.” x Scenes from a day in the country: Seminars, Augustine on Kindle, friends, and badminton. Photos by David Allison. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } 49 �50 {Alumni Association News} A Special Correspondence Alumni Association Honors WWII Hero H “. . .He modestly disowns any praise for his personal courage.” tutor Eva Brann, on Martin Andrews lives, and his family and friends joined in congratulating him. In her remarks at the brief ceremony, Miss Brann noted that Mr. Andrews is “the alumnus of alumni.” He left St. John’s in 1941 to enlist as an aviation cadet in the Army Air Force. After he completed his flight training in 1942, Mr. Andrews was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and flew the B-17—the Flying Fortress—out of England. On his 13th mission, his plane was fired on by Luftwaffe fighters, and Mr. Andrews was forced to set his damaged bomber down in neutral Switzerland. He spent seven months in internment camps there before being released through a prisoner exchange with Germany. (Along the way, he carried out a spy mission for Allen Dulles, who headed up the OSS in Europe.) After the war Mr. Andrews settled in New York, where he became a documentary filmmaker. Although he didn’t finish the Program, Mr. Andrews carried the ideals of the joe sledge, va medical center is health wouldn’t allow World War II veteran Martin Andrews (class of 1943) to come to Annapolis to receive the Alumni Award of Merit, the highest honor given by the Alumni Association. So Alumni Director Jo Ann Mattson (A87) and Steve Thomas (SF75), vice president of the association, traveled to the Northport Veteran’s Administration Medical Center on Long Island, New York, to present the award to him on March 17. They brought with them a special guest: tutor Eva Brann (H89), who through a dedicated correspondence with Mr. Andrews developed a friendship that has lasted more than two decades. When they arrived at the center Mr. Andrews introduced his wife, Jean, to the group and quipped to Miss Brann, “she knows I love you.” The Award of Merit was presented by Mr. Thomas, in recognition of Mr. Andrews’ outstanding service to the country, his affection and dedication for St. John’s and the ideals it represents, Mr. Andrews has been deemed a most worthy recipient of the Award of Merit,” he said. The ceremony was held in a common room of the VA Center, where Mr. Andrews college to war with him, Miss Brann said: “Under the pilot’s window of the Flying Fortress he piloted, he preempted the display of the customary buxom blonde by a stenciled quotation from our old seal: Nulla via invia virtutis—No way is impassable to courage,” she said. “From his aircraft he released catalogues of the New Program attached to little parachutes. It still makes my heart leap to think of these plans for a liberal education floating down from the heavens into totalitarian Germany.” Miss Brann recalled meeting Mr. Andrews at Homecoming in 1998, and shortly afterward, she received the first of his letters, an account of his war experiences. “ How young they all were, Lieutenant Andrews himself only 23? And what the world owes them. He won’t, I hope, mind this way of putting it, although he modestly disowns any praise for his personal courage.” She expressed her gratitude for the friendship that has developed through letters: “When I see his beautiful handwriting on an envelope, I’m happy.” She noted that they have occupied the same places but at different times or under different circumstances during their lives. For example, in 1943 Mr. Andrews passed under escort through San Sebastian in Spain after his release from internment in Switzerland. “As it happens, I too passed under escort through San Sebastian, but in 1941, when a last refugee transport was mounted leaving Berlin for Lisbon.” Miss Brann and her family settled in Brooklyn, and after earning a doctorate at Yale, she became a tutor at St. John’s in 1957. “So now, once more, space and time have happily made connection for us,” Miss Brann concluded. “It is indeed purely wonderful to me, for I’ve grown to love Martin.” Still dapper at age 89, Mr. Andrews was visibly moved by the presentation. He expressed gratitude for both the honor from St. John’s and the visit from Miss Brann. “This is a thrilling moment for me, because Eva Brann is an extraordinary woman,” he told the guests. “She is the dearest correspondent I have, and I love her dearly.” x Penpals Eva Brann and Martin Andrews have developed a deep friendship, rooted in mutual admiration. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �{Alumni Association News} Spotlight: The Harrisburg Reading Group W hen Hannah Eagleson (AGI04) moved back home to Hershey, Pennsylvania, to work on her doctoral dissertation on lyric poets, she found herself missing seminar. She missed the conversations she had at the St. John’s Graduate Institute and as a graduate student at the University of Delaware. It might have been easy to find a book group or a reading club in the area, but that wasn’t what she was looking for. “I wanted to meet more people who enjoyed reading and wrestling with texts in the way that Johnnies tend to,” she says. “Many of my friends in this area are thoughtful readers, but they might not have time for a St. John’s style reading group.” In February, Eagleson started a St. John’s alumni reading group in nearby Harrisburg. Meeting once a month at a local coffee house, participants get together to discuss works. Leadership of the discussion rotates between members, who can ask an opening question if they choose. Participants in the group include alumni from both campuses, and from both the undergraduate and graduate programs. Regular participants include 51 ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION All alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the association. “I love reading with Johnnies because they tend to be interested in approaching the text on its own terms. . .” President – Jason Walsh (A85) Vice President – Steve Thomas (SF74) Secretary – Joanne Murray (A70) Treasurer – Richard Cowles (A70) Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Hannah Eagleson Randy St. John (AGI87), Aaron and Sarah Frederickson (SF95), Kristen Litsinger (A93), Marvin Israel (SFGI73), Rebecca Stevenson (AGI95), Mike Jerominski (SF97), and Kristin Lockhart (SF97). Readings have included selected poetry of John Donne and King Lear, which Randy St. John has been leading the group through act-by-act. Group members are eager to move beyond the seminar to arrange social and cultural outings; they’re planning to attend a local Shakespeare in the Park production of Cymbeline, as well as organize a group hike. “We’re still figuring out a lot of things, but it’s been very exciting so far,” Eagleson says. “[I]t has been a great pleasure to give careful attention to texts together, and to hear what everyone else has to say. I love reading with Johnnies because they tend to be interested in approaching the text on its own terms, but also interested in how texts interact with life experience.” The group typically meets on the fourth Friday of each month at Cornerstone Coffeehouse, 2133 Market St., Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Contact Hannah Eagleson (hannaheag@comcast.net) for more information. — Sara Luell (A09) Introducing Nancie Wingo I n June, Nancie Wingo joined the Santa Fe staff as director of Alumni Activities. Prior to joining the college, Wingo worked in Richmond, Va., for the YMCA of Greater Richmond Association. She held numerous roles in her seven years with the association, most recently directing member services. A native of Merced, Calif., Wingo is a 1981 graduate of Baylor University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communications. She has also held jobs in public relations and marketing. She has two sons: Harrison, 23, and Andrew, 19. An avid traveler, Wingo enjoys tennis, hiking, reading, films and trying new recipes. Wingo is pleased to join “this gem of a college” and eager for the opportunity to reach out to Santa Fe alumni. “I have a deep and growing respect for the College, the Program, a stimulating community, and the opportunities that the future holds,” she says. x { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �52 greenfield library {St. John’s Forever} A century ago this past February—just as the college was preparing to celebrate the 125th anniversary of its charter— McDowell Hall was gutted by a blaze most likely caused by defective wiring. President Thomas Fell had been working in his McDowell office that Saturday morning, February 20. He later told the Baltimore Sun that he and his secretary had smelled smoke, but they both thought someone was burning trash nearby. Fell went home to lunch at 1 p.m., but within minutes, his secretary was at the door, reporting that McDowell was on fire. Students formed a bucket brigade, but they soon realized they could not reach the source of the flames. Instead, led by faculty members, they concentrated on saving the building’s contents, including college records (including some from King William’s School), class shields and portraits of the college’s presidents. Led by Lt. E. Berkely Iglehart (class of 1894), a squad of students was dispatched to carry out the 30,000 rounds of ammunition for the college’s military program stored in the basement. Firemen and midshipmen from the Naval Academy also helped fight the blaze, which could be seen for miles around and attracted hundreds of spectators to the campus. When it was all over, the upper two floors of McDowell were gone. Falling debris and water left the building’s first floor in ruins. Though badly damaged, the masonry walls were intact, and this helped Fell and the board decide that McDowell would rise again. Contributions from alumni started pouring in immediately. With their financial support, the college rebuilt McDowell according to its original design, { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } with the largely intact rear rooms serving as models. By June 1910, the reconstruction was complete. In 1989, the college undertook an extensive restoration of McDowell, moving administrative offices to a new wing in Mellon Hall and refiguring them as classrooms, installing heating and air conditioning, and shoring up the floors and galleries. It’s hard to imagine the Annapolis campus without McDowell. Its iconic bell tower was carried over to the design of another building 2000 miles away, what would become Weigle Hall in Santa Fe. x For more on McDowell’s history and a full account of the 1909 fire, consult McDowell Hall at St. John’s College in Annapolis: 1742-1989, by John Christensen with Charles Bohl. �{Eidos} On Moving Again This evening, walking along the long field My eye was drawn to a living shimmer in the sky: Three aspens alone alive in a world of almost motionless Cottonwood and willow and Chinese elm trees. The breeze that barely stirred the others Sprang it free, spangling leaves like light on water, An electric flutter, the secret energy In the heart of the world revealed. Free. An aspen leaf might believe itself inordinately busy (especially comparatively) and certain therefore It will expire prematurely, useless, stupid, failed. From where I stood, it was the most beautiful thing to see. My life could be similarly pleasing to God. I guess this could be service enough for me. Liz Waldner About the artist and poet Karina Hean’s Nebulous (36" x 24" charcoal, conté, and graphite on cotton rag paper, 2007) was created for an exhibit at the University of Colorado. After teaching at Fort Lewis College and completing several national and international fellowships and residencies, Hean (A00) will be a visiting professor at the University of Montana this fall. Upcoming solo exhibitions include the Contemporary Center for the Arts in December 2009, Fort Lewis College in January 2010, and ArtHaus 66 in summer 2010. Liz Waldner (A83) is the author of Saving the Appearances; Dark Would (the missing person),winner of the 2002 Contemporary Poetry Series; Etym(bi)ology; Self and Simulacra (2001), winner of the Alice James Books Beatrice Hawley Prize; A Point Is That Which Has No Part, winner of the 2000 James Laughlin Award and the 1999 Iowa Poetry Prize; and Homing Devices (1998). Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Ploughshares, VOLT, and many other publications. { T h e C o l l e g e • St. John’s College • Summer 2009 } �NON -P ROFIT ORG . U.S. P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED A NNAPOLIS , MD P ERMIT NO . 120 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <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, Summer 2009 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Issue of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Summer 2009. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Magazine_Summer_2009 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/48bc97ee162d9b5a7cda2bab17b7a7bf.pdf 09482996b84077bfe8afc7d84bab5e9c PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis w i n t e r • 2 0 0 3 Santa Fe TheWife of Bath Reflections on C h a u c e r’ s P i l g r i m a n d Moder n Marriage �On the Wife of Bath t’s easy to imagine the Wife of Bath among the guests on the Jerry Springer Show. The screen caption: “I was a lusty oon!” Unapologetic about her appetites and seductive wiles, the oft-wed Wife would acknowledge that she married older men for their money and was on the prowl for a man half her age while burying her fourth husband. And—would Dr. Phil buy this?—she blames her nature on astrology: “I followed my inclinacion/by vertu of my constellacion.” Several of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales share their observations on the matrimonial state, but none with the candor and outrageous good humor of the Wife of Bath. Her lengthy, spirited prologue suggests the poet himself had great fun with this pilgrim. Using her voice, he delivers wisdom he had acquired from Ptolemy, Seneca, and Ovid, among others. In this edition of The College, managing editor Sus3an Borden revisited the Wife of Bath’s commentary on marriage with five Johnnie couples, covering everything from fighting fair to what becomes of two sets of Program books. From a host of official documents, much is known about Chaucer’s public life, but details on his personal life are sketchy. He was born in London around 1340, the son of a successful wine merchant. He was lucky to survive the bubonic plague as it raged through the city during his youth. He gained a post as a page in the household of the Countess of Ulster. Here Chaucer gained knowledge of Latin, French, and literature, though it’s unclear what formal education he received. He traveled to Spain and France on diplomatic missions and served in the war with France. Chaucer’s wife, Philippa, also served in the royal court. Biographers differ on whether this marriage was a happy one, but there’s nothing to suggest Chaucer suffered at the hands of a shrewish wife. The couple had at least two children. Pensions, various annuities including free wine, and plum positions as a customs official, and later, the king’s clerk of works provided Chaucer with social standing and a comfortable lifestyle—along with the freedom to pursue poetry. Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales the year Phillipa died, 1387, and of course, never completed it. He died on October 25, 1400. Because of his service to the crown, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, and later was moved to the east aisle of the south transept, becoming the first tenant of Poet’s Corner. A brief aside: The introduction of a great books character, instead of an author, to our magazine’s cover startled our designer, Claude Skelton, who put Aristotle on the first cover of The College. The selection delighted artist David Johnson, who said he had great fun drawing the Wife of Bath. Alert readers will also notice another change: The College has a new editor. Rest assured that founding editor Barbara Goyette (A73), now vice president for advancement in Annapolis, will continue to offer a guiding hand and good advice in our quest to offer a lively and thoughtful publication. I –RH The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM. Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, md 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, md postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, md 21404-2800. Annapolis 410-626-2539 reharty@sjca.edu Rosemary Harty, editor Sus3an Borden, managing editor Susanne Ducker, art director Advisory Board John Christensen Harvey Flaumenhaft Roberta Gable Barbara Goyette Kathryn Heines Pamela Kraus Joseph Macfarland Jo Ann Mattson Eric Salem Brother Robert Smith Santa Fe 505-984-6104 tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor Advisory Board David Levine Ginger Roherty Tahmina Shalizi Mark St. John Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �The w i n t e r 2 0 0 3 2 9 , i s s u e 1 College V o l u m e The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 14 Fruitful Pursuits page d e p a r t m e n t s 2 Alumni involved in various aspects of the wine industry explain why they’re so taken with wine. 20 Johnnies on Marriage page The Wife of Bath had strong opinions on marriage; alumni who married fellow Johnnies reflect on her wit and wisdom. page 14 • Modernist Architecture and Mellon Hall • American Orpheus • Graduate Institute Student Gets Johnnies on Board • Science at St. John’s Makes the Top Ten • Animal Tales from Santa Fe • Studying Conifers in the Mountains • Santa Fe’s New Advancement Chief • Announcements • Philanthropia • Letters alumni voices 27 homecoming 30 bibliofile 24 Engaged in Discovery 12 page Curtis Wilson is still on a quest to learn all he can about early astronomers. • Peter Pesic’s New Book on Physics • Alumni Books 44 Dance of the Muses 32 page Exploring the poetry of Homer and Aeschylus through dance. from the bell towers alumni notes A LU M N I page 20 P RO F I L E S 33 Peter Ellison (A73) finds new challenges as a Harvard dean. 34 Environmental lawyer and tutor Martha Franks (SF78) brings idealism and a practical approach to the water rights issue. 38 Jonathan Aurthur (A68) searches for answers to his son’s suicide in The Angel and the Dragon. 42 Ben Frey (A02) finds art in bookbinding obituaries 46 alumni association news 48 st. john’s forever 40 page 24 on the cover Wife of Bath Illustration by David Johnson �2 {From the Bell Towers} The Neutra Chronicles Austrian-born architect Richard Neutra made his mark in modernist architecture in sunny California with simple structures featuring flat roofs, expansive glass walls, and interiors open to verdant hillsides or colorful desert views. Neutra was particularly known for blurring the lines between the exterior and interior, believing that architects should “place man in Nature…where he developed and where he feels most at home.” How did St. John’s College, its landmark building a 200year-old Georgian mansion, decide on Richard Neutra as architect for its new campus building in the mid-1950’s? A campus plan already called for a quasi-colonial building. Correspondence between the famed architect and then-president Richard Weigle yielded evidence for part of the story of Mellon Hall. Along with hundreds of documents on minutiae such as carpet color and the fabric for the stage curtains in Francis Scott Key Auditorium, the letters show Weigle admired Neutra, and suggest that he hoped to gain distinction for the college by selecting a celebrity architect. Neutra made the cover of the August 15, 1949, Time magazine, the headline asking, “What will the neighbors think?” The story, included with a set of press clippings kept in the files, detailed Neutra’s success and described him as second “only to the lordly Frank Lloyd Wright.” (Wright by this time had distanced himself from Neutra, refusing to allow his designs to be included david trozzo The story behind Mellon Hall in Annapolis Last September, the College unveiled a greatly improved Mellon Hall. the $12.9 million renovation undertaken in April 2001 added new space, upgraded and improved mechanical systems and generally produced a more pleasant and functional building. A new wing of the building houses a pottery studio, a darkroom, and the Hodson Trust Conference Room (shown above). A solarium café honors Neutra’s vision of uniting interior spaces with nature. A red tile floor installed throughout the building brightens long, unbroken corridors. A new environmentally friendly cooling system—geared to operate at off-peak hours—circulates cool air during the day. Francis Scott Key Auditorium has new heating and air-conditioning systems, enhanced theater lighting and sound, refurbished seating, new fire suppression systems, and improved lobby space. Science labs were renovated and upgraded. in an exhibit alongside those of his former protégé.) It’s likely that something in Neutra’s rhetoric resonated with the ideals of the Program, not yet two decades old. A yellowed clipping in one file includes a Neutra quote that must have seemed particularly cogent: “A school,” says Neutra, “is essentially a container out of which organic life can bloom.” Philosophy aside, Neutra’s prominence must have appealed to a college still struggling to boost enrollment from 220 to 300 and still managing limited resources. The architect was at the peak of his popularity when he came to St. John’s to give a lecture at the same time the college was forging ahead with its building plans. Paul Mellon’s Old Dominion Foundation came through with $1.5 million of the estimated $2.1 million project cost. (The phi- lanthropist Mellon was briefly a member of the class of 1944.) Neutra’s fame could only help to shine the light on this small college. The files reflect Neutra’s personal commitments to a relatively small and obscure project; he didn’t just loan his famous name to the design. While Neutra’s partner, Robert Alexander, handled many of the project’s details, Neutra made several trips to Annapolis to oversee construction and corresponded closely with Weigle. His letters—some in his bold, slanting script— reflect that he considered himself as much a philosopher as an architect, and that the New Program at St. John’s intrigued him. Neutra accepted the job for considerably less than his regular fee (though not as low as Weigle had tried to bargain for, one letter shows). The { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } contract was signed on April 15, 1955. The familiarity between the two Richards, and between Weigle’s wife, Mary, and Neutra’s wife, Dionne, grew over the years, as reflected in handwritten notes from Pakistan and postcards from Rio. The letters and notes are all written in the graciously charming rhetoric of a time gone by. Neutra once loaned Weigle his car when the president made a business trip to California in 1959: “I quite fell in love with that little Nash,” he wrote to Neutra. In 1957, Neutra—who at one time offered to raise money for the college’s planned California campus— thanked the Weigles for a Christmas gift: “Smoked tuna is one of my great favorites!” Apparently, Weigle’s public relations goals for the building were successful. President �{From the Bell Towers} American Orpheus 3 I was studying at the Stuttgart Conservatory on the G.I. bill when Mellon Hall first opened in 1958. [Musician and tutor] Victor Zuckerkandl wrote me to say he had been approached by [thenpresident] Dick Weigle, who had told him that Paul Mellon was planning to give the school $30,000 to do something “really grand” for the opening. Weigle asked Vicki if he had any ideas and Vicki said yes, he had a wonderful idea. He had just learned that the first great opera ever written, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, had never had a stage production in the U.S. “How would that be appropriate, Dr. Zukerkandl?” asked Weigle. “Well,” Vicki said, “Wasn’t Francis Scott Key the American Orpheus?” Vicki told me that Weigle looked dubious and said he would think about it. He asked if I had any other ideas for the opening because he feared that Weigle wouldn’t buy the “American Orpheus” connection. I wrote back to say that I did. I had just learned about the following astonishing chain of circumstances: Lorenzo da Ponte was born just outside of Venice in the middle of the 18th century to a Jewish family. His mother died when he was young and his father remarried a Christian woman. The whole family was converted to Catholicism. Da Ponte went to seminary, became a priest, and went on to have a very colorful life. He moved to Vienna where he was the official composer to one of the imperial theaters, writing a number of libretti for operas including Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan Tutte. Da Ponte fell in love with an English contralto and married her. They fled the Holy Roman Empire to England where he produced opera for about 20 years, then moved to the U.S. in the early 19th century. Da Ponte first had a grocery store in Philadelphia, then in Elizabeth, N.J., where one of his customers was William Livingston, the son of a prominent American family. William Livingston became fascinated by Da Ponte and had him appointed the first professor of Italian literature in the U.S., at Columbia College. Da Ponte took a house in Manhattan and Nathaniel Sickles, the son of a well-known New York family, moved in with the Da Pontes and was tutored by Lorenzo’s son, a professor at the school that was to become N.Y.U. Sickles became very friendly with Lorenzo and fell in love with his step-granddaughter (who was generally believed to be his real granddaughter). Around 1840, they married. Sickles became a New York state assemblyman and was eventually elected to Congress. Sickles and his wife moved to Washington and his wife began a very public affair with St. John’s alumnus Philip Barton Key (class of 1822), who was the district attorney of the District of Columbia, as his father, Francis Scott Key (SJC class of 1796), had been. Sickles became enraged by the affair, followed Key to Lafayette Square, and shot him dead. “So Vicki,” I said, “any one of the Da Ponte libretti, particularly Cosi fan Tutte, would be appropriate for the opening.” Vicki was delighted by the story, but as it turned out, an alternate plan for a suitable opening production was not necessary. The previous Sunday he and some old friends from Austria had visited Fort McHenry. They spent the day walking all around the battlements. As they were leaving, they passed a large bronze statue of Francis Scott Key. Engraved on the marble plinth were the words: “Francis Scott Key, the American Orpheus.” x Dwight D. Eisenhower attended dedication ceremonies for the building in 1959, attracting a great deal of media attention. The building was also included in a Newsweek feature on distinctive new campus buildings, along with a project at Yale. Before and after the building was occupied, flaws came to light: The roof leaked. Adhesive oozed from between floor tiles. The reflecting pool—such a successful element in so many Neutra projects—couldn’t hold water. The solar louvers designed to save energy trapped pigeons and never worked properly. Walking an architecture critic through the building last September, Ziger/Snead architect Joseph Celucci, who headed up the recent renovation, flaws that might have been avoided had the project been adequately funded from the outset. Nevertheless, St. John’s still possesses an architectural jewel: one of the last remaining Neutra buildings on the East Coast, an ambitious design that tried to strike a balance between the upper and lower campuses, between old and new, simple and ornate. And Mellon Hall, Celucci added, really is a good Neutra building. It exemplified what the architect did best, and for the most part, remained true to his ideals. Stand in the lobby of the Francis Scott Key auditorium, and it’s easy to imagine what Neutra had in mind. In a letter to the editor of Architectural Record, dated July 1959, Neutra wrote of his Monteverdi’s Orfeo was performed on January 31 and February 1, 1959, in celebration of the opening of Francis Scott Key Auditorium and Mellon Hall. As we celebrate the building’s recently completed renovation, ADAM P INSKER (class of 1952) tells the story behind the college’s decision to stage the opera. Richard Neutra explained that a tight construction budget in the 1950s was one factor in the building’s shortcomings; later renovations, including the $12.9 million expansion and renovation completed this fall, corrected { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } goals for the building and compared St. John’s to the great universities of Europe. St. John’s, he said, would endure as they have: “There is a great stimulation—I almost said a thrill—to meet [the] most advanced thinkers of our age in old, long-lived universities and see them teach modern science way beyond the horizon of former centuries, right in halls and buildings which have been built in those now long bygone days. The faculty of St. John’s in Annapolis has this fascinating capacity of Time-binding, and from the start we have among ourselves discussed and tried to grasp and express this faith in values that last beyond historic and modish realities.” x —by Rosemary Harty �4 {From the Bell Towers} Johnnies On board We Do That “Sail like Odysseus, without having to be tied to the mast!” So went the siren call for recruits to the newly formed Johnnie Sailing Club, the inspiration of John Bergquist, a Graduate Institute student with an Alberg 30-foot sailboat and a job as a naval architect in Annapolis. Bergquist placed posters for the new club all over campus, offering students sailing lessons, a chance to join the racing team, or simply the opportunity to get out on the water for those disinclined to join the crew club. So far, about 40 undergraduate and graduate students have signed on. Bergquist is a naval architect with a bachelor’s in naval architecture and master’s in marine technology, and his work has included programming for tanker performance testing, industrial fabrication, and service on commercial vessels. He arrived at the Graduate Institute last fall in search of personal enrichment. “I graduated with a glorified trade school education,” he says. “It was very practical, but I had maybe two classes in the liberal arts.” Bergquist found a way to merge liberal arts and sailing in the Johnnie Sailing Club, begun last spring when he acquired a boat named Calliope (the muse invoked in the Odyssey and the Aeneid). Last July, Bergquist and some fellow students started to take part in Annapolis’ famed sara white wilson A Graduate Institute student brings serious sailing to St. John’s. Wednesday night boat races on his boat, and Bergquist hopes to have some students hardy enough to participate in the Annapolis Yacht Club’s winter frostbite series. In the Johnnie way, it wasn’t enough just to take students racing and cruising; Bergquist also offered a series of Wednesday evening classes on sailing and seamanship, covering topics such as the physics of sailing, racing tactics, and navigation. “He has a wonderful understanding of fluid dynamics, both aero and hydro,” says sophomore Christopher Muscarella. “It adds a component more than mere boat handling and adds a Heeding the siren’s call on College Creek. depth of understanding that many sailors lack.” Bergquist’s yacht is a great addition to the water sports program, says athletic director Leo Pickens. “Our boats aren’t really rigged out with all the bells and whistles for racing,” Pickens says. Ultimately, the new club offers a way to leave Hegel or Heidegger behind for a few hours on the Chesapeake. “Sailing is a form of escapism,” says Muscarella. “In Santa Fe, they have mountains. In Annapolis, we have the water.” x –Beth Schulman { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } Many at St. John’s clipped a full-page article from the September 24 New York Times science section and crowed about it in that self-satisfied tone of people who love to be proven right. That’s because the article on the “10 Most Beautiful Science Experiments of All Time” featured seven that are performed regularly in the college’s laboratory program. State University of New YorkStony Brook Professor Robert P. Crease, also the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiments of all time and wrote about the results for Physics World. The simple experiments were chosen, according to the Times, on “beauty in the classical sense: the logical simplicity of the apparatus, like the logical simplicity of the analysis, seems as inevitable and pure as the lines of a Greek monument. Confusion and ambiguity are momentarily swept aside, and something new about nature becomes clear.” The experiments on the list that students on both campuses regularly perform are: Galileo’s experiment on falling objects; Young’s light interference experiment; Millikan’s oil-drop experiment; Newton’s decomposition of sunlight with a prism; Galileo’s experiments with rolling balls down inclined planes; Rutherford’s discovery of the nucleus; and Young’s double-slit experiment applied (by Planck and Einstein) to the interference of single neutrons. x �5 {From the Bell Towers} A Duck’s Tale Courage and perseverance in the face of hardship and tragedy pay off. A recent blessed event on the Santa Fe campus proves it. But first some background: In the spring of 1999 some feckless folk gave their kids two baby ducks for Easter and were surprised to see them grow. Not wishing to deal with these messy but harmless critters, they traumatized their children by handing the ducks over to the Santa Fe animal shelter— which does its best to save anything but is not well equipped to deal with waterfowl. Most of the offers to give them “homes” were motivated by visions of duck à l’orange. What were the animal protectors to do? Betsy Starr (née Hamilton, SF88), protector of God’s more innocent creatures, was working for the shelter at the time and brought them home. Mr. The unexpected ducklings and their parents. Starr, tutor and clandestine friend of animals, built them a fenced yard behind the casita on the south corner of lower campus. The ducks proved to be a male and a female (Ambrose—later renamed Utka for theological reasons—and Blossom). That fall, tragedy struck. Their prefab igloo was not secure against predators, and Blossom fell prey to a raccoon out for a midnight snack. Rescued by Mrs. Starr from his wife’s fate, Utka was given a plywood fortress and saved from loneliness by the arrival of the beautiful orange Peach. Thus these ducks began two years of persistent procreative endeavor. The broody Ms. Peach produced nearly an egg a day from April to October in 2000. Realizing that Peach was longing for a full nest, Mr. Starr rearranged the fowl apartment to accommodate egg-sitting, and for the next year and a half Peach produced what is called a “clutch” of eight to twelve eggs every couple of months and sat on them until they started to smell bad. The two nesting ducks had a fertility problem, and the Starrs, partly relieved and partly sorry, resigned themselves to using the unfertile eggs for pisyanki, omelettes, and the like. The relief was short-lived. After another barren summer, while the Starrs were on vacation, Peach valiantly produced another clutch with her attentive partner’s more efficacious help. Upon return the Starrs noted that brooding was again in process. Expecting more reproductive disappointment for the poor ducks, they decided to leave them to their bravely fruitless work. Sunday morning, September 1, 2002, Mrs. Starr went out to feed Utka and Peach, and heard unfamiliar peeping sounds. Investigating the mystery, she found a new-hatched duckling emerging from an egg, and some tiny siblings already moving about the nest. From the first week, during which the four baby ducks could (and did) all swim together in a little water dish, they have in six short weeks grown into very fine, stalwart adolescence. Apricot, Posey, Gwyneth, and Lance (as they are tentatively called) are doing fine, and their proud parents seem very pleased. x —David Starr, tutor, Santa Fe { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } Allanbrook Honored The Cultural Arts Foundation of Anne Arundel County selected Tutor Emeritus Douglas Allanbrook as one of the recipients of an “Annie” award for lifetime achievement. The honor recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the cultural life of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County. A renowned composer and harpsichordist, Allanbrook joined St. John’s in 1952. In November, the college celebrated his 50 years at St. John’s with a recital of his works and a reception. Allanbrook continues to teach French at the college. He is an active member of the board at Yaddo, an artists’ residential community in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a member of the advisory board for the Great Books of Western Civilization program of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Allanbrook is at work on a novel and his sixth string quartet. x �6 {From the Bell Towers} Philanthropia’s New Direction “I started to feel that it would be a good idea to help educate alumni about the needs of the college.” Brett Heavner Not long after graduating from law school at Duke University, Brett Heavner (A89) noticed that something was missing in his life. That something, he says, was a mailbox full of fundraising letters from St. John’s College. “My law school contacted me all the time, so I was surprised that I was not pressured in the same way by St. John’s to give. I started to feel that it would be a good idea to help educate alumni about the needs of the college.” Today, Heavner is in a position to do just that as chair of Philanthropia, the alumni organization dedicated to alumni fund raising. A major part of the group’s efforts is devoted to educating alumni about the needs and financial workings of St. John’s. Heavner’s first involvement with Philanthropia was in 1998, when he was asked to attend a brainstorming session for the relatively new group. (Philanthropia started in 1997.) He quickly signed on as reunion class leader for the class of ’89, then chair of the reunion class leader committee, and now he leads the entire organization. A great deal has changed since that initial brainstorming session, says Heavner. “When Philanthropia was first being developed, the college Advancement Office was not fully staffed. We did much of our own legwork, we had a strategy committee, we had committees that planned different aspects of fund raising.” Now that Philanthropia is up and running and the college has hired more staff to support the group, Heavner says that the volunteers’ role has shifted. “Volunteers can focus more on recruiting fellow alumni and contacting classmates,” he says. “We are also getting more comfortable in our relationship with the Alumni Association.” Early on, he explains, there were questions about possible competition with the Association. “That doesn’t make sense,” he says. “We don’t want to compete. We’re really just a group of volunteers who want to educate fellow alumni about the needs of the college and to foster the habit of regular giving.” As Heavner became involved with Philanthropia, he found one of its educational mes- sages—alumni participation— particularly interesting. “One of the things that struck me is that the percentage of participation by alumni is as important as the dollar amounts they give. When St. John’s goes for corporate or government grants or nonprofit funding, they’re competing with other colleges, and one of the things these organizations look for is the amount of support the college has from its alumni.” When Philanthropia started, St. John’s was toward the bottom: about 22 percent of alumni gave to the college. Other liberal arts colleges, such as Williams, Bowdoin, and Amherst, ranged from 57 to 66 percent. Five years into Philanthropia, St. John’s alumni participation has climbed to 29 percent. “I certainly didn’t understand this as a recently graduated alumnus,” says Heavner. “I think I, like many others, thought, ‘if I’m really strapped for cash in graduate school, I don’t want to send something stupid like five bucks so I’ll just wait until I have more money.’ But now I understand that those five dollars would have gone further, they would have made St. John’s more competitive.” Under Heavner’s leadership, Philanthropia is working on developing special class gifts during reunion years, communicating regularly with all alumni and encouraging them to give to the Annual Fund. They also sponsor social events each year throughout the country. “We’re heading in a new direction now that we’ve had fairly successful reunion class programs,” says Heavner. “We’re trying to keep the momentum going by having class archons who will take responsibility for maintaining addresses, sending out end-ofyear holiday postcards, maintaining and updating class web sites, and keeping in contact between reunion class years.” Heavner’s relationship to the college is not, of course, all about fund raising. He says that his class has always been fairly close and, living in Washington, D.C., he sees a number of alumni regularly. His brother, Bryce (A93), is also an alumnus. In addition, the Annapolis campus holds a special place in his heart. Although he and his high school sweetheart, Christine, had split up during college, the two reunited in 1996 to attend the Lafayette Ball for St. John’s 300th anniversary. The couple married a year later in the Great Hall. Look for them and their two toddlers, Graham and Tess, on the sidelines of this year’s croquet match. x The Freshmen: A Few Facts St. John’s College welcomed 263 freshmen to the college last September: 124 in Annapolis and 139 in Santa Fe. Counter to the trend many liberal arts colleges are seeing, men still outnumber women: (72 to 52 in Annapolis; 80 to 59 in Santa Fe). More than 50 percent of the students at each campus were 18 at the time of enrollment. Santa Fe draws the highest number of students from California (27), Colorado (15), and Texas (12). In Annapolis, Marylanders dominate (17) with Virginians close behind (14). New York and Pennsylvania yielded 10 freshmen apiece. Santa Fe enrolled 34 students who had received National Merit honors, Annapolis, 47. Most students at both campuses attended public secondary schools. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �7 {From the Bell Towers} Michael Franco: Energizing Advancement in Santa Fe teri thompson randall Here’s a fact about Michael Franco that clearly defines the mettle he is made of: He had the nerve, growing up outside of Boston, to be a diehard Yankees fanatic—“not fan, fanatic,” he says. That takes courage in Red Sox country. Learning from and later working with Jesuits at Boston College, Franco adapted the Jesuit philosophy of “don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness” as he climbed the ranks of college advancement. “I’ve always interpreted that saying as a call to act and to follow through on what you believe,” he says. Franco, who joined St. John’s last summer as the vice president for college advancement in Santa Fe, brings many years of experience in college advancement with institutions including Boston College, Roger Williams University, Michael Franco The Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Rochester. In a recent Board of Visitors and Governors meeting in Annapolis, Santa Fe President John Balkcom praised Franco for prompting the campus to re-examine entrenched ways of doing things and for bringing new energy and ideas to the advancement efforts and management of the college. A short six months spent on the job, and Franco has discovered the key facts that will shape his approach to the work before him. While other institutions he has worked for have much larger alumni bases from which they can draw financial support (Boston College counts 135,000 alumni, for example), St. John’s has something else—what Franco calls “the power and centrality of the Program.” “Everything we do here begins and ends with the Program,” Franco says. “The real key to our message is the receptivity of our audience. In a short time, I’ve seen what strong emotional ties our alumni have to the college. I’ve seen that in the letters people send, the passion and intensity of their loyalty.” Franco says his most recent position, as advancement vice president at the Rhode Island School of Design, best prepared him for the challenges of St. John’s. “Some of the strategies and programs we were able to start in Rhode Island are good lessons for me as I begin to help define what the advancement role for the Santa Fe campus needs to be,” he says. Although very different institutions, the two schools share in common a loyal alumni base, and fund raising at both share the same dynamics, says Franco. “If you stay true to your mission, your alumni will support you.” Franco grew up in Fall River, Mass., a gritty blue-collar town (home of Lizzie Borden), the youngest of three children of a Portuguese father and Irish mother. His father worked as a galvanizer, which Franco says, “basically involved pouring molten lead into molds.” The economic boom that benefited other towns in the Boston area never reached Fall River. In a town where many of the young people didn’t go beyond high school, Franco went on to earn a bachelor’s at Boston College, a master’s at Boston University and a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester—a source of great pride for his family. “I’m a survivor—I think people who come out of Fall River share that in common,” he says. “I don’t look back; I keep going.” Franco and his wife, Susan, were grateful to trade Rochester winters and muggy Boston summers for sunny Santa Fe. But the transition from a brick house in downtown Providence to an adobe house on a dirt road has taken some getting used to for the city dwellers. “I refer to our house as the wild kingdom,” Franco says. “At any given moment there are raccoons in the chimney, coyotes running through the yard, mice aplenty. My wife even saw a bear the other night.” x “Everything we do here begins and ends with the Program.” Announcements The Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses each welcomed four new tutors this fall. New Tutors at Santa Fe MICHAEL ANDREWS received a bachelor’s degree in history from Montana State University in 1992. He received an M.A. in 1997 from Tulane University, and is expecting to receive a Ph.D. this coming year. His dissertation, “The Endless Republic: Liberty, Tradition, and the Flight from the Past,” is a study of the origins and the subsequent development of the idea of liberty and related concepts such as individualism and personal autonomy. MONIKA CASSEL received an A.B. in comparative literature, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1992. She pursued graduate studies in comparative literature at the University of Michigan, where she received her Ph.D. in 2002. The title of her dissertation is “Poetesses at the Grave: Transnational Circulation of Women’s Memorial Verse in Nineteenth-Century England, Germany, and America.” INGO FARIN was born in East Germany and raised in West Germany. He received an M.A. from the Free University of Berlin in 1985, and expects to complete a Ph.D. in philosophy from Indiana University this { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } August. Farin’s dissertation is “Before Being and Time: Heidegger’s Life Philosophy.” His areas of interest have recently included phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism, and critical theory, as well as the history of philosophy. A 1994 graduate of St. John’s Santa Fe campus, KENNETH WOLFE received a Ph.D. in classics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002, with a dissertation on “The �8 {From the Bell Towers} Announcements Relation of the Form to the Intellect in Plotinus.” His special interests include ancient philosophy, intellectual history, social history, and Greek and Latin literature. New Tutors in Annapolis SRIRAM NAMBIAR received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the State University of New York, Buffalo. He specialized in the history and philosophy of logic, mathematics, and natural science. He wrote a dissertation on George Boole and he taught in the departments of chemistry, education, and philosophy. He has also been a research assistant in experimental and computational studies of the thermophysical properties of chemical mixtures, and in experimental and theoretical studies of fluid mechanics of soil erosion. LOUIS PETRICH received a bachelor’s degree in English (continued) from Northwestern University, where he began his studies in an integrated science program but shifted majors when his interest turned to poetry. He received a master’s degree from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where his work emphasized philosophy and literature, especially the plays of Shakespeare. He spent many years in theater activities. As a member of the Peace Corps in Czechoslovakia, he taught English language and American culture and literature. JASON TIPTON received a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology, with a minor in philosophy, from the University of California at San Diego. He then received a master’s degree in philosophy and another one in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University, from which he also received a Ph.D. in philosophy, with a dissertation on Aristotle’s Parts of Animals. He has published articles on Plato’s dialogues and on “This [diversity] initiative allows for a more concentrated effort.” –Lawrence Clendenin Aristotle’s biological writings, and a number of scientific articles on fish, his research specialty. He has worked in the Aegean studying the life histories of marine life that Aristotle discusses. A graduate of St. John’s Graduate Institute in Annapolis, JOANNA TOBIN received a bachelor’s degree in medieval and Renaissance studies from Wellesley College, after which she worked at a classical repertory theater in New York. She then worked at fund raising and producing large events for a Washington foundation. Her rachel martin From Concept to Structure At Santa Fe last fall, freshmen studying Euclid’s ELEMENTS were assigned a project to create a visual representation of interpropositional connections. Given free rein, students pursued a variety of media, from paintings to flow charts. Shown here is Nichole Miller, who drew from her experience constructing three-dimensional installation art to create this elaborate representation of the relationships between propositions in Book 1. Her installation was on exhibit in the lobby of Weigle Hall. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } political experience includes working in the 1992 Clinton/ Gore campaign and working for Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore. She will soon complete a doctorate in government from Georgetown University with a dissertation on Emerson’s view of democracy. Diversity in Santa Fe The Santa Fe campus has a new initiative to increase diversity on campus and has begun to reflect on ways to better support minority students. JOAQUIN BACA (SF95) joined the staff in August as assistant director of Admissions. In addition to regular admissions functions, Baca is working with tutor Victoria Mora to attract and support a more diverse population at the Santa Fe campus. Admissions Director Lawrence Clendenin (SF77) explains that hiring a full-time staff member dedicated to looking “wider and harder” within the region for potential Johnnies should yield an increase in minority applicants. Baca’s role will be to increase an awareness of the college for students who might not otherwise consider St. John’s, particularly among Hispanics, who make up 42 percent of New Mexico’s population, and Native Americans, who make up 9.2 percent of the state’s population. “There has always been an effort to find students from the region, but this initiative allows for a more concentrated effort, with some added strategies,” Baca says. “It may also help that I am from the area, am bilingual, and am very familiar with issues minority students face.” Prior to joining the Santa Fe admissions staff, Baca assisted in the start-up of a charter high school, where he served as a teacher, service-learning coordinator, and technology coordinator. x �{From the Bell Towers} 9 Metamorphosis in the Mountains Students in Santa Fe study classification by taking a careful look at conifers. teri thompson randall Jonathan Katzman among the conifers. devise their own systems of classification. First stop for the class is “A large part of this lab is to see things as they really are.” –Karen Powell 7,400 feet, the same elevation as the campus. Working under the guidance of tutors Hans von Briesen, David Pierotti, and Ewen Harrison, the students pair up to examine the piñon pines and junipers that also dot the hillside around campus. “The students should be forewarned to take copious notes because once the specimens are brought back to the class, it is hard to put them on the tree again,” the writ- teri thompson randall Carl Linnaeus advised “attentive and diligent observation” to all who take on the task of classifying plants and animals. Each year, students in freshman laboratory on the Santa Fe campus take that advice to heart as they follow in the footsteps of the “Father of Taxonomy,” trekking 10,000 feet above the high desert floor to a marvelous outdoor classroom: the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Fresh in their minds on this expedition are Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae and Genera Plantarum, Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants, and Thoreau’s Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds and Other Late Natural History Writings. At three different elevations, the Santa Fe freshmen study the conifers, record as much detail as they can, and bring specimens back to the laboratory, where they will A mountain laboratory. ten assignment reads, echoing Linnaeus’ advice. “Usually, too few questions are asked, not too many!” Chris Lintecum, from Kansas City, Missouri, holds a branch between his fingers and studies it carefully. “See how the needles are contracting into the pine cone? Strange, I’ve looked at these all my life,” he says to his partner. “It looks like it’s contracting, but on the inside it’s expanding, forming new parts. Each tip has the potential to form new pine cones.” Each successive stop provides greater variety of flora. At the third stop, a lofty 10,000 feet, different species thrive: corkbark fir, Engelmann spruce, aspen. The weather is different here, too—cold and damp, more like { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } winter than mid-September. An early morning storm has left white patches of hail on the steep mountain slope. The students work quickly and are eager to return to the vans. On the ride back to campus the conversation shifts to another metamorphosis— their own. They’re aware of the power of asking questions in a new way. “A large part of this lab is to see things as they really are—to get rid of your preconceived notions,” notes Karen Powell, from Fort Pierce, Florida. “I can’t imagine going to school anywhere else,” Lintecum says. “I could be sitting in a lecture right now.” x —By Teri Thomson Randall �10 A Gift of Greek Grammar While other colleges ply freshmen with snack packets and CD cases—often from vendors and credit card companies eager for access to college students—St. John’s in Annapolis this year gave students a truly meaningful and advertisingfree welcome gift: a copy of the Liddell-Scott lexicon of ancient Greek. In his convocation speech to the freshman class, President Christopher Nelson talked about translating ancient Greek in tutorials, and how this part of the St. John’s Program helps lead students to a new way of seeing: “Spend time with your lexicon and consider the many different ways a sentence can be translated and understood,” he told the freshman class. “Your lexicon will be more than an aid to vocabulary and translation. It will also be an aid to philosophy. It will {From the Bell Towers} help you ask and try to answer that big, big question: what is this thing in front of me?” Although the fall convocation marked the first year for the gift, Harvey Flaumenhaft, dean, said the gift so perfectly symbolizes initiation into the world of St. John’s, that it already smacks of tradition. A Delicate Balance “ Spend time with your lexicon and consider the many different ways a sentence can be translated and understood.” –President Christopher Nelson “Within a couple of years, people will think we’ve been doing it for centuries,” Flaumenhaft said. x At the Santa Fe campus, students in freshman laboratory bring their experiments on gravity to the Coffee Shop. Students have grown adept at balancing the venerated St. John’s chairs over the center of gravity. “It creates quite an interesting tableau,” says lab director David Pierotti. {Letters} Crime and Punishment There is little I can disagree with in your article “Crime and Punishment” in the Summer 2002 issue of The College. However, I would like to add an additional perspective derived from my experience as an assistant public defender in the rural Florida county where I live. Everything I have read or heard about the criminal justice system elsewhere in the country suggests that my perspective is in no way unique, and my observations can be extrapolated, although obviously with modifications, to the country as a whole. In rural Florida, a significant percentage of criminal activity is a direct consequence of the extremely unequal distribution of wealth in our society. What I am getting at is not solely the unequal access to parental care, mental health treatment, educational and job opportunities which is, in any case, perhaps more characteristic of poverty in rural areas of this country than elsewhere. Instead, what I wish to suggest is that many crimes (or, more accurately, much of what is prosecuted as crime, since prosecutorial discretion is fundamental to the system) are directly connected to poverty, plain and simple. These are crimes that apply to all strata of the population but which disproportionately affect the poor. More than that, they are crimes of poverty, since those who are not poor are effectively immunized against them. Where I practice law, the crime most emblematic of this situation is known as “DWLSR”: driving with license suspended or revoked (with knowledge), a first-degree misdemeanor in Florida and punishable by { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } up to one year in the county jail. There are numerous reasons why the Department of Motor Vehicles can suspend your driver’s license in this state. Most common is failure to pay traffic fines, fines for previous criminal acts, or child support. During the past year, I have represented several dozen individuals whose only crimes, at the time they were incarcerated and for which they were sentenced to up to 11 months in jail, were one or more counts of driving with a suspended license. In at least one of these cases, the driver was operating a moped; in many of them, the drivers used their vehicles to get back and forth to minimum-wage jobs; for all of them, there is no available public transportation. While it is true that my clients had their licenses suspended originally— and thereupon suffered their draconian �11 {Letters} punishments—because of a history of previous brushes with the law, their criminal history more often than not consisted of offenses intrinsically no more dangerous to the community than driving without a driver’s license. These offenses included possession of illegal drugs, trespass, and earlier charges of driving with a suspended license. Most crimes in this county (and most crimes in this country) are minor ones. Sentences are imposed that serve to keep these minor criminals—economically, socially, and culturally marginal—increasingly more marginal, in a downhill spiral that can last for years or generations. The solutions to this problem are obviously highly complex, and what I have sketched above is necessarily somewhat oversimplified. However, I have tried to make at least this point: that, at bottom, drastically unequal distribution of wealth in this country leads to crime, among other social ills, and efforts toward redistribution will help solve those problems. —Peter Coen (A68) Statistics vs. Ptolemy In response to the article “Statistics vs. Ptolemy” of the Summer 2002 issue of The College, I have a few comments. The main issue of the article seems to be the degree of preparation that the Program at St. John’s is able to provide for the vast array of careers awaiting the interests of liberal artists. The specific qualm raised in the article is that Johnnies are not adequately prepared in the areas of mathematics necessary for continuing studies in the social sciences. I would like to add, from my present experiences, that the mathematics and science studied at St. John’s in no way substitute for the preparation that college undergraduates in the areas of physics and astronomy receive. I completely disagree, however, with the sentiment that this reveals any lack, gap or limit in the scope of the Mathematics Tutorial. I agree with Mr. Eric Rosenblatt when he comments, “students are not all finding careers appropriate to their abilities.” But I disagree quite strongly that any existing “math gap” is the reason that students avoid particular career paths. There are many topics in the fields of social sciences, particularly in economics, which require higher mathematics than the topics that are studied in the Mathematics Tutorial at St. John’s, and of careers in hard sciences there are more required levels of mathematics than I could name when I started my graduate studies. However, from the Mathematics Tutorial, I received a broad and detailed exposure to the evolution of mathematics and the role of mathematics in intellectual and scientific development. This foundation, obtained with considerable effort, gave me the confidence that any traditional study of mathematics was accessible with similar diligence, effort, and practice. In reference to his experience in graduate level classes, Mr. John Lawless comments, “the advantage [of the people in graduate school] is that they’ve seen a lot of this stuff before. They have a broad exposure to basic math.” Thus far, it has been my experience, with physics and mathematics classes, that while most of the students have seen and solved more problems and are more familiar with the tools of mathematics than I am, one rarely finds the student with skills that resemble a mastery (or even a capacity for recollection) of the mathematics he has studied previously. The physics and mathematics textbooks that I now use all provide approximations of the works we read in the Program and in the space saved, the books include examples, problems, and solutions. Yes, I am “behind” in my abilities to solve these problems when compared to the students who have four years of experience studying physics and mathematics to the exclusion of other topics. Rather than bemoan the situation, I consider my disadvantage on this level to be a credit to the traditional system of education… Perhaps it is useful to consider the idea that the Mathematics Tutorial enables us to study mathematics as a language (herein lies the “beauty” to which we frequently refer) while traditional studies treat mathematics as a tool for simplifying analysis. While I share Mr. Lawless’ frustration that certain things should come easily, and do come more easily for students trained to use this tool, I do not look for fault within a program that has provided me with the unflinching interest to master topics of mathematics and science…I chose to take a nontraditional path with the expectation that no doors would be closed when I reached its end, rather I merely supposed that some doors may become heavier with time. …Mr. Rosenblatt is doing a great service to the St. John’s community in his hiring policies…In the effort of making { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } physics/astrophysics more accessible to students at St. John’s, I have organized similar meetings at St. John’s College, bringing professors from George Mason University who offer summer research fellowships to interested students. (The professors there prefer students from St. John’s College to undergraduates of their own school for their untiring efforts and interest in fully comprehending the motivation and goals of their research.) At these meetings I shared my experiences studying physics and astronomy and information about the courses one needs in addition to the Program to have a background that is comparable to a student with a traditional undergraduate physics degree. At the first meeting, three people attended; for the second meeting, more than 20 students were willing to wait while the professors were unavoidably delayed in traffic (God bless cellular phones). From the second meeting, seven students worked as contracted research assistants for the summer (2002), and two of those students are presently enrolled at GMU, pursuing degrees in astrophysics. From this it is clear that an awareness of the available opportunities is far more important than preparedness in the career decisions of St. John’s students. And further, with interest and effort, all skills are acquirable, while a love of knowledge is not. —Jessica K. (Reitz) Gambill (A01) Correction A story in the summer 2002 issue of The College on Andrea D’Amato, manager of the college bookstore on the Santa Fe campus, misspelled her name. We regret the error. The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis MD 21404 or The College Magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: reharty@sjca.edu, or via the form for letters on the web site at www.sjca.edu. Click on “Alumni,” then on “Contact The College Magazine.” �12 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } THE LEGACY OF D AV I D G R E N E A Tutor Remembers a Teacher and Mentor by Amirthanayagam David (A86) ...the odds is gone And there is nothing left remarkable Beneath the visiting moon. –Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra D avid Grene died September 10 in Chicago. He was a living legend, and his life was legendary. He was already a professor of classics at the University of Chicago when the New Program was first instituted at St. John’s. Over the years he took an interest in the development of this program, which was entirely a creature of his adult life; from his perch in the Committee on Social Thought he taught a number of our tutors and an even more significant number of prominent teachers of our tutors. Among the faculty in Annapolis who studied directly with him are Laurence Berns, Joe Macfarland, Robert Williamson, Paul Ludwig, Louis Petrich and I. In the normal course of things, a teacher like David is only to be met with in books. He was a peerless philologist, from a generation that genuinely knew philology, and it was indeed an important part of the experience of studying with him to encounter his compendious acumen. But David’s philological knowledge was merely one of several paths into the mystery of author, word, and sentence that made a text a living presence in his classroom. He had a queerness to his mind and imagination that made Euclid, for example, incomprehensible to him, and the memorizing of traffic symbols an arduous task. He was a small-built man, but he was athletic—he was a horseman—and in his intellect, movement, and voice he was a commanding presence. Mr. Berns relates how singular an honor it seemed to earn David’s recognition, by saying or writing something insightful. His colleague Wendy Doniger remembers that “he lived on meat—particularly bacon and steak—cheese, butter, eggs and Tanqueray gin... He was a real person. He was bigger than life.” For half the year every year David was a farmer, and a number of us students, including the late Allan Bloom, were at some time initiated by him into the realities of cow and pig, horse and donkey. The stock of his memoirs, from Wicklow to Trinity, from farming in Illinois to Belturbet, County Cavan, from studying in Vienna under Radermacher during Hitler’s rise in the ’30s (Hutchins sent him) to Hutchins’ Chicago and the Committee on Social Thought, is a thing of wonder in itself. Yet David was able to dramatize these realities in the classroom so that somehow they formed an entry point for the dramatization of literature, philosophy, history—the distinction becomes moot—and one began to feel the presence of an author as a protagonist: mortal, historical, and yet ever-present. Even the philology seemed to come alive in a new way. One became self-conscious, about one’s accent as much as one’s ideas; one felt intimidated, and yet challenged to speak. It was a rare critical formulation that could survive this experience. Translation was a private matter with David; in class almost all the translating was done by students. His gift as a translator did not lead to his conducting master classes. Many of us can testify to a common experience, of preparing a text of Aeschy- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } lus or Pindar or Sophocles painstakingly for hour after hour, coming up with formulations that seemed (at the time, and to us) very clever or even brilliant, but then showing up at his class and having our minds go blank when he called on us to translate. Suddenly the Greek appeared before us as an obstacle course that we had never seen before, and which we were asked to run on a full stomach. He was completely galvanizing that way. Perhaps his power had to do with our own feeling that he was on the “other side” of the line that Greek drew before us, a Poseidon feasting among the Ethiopians; he also seemed somehow on the other side of the author’s mask, a fellow worker with him in the art of turning thought, and the movement of thought, into Greek. There was also a curious knack to his timing, a way he would call on you that simply left you naked. At the heart of the obstacle course was always a tightrope over an abyss. No other teacher I have known was so able to initiate one into the “going across” of translation. If you missed your step, you remained scarred and subdued until the next attempt. But there were also times when it felt like one was dancing on that tightrope, and on those happy occasions in David’s company I have had no more exhilarating an experience as a student or a teacher. David grew very fond of St. John’s graduates. His companion of the last 17 years was Stephanie Nelson (A83), now of Classics in Boston University. She was our pioneer in Chicago. There were also Allen Speight (A84), now in philosophy at BU, David Neidorf (SF80), Cindy Rutz (SF82), Mark Shiffman (A89), Eric Lavoie (A88), Brian Satterfield (A94), and Zena Hitz (A95). �13 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } “Suddenly the Greek appeared before us as an obstacle course that we had never seen before.” sara white wilson I am particularly grateful for his early study, Man in His Pride: A Study in the Political Philosophy of Thucydides and Plato, later reprinted as Greek Political Theory. David’s treatment is a healthy antivenom to the kind of pseudoanalytic reductionism and juvenile unliterariness that dogs the use and abuse of Plato’s writings in departments of “philosophy” and also to the programmatic approach to Thucydides in “departments” of history. But David’s greatest legacy is his translations, which should continue to bring him students. He was bold enough, hubristic enough, brilliant enough—and, to be sure, there was also his extraordinary feeling for stagecraft—to think that one could translate the Greek tragedians into English verse. His achievements here represent a genuine conduit for the ancient playwrights into a modern world and idiom. The rhythms of Greek are not translatable, not even the iambs, but David, in my view, was particularly good at capturing the rhythmic movement, together with the movement of thought, of whole speeches in Greek drama. His aim was unique in his time: to give “access” to the tragedies to students who were not intending to study Greek. Ms. Nelson writes in an e-mail that “the idea of a great books course is so usual now that we tend to forget that it was David’s David Grene’s greatest legacy: his translations. completely new idea that a translation didn’t need to serve only as a pony for beginning Greek students that made the course possible. He really did issue in a whole new era that way.” David’s passing underscores the nearly complete dependence of our program on translations, and the traditions of scholarship and teaching (that we sometimes misleadingly call “secondary”) that underlie works of translation. But David’s renderings do represent a body of invaluable commentary for students of Greek as well. David knew enough not to translate Homer into English (though I, knowing less, was always pestering him). The long line he found for Hesiod (a translation of Works and Days is included in Ms. Nelson’s God and the Land, Oxford 1998) will always leave me { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } wondering what his Homer might have been. The most remarkable achievement, however, was his Herodotus. There he found an uncanny match in the neverland of a quasi-Hibernian storyteller for the diction and character of Herodotus’ own neverland of antique Ionic. The experience of being “behind the mask” is simply extraordinary; only the achievement of Hobbes with Thucydides is a fit comparison in English prose (although David himself would never have allowed the comparison). Herodotus’ thought in form and rhythm, gesture and posture, lives and breathes in those pages of David’s. And David lives on in them too. He was a man of wonders who faced the challenges of his aging body and the relentless mortality of his friends with a vivid, fiercely loyal and capacious heart. He was a bodhisattva of the Tanqueray vine with an Apolline absolutism of conviction. But his absolutism was always grounded in human feeling, never in abstract principle. The one thing that could not survive in his classroom was pretension or dishonesty. The ingenuity of the genuine was David’s virtue, and academia everywhere is a drearier, less principled place without his animating and enduring spirit. x �14 {Pursuits} A BEAUTIFUL WINE Four Johnnies Pursue Perfection from the Vine. By Rosemary Harty The Winemaker tag’s Leap Wine Cellars is situated in a valley formed by the uplift of two mountain ridges. If you want to know beauty, says the winery’s founder, Warren Winiarski (A52), stand here until the light begins to fade in the evening. “To the east of us is a spectacular outcropping of volcanic rock that forms a palisade—that’s the Stag’s Leap ridge,” he says. “Particularly at sunset, the palisade is illuminated with a very special, very warm, magical glow. “That’s our fire.” In another form, beauty is in the product of these vines before him, of years of planting and harvesting, of choosing and rejecting, of waiting. Not all wine drinkers are prepared to think of a fine wine as beautiful, but a winemaker does, Winiarski says. True, it’s a very subjective beauty— one assigned scores by magazines like the Wine Spectator and awarded prizes by judges in international competitions. If Warren Winiarski needed any proof that he knows how to make a beautiful wine, it came in 1976 when French experts in a blind tasting in Paris gave his 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon top marks over the very best French wines. The competition made headlines across the world and Winiarski’s cabernet put California wines on the map. But how do you make wine beautiful? For Winiarski, it goes back to something he learned from the Greeks. To illustrate, he sketches out a Golden Rectangle on a legal pad. S The golden proportion within the framework of the rectangle makes it pleasing to the eye, he explains. In wine, that perfect, pleasing proportion is also sought. Take the extreme and the means in a geometric structure and you have balance and structure. In viticulture, contrast the products of coarse volcanic soils and gentler alluvial soils in just the right proportion and you have the start of something beautiful. “You have soft elements like the smooth, supple, fruity characteristics, and then you have hard elements like tannin. The challenge is to get astringency and softness related to each other in a certain way.” Balance, understatement, subtlety—these were not the guiding principles of winemaking in California in 1970. That’s when Winiarski left the University of Chicago, where he was a lecturer, and began making wines in the Napa Valley. Californians were then making wines that were “very powerful expressions of the varietal character,” he says. Winiarski left Chicago with an objective: “I couldn’t believe from what I knew about California wine and French wine that we could not do better with the fruit that we had in California and make more expressive, more beautiful wines,” he says. In 1970, Winiarski bought a plot of land on the Silverado Trail. He later acquired land adjoining the vineyards of Nathan Fay, a winemaker whose wine possessed that elusive unity Winiarski had sought. That land became the Stag’s Leap vineyard, and the grapes that grew here gave Winiarski the starting point he was looking for. “At St. John’s, we talked about the four classical virtues” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �15 {Pursuits} “To extend the pleasure of wine... overstatement is an enemy.” Warren Winiarski of truth, beauty, goodness and unity, he explains. “In wine, they’re expressed as understatement. To extend the pleasure of wine, the appreciation of its beauty, overstatement is an enemy.” A great deal goes into the science of winemaking, but the soil Winiarski knew had promise was the beginning of it all: Volcanic soils are coarse particles; alluvium, very fine. “One produces wines that are like fire: concentrated, spirited, intense,” he says. “The other, alluvium soils, are soft, yielding, supple. “Somewhere in the middle of the vineyard, you have these soils that are mixed. So putting this together, you can relate those means and extremes in a way where you have an iron fist surrounded by a velvet glove.” In the quarter-century since Winiarski helped put California wines on the map, his winery has become immensely successful, his wines sought after. The Cellars Cask 23 that won in Paris goes for well over $125 a bottle. These days his role in the winery involves “setting the stylistic goals and objectives for the vintage.” How that’s accomplished is carried out by others. His family, including Kasia (A84) and Julia (SF92), is involved in the business. Recently, Winiarski shared his { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �16 {Pursuits} think carefully about what happened when the sweet pear followed the sharp cheese. “Any time that you’re thinking carefully and precisely about a sensation, you have an opportunity to learn how the mind is truly embodied,” he explains. Schoener’s wine study group became more serious about studying viticulture, comparing domestic and European wines, and learning how to The Quest taste wine. One of the first students to join the group was A little over a decade ago, Abe Zach Rasmuson (A95). OrigiSchoener (A82) tried to explain nally a reluctant participant, his love for wine to beer-drinkRasumuson ended up heading ing friends. This led to a wine to Napa Valley and asking Warstudy group comprising other ren Winiarski for a job at St. John’s tutors, a few students, Stag’s Leap after graduation. college administrators and He started out as a cellar and friends. But the more Schoener lab assistant and within three learned about wine, the more he years was assistant winemaker wanted to know. And pretty at Robert Sinskey Vineyards. soon, Schoener went from careHe’s now making wines at fully choosing the best wine to Warren Winiarski Husch Vineyard in Mendocino accompany special dinners to a County. Napa Valley wine cellar, up to To learn more about wine, Schoener was also willing his elbows in grapes and immersed in an experiment to to start at the bottom. He took a sabbatical from St. see if he could make a pure and beautiful wine. John’s and headed West. His job as a field sampler at All this from the simple question, “what’s so great Stag’s Leap involved monitoring about 100 acres, walkabout wine?” ing the vineyards daily to monitor the ripening of the This devotion to the science of winemaking goes back fruit and bringing samples back to the winemaker. to Schoener’s work as a scholar and a tutor. Tracking his Through Rasmuson, Schoener later became acquainted steps from Annapolis to Napa Valley shows how interrewith John Kongsgaard, vice president and founding lated are the worlds of Johnnies and California wine. winemaker at Luna Vineyards and his wife, Maggy, parSchoener arrived at St. John’s from Toronto with a ents of two St. John’s students: Alex, a sophomore in Ph.D. in Ancient Greek philosophy. He had studied the Santa Fe, and Helen, a junior in Annapolis. When his philosophy of science from Anglo-American and French job at Stag’s Leap ended, Schoener went to Luna to perspectives, put that together with his study of Homer, work a few days over the Christmas break and eventualand started thinking about “how the body was thinkable ly extended his leave to take a paying job and learn and how the mind was embodied.” everything he could about winemaking. Body and mind come together very logically in wine Schoener bought a half-ton of grapes and made wine study, Schoener says, because to really appreciate a parunder Kongsgaard’s direction. The next year, they ticular wine one has to “think in an embodied way.” bought grapes together and Schoener was the winemakSchoener wanted to get his students in sophomore er for three tons of Chardonnay. “It went really well, so music to try this kind of thinking when approaching a the next year, I organized myself to become a small propiece of music. He couldn’t bring wine, so he laid out ducer, made some more contacts and bought some more gorgonzola cheese and pear slices and asked students to grapes”—this time for the Scholium Project, his own expertise with Sante Fe alumni and friends in a winetasting. Beating the French in 1976 was satisfying in a way that transcends business, he adds—the chance to make history. “There’s a bottle of that wine entered in the Paris tasting in the Smithsonian. In your own lifetime when you have something in the national museum, something that you made, that’s pretty satisfying.” “I couldn’t believe that we could not do better.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �{Pursuits} 17 venture in winemaking. He chose the word that refers to The Family Business explanatory notes or commentary in ancient texts, or a At one time, Daniel Speck (A96) had planned to study note amplifying a course of reasoning, to reflect the fact architecture. After spending most of his formative years that he is expanding on others’ work. toiling in his family’s winery, Henry of Pelham, he initially “Scholium is a word that connotes the opposite of preplanned another path for his life. tension and that was a good name for what I was doing,” “I was adamant that I wasn’t working in the winery,” he he explains. “It was always a question of [my] following recalls. “But after graduating from St. John’s, I needed other people, studying them, creating something that some cash, so back I went. Now I can’t imagine doing anywas going to be good.” thing else.” A year ago, Schoener invested about $4,000 in a ton Neither, apparently, can Speck’s brothers: Paul (A89), and a half of high-quality grapes. He fermented most president; and Matthew (A92), vice president and viticulof the crushed grapes in white plastic containers about turist. All three had worked almost every job at the winery three feet high. His approach is to give the microbes their father, Paul, started in 1982. Concord and Niagara enough oxygen to ferment the grapes, but not enough grapes were growing on the farm, but the old vines were to spoil them. Most winemakers add yeast to the ripped out and one-year-old vines crushed g rapes, but Schoener imported from Europe were planted does not. He also minimizes the in 1984. Four years later, the first use of antibacterial and antifungal crop was harvested and a year later, chemicals, in particular sulfur the first batch of wine—2,500 dioxide. The sulfur dioxide procases—was ready for sale. The winduces a “f latter, simpler wine,” ery, located in St. Catherine’s, and what Schoener seeks is comOntario, focuses on vinifera grape plexity. varieties: Chardonnay, Riesling, “The tradition at Napa is to and Cabernet Sauvignon. really control the microbiology, to Daniel Speck, director of sales turn [the wine] into a sterile fluid. Abe Schoener and marketing, remembers the My approach is really just the oppobackbreaking, often tedious work site: don’t start with sterile, start on the 150-acre estate. Summer with something infected with all vacations were spent as indentured servants. But the work kinds of things.” was ultimately satisfying. And when Paul Sr. passed away in Two years ago, his experiment failed and three-quar1993, it was natural for his sons to take over a business in ters of a ton of grapes emerged tasting like vinegar. But which they had already invested so much work and passion. Schoener learned something from that experiment. Henry of Pelham wines, he explains, are more “Old His white wine made with Chardonnay grapes is World” than California—whites are crisp and zesty, reds a called Les Tenebres, translated as “the shadows” or “the little more “austere and structured.” ghosts.” His goal was to produce a white wine that did“California is kind of like the Mediterranean, and our n’t evoke any fruit but the grape. The principle behind wines are more like those from the Burgundy region, Borhis approach is to “start with really good fruit but for deaux and Champagne,” Speck says. “Our reds are not the wine to be not about the fruit, but the fermentaapproachable for five years—they’re meant for aging, and tion.” The red wine, called Babylon, took its name from that’s usually due to the tannin structure.” the ancient Jewish world and is meant to connote someFrom an agricultural viewpoint, soil, weather, and thing “strange and exotic.” canopy management are critically important for the busiNext year, Schoener will have a license to sell his first ness. Canopy management means developing the vineyard batch of The Scholium Project. Last fall, he moved from in a way to “balance the vigor of the vine with the crops you amateur to professional when he became the winemaker leave—choosing where we leave grapes and where we don’t.” at Luna. He incorporates some of his risky techniques in “When you strip it all away, it all comes down to farmhis official work for the winery, but not all of them, ing,” he says. “Wine is 50 percent packaged goods and 50 because “there’s too much at stake” for a commercial percent produce. It’s got more in common with lettuce than venture. Coca-Cola. And if anything is a constant, you have to be “Don’t start with sterile, start with something infected with all kinds of things.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �18 {Pursuits} “You’ve got to have good grapes.” Daniel Speck growing grape varieties that you can produce great wines from. You’ve got to always have good grapes.” In addition to toiling on the land, Speck has also enjoyed making wine. The Pinot Noir, for example, is made entirely by hand: hand-harvested, crushed and fermented in open-top fermenting tanks. “Instead of getting in there with the feet and trodding it, we use a stick with a flat surface on the end. In the past we’ve used canoe paddles. That’s ‘punching down’ the ‘cap,’ the skins that float to the top in fermentation, back into the fermenting wine to keep extracting flavor. The more common method is the ‘pumpover,’ pumping wine from the bottom of the tank up and over to wash the cap down. It’s less desirable because it introduces more oxygen.” Henry of Pelham’s big sellers are Rieslings and Chardon- nays. The winery’s Baco Noir Cabernet (“a weirdo variety like a Shiraz,”explains Speck), and ice wine are also popular. To make ice wine, grapes are left on the vine until they freeze. “When you crush it you only get a few drops, and it’s incredibly intense. It makes a great dessert wine.” Most of the wine is sold in Canada, but the winery is beginning to make inroads in the U.S. market. Speck has new contracts with Red Lobster, a Canadian Italian food chain, Air Canada and British Airways. Speck isn’t sure he’d enjoy the wine business as much if he weren’t in a family business. “There’s a guy nearby who has started up a really nice winery, but just looking at it you can tell there’s some problems. I would think it would be hard trying to figure it out, because it’s only him and he’s surrounded by people new to the business. Our family had more people to pool from, and we know how to talk to each other. That kind of conversation is really critical.” The wine business can be “really brutal,” says Speck. “There’s no easier way to take a large fortune and make it a small one. “But there’s nothing more satisfying than getting together with the family to open a bottle of wine that’s 10 years old. I remember putting those vines in. It’s a personal wine.” The Devotee A beautiful wine “perfectly expresses where it is from,” says Mark Middlebrook (A83). It tells the story of where the grapes were grown and who made it. It opens a window to { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �{Pursuits} 19 and appreciate something that tastes good and adds an history and creates a bridge between different cultures. To increment of pleasure to their lives.” Middlebrook, the wine he tasted in a tiny village in BurIn past months, Middlebrook has put his computer gundy still bears the imprint of the Cistercian monks who skills to work in the shop by launching an e-mail newsletonce made wine in that valley centuries ago. ter and web site for the shop and establishing a database “There is a sense of longevity and of connecting with to track inventory. these monks in some way over all these centuries,” he Initially devoted to Spanish wines, Middlebrook has says. After earning a master’s degree in structural engicome to appreciate Italian wines, especially those of the neering at UC-Berkeley, Middlebrook started his own Piemonte (Piedmont) region in the northwestern corner company, Daedalus Consulting, to provide CAD (comof Italy. Late last fall, Middlebrook spent a week in Italy, puter-assisted drafting) consulting to engineering and learning about the vineyards, meetsoftware companies, developing ing the people, drinking great custom software applications and wine, and eating truffles. writing articles and books. “The Piemontese wines made However, he’s become so enamfrom the Nebbiolo grape, most ored of wine that, like Abe Schoennotably the wines from around the er, he’s made major changes and towns of Barolo and Barbaresco, sacrifices in his life to pursue this Mark Middlebrook are arguably the best in Italy. Nebinterest. He recently chose to scale biolo, like Pinot Noir in Burgundy back his work as a computer consultand Riesling in Germany, makes ant in order to sell wine in a small wines that ‘speak’ in highly specific and selective shop in California. ways about the particular place they His romance with wine, and his come from—the soil, the slope, the particular interest in the “specificiexposure to sun and wind, the vine ty” of a vintage, began when he first configuration, the vintage. drank a glass of wine in Rioja during “Some of this specificity is due to a trip to Spain in 1997. After returnthe grape varietals themselves. ing to California, Middlebrook startNebbiolo, Pinot Noir, and Riesling ed reading and tasting. He took three are said to be “transparent” varimore trips to Spain for research, and etals, because the elements of teron one venture, encountered Bill roir come through the vine, into Randolph (A75), a wine aficionado the grapes, and ultimately into the living in Paris. Randolph later guided glass particularly clearly.” Middlebrook and his wife, Cheryl Middlebrook draws a parallel Koehler, through the Burgundy READING LIST between exploring great books in region. He also joined Middlebrook American Vintage: From Isolation to Interseminar and exploring wine. “We for Northern California alumni chapnational Renown—The Rise of American spend time at St. John’s conter wine tastings at Stag’s Leap Wine Wine, by Paul Lukacs. fronting and discussing objective Cellars. Eventually Middlebrook The World Atlas of Wine (5th Edition), by questions about ethics and truth. came to believe he needed to devote Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. At one level, wine is simply a matmore time to exploring wine, so he Pocket Wine Book, by Hugh Johnson. ter of taste. It’s also part of the went to the Paul Marcus wine shop, social ritual of a meal.” where he had been a customer, and The Oxford Companion to Wine, by Jancis But on another level, our aesthetasked for a job. Robinson. ic experience—how we come to “It’s been even more rewarding The Wine Bible, by Karen MacNeil. know something, how we come to than I’d imagined it would be. Besides Touring in Wine Country, a series, Mitchell learn—is involved in studying and tasting lots of wine, I get to talk with Beazley publisher. thinking about wine. lots of people who have a great variety Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy, “It’s a really rewarding world to of insight and experience. There is by Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch. be a part of.” x the occasional snooty collector, but — suggested by Mark Middlebrook and Warren most people who work in the trade Winiarski and shop in our store simply love wine “ Good wine tastes like it comes from somewhere specific.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �20 {Johnnies on Marriage} THE WIFE OF BATH’S GUIDE TO MARRIAGE Johnnie Couples Compare Life to Literature by Sus3an Borden, A87 haucer’s much-wed pilgrim, the Wife of Bath, is often considered an authority on marriage. Perhaps she was—in the 14th century. But here in 2002, we have other ideas. The College magazine consulted five happily-married Johnnie couples for their take on the advice and analyses of the Wife of Bath. We publish here a sample of their wit and wisdom. all over my face—I would be horrible at poker. I’m not the type of person to lie about anything.” Jim confirms her story with a sarcastic snort. “The very fact she thinks flirting is a lie is so sad,” he says. “I see it as dramatic license, an entry to a conversation, a story told to arouse interest. It’s a joy, a pleasure, a type of play.” However, when it comes to the particulars of the Wife of Bath’s flirting techniques, Jim is determined to set the record straight: “As for ‘oh, I was dreaming about you last night,’ that happened both ways and we both enjoyed it. She just forgot.” Wiles of Courtship Wife of Bath Says Wife of Bath Says You say that all we wives our vices hide Till we are married, then we show them well; C I made him think he had enchanted me; My mother taught me all that subtlety. And then I said I’d dreamed of him all night, He would have slain me as I lay upright, And all my bed was full of very blood; But yet I hoped that he would do me good, For blood betokens gold, as I was taught. And all was false, I dreamed of him just—naught. Johnnies Say Could Andrea Williams Ham (SF77) have pulled off such a boldly provocative flirtation when she was dating her nowhusband Jim Ham (SF77)? Absolutely not. “I’m not flirtatious, not a game player,” she says. “What I’m thinking is The Newlywed Game Johnnies Say “Hon, do I have any vices?” Kathy Ertle (A84) asks her husband, John Ertle (A84). “Well, you did drink back in college and you didn’t hide that very well and some people consider that a vice,” he cautiously suggests. As for his own vices, John says he was upfront about them from the start: “Marry the man today and change his ways tomorrow—right?” Kathy agrees: “I already knew he wasn’t perfect.” “Really?” John asks, somewhat surprised. Apparently, this is news to him. “Before I married you, absolutely,” Kathy says, sans { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �{Johnnies on Marriage} 21 “Sitting across the seminar table for two years taught us to disagree.” Jim Ham backpedaling. Johnnies Say Jacques Cartier (A58), Kathy Ertle does not hesihusband of Diana Barry tate to acknowledge her Cartier (A56), introduces a familiarity with the Wife of more philosophical spin to Bath’s fighting strategy: the matter: “Both parties, “Oh yeah, going on the not just the woman, try to attack, isn’t that what you’re put their best case forward supposed to do? The best and conceal things they defense is a good offense, don’t want known. They’re that’s what I’ve heard.” usually trying to conceal “Fighting is unavoidable, these things from thembut never fight in front of selves as well, since most your children,” advises of us possess relatively litJacques Cartier. He’s also of tle self-knowledge, espethe “never go to bed angry” cially when we’re young. school. “Whatever erupts Kathy and John Ertle We don’t know what we’re during the day, get it sorted hiding. Time reveals it to out before bedtime. You both of us. It can come as a pleasant or a disagreeable surdon’t want to start the next day with the residue of yesterprise.” day’s fight. And don’t be too stiff-necked to apologize when Lovers’ Quarrel Wife of Bath Says I could complain though mine was all the guilt… Or else, full many a time, I’d lost the tilt. Whoso comes first to mill first gets meal ground; I whimpered first and so did them confound. They were right glad to hasten to excuse Things they had never done, save in my ruse. you’re wrong—and even when you’re right.” Jenna Palmer (SF93), married to Jim Michel (SF92), describes the world of fighting Johnnie couples: “You always hear about how in normal relationships, usually the woman is much more verbal and the man gets angry or even violent when he can’t keep up with his wife’s words. But a Johnnie guy is very verbal. He can really argue well. And Jim is an attorney—we were together when he went to law school. In his first year in particular, he was quite a debater. I found myself at a loss for words. I was the one { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �22 {Johnnies on Marriage} who resorted to slamming the door.” With law school behind them, the couple fights less frequently. “Now he gets most of his arguing out with opposing counsel,” Jenna says. Jim and Andrea Ham rarely fight, and Jim gives St. John’s partial credit for this. “Sitting across the seminar table for two years taught us to disagree,” Jim says. “So many people I know are incapable of having a conversation or discussion or disagreement without it becoming personal. Or without having someone be right. We learned at St. John’s that there may not be a right answer. When we went through the Program, we read the Bible and Darwin simultaneously. In our seminar we had people who later became nuns and a number who ended up at Los Alamos doing DNA research. Both in the books and in our classes, we had the full spectrum of ideas.” What Women Most Desire Wife of Bath Says Some said that women all loved best riches, Some said, fair fame, and some said, prettiness; Some, rich array, some said ‘twas lust abed And often to be widowed and re-wed. Some said that our poor hearts are aye most eased When we have been most flattered and thus pleased And he went near the truth, I will not lie; A man may win us best with flattery; And with attentions and with busyness We’re often limed, the greater and the less. And some say, too, that we do love the best To be quite free to do our own behest, And that no man reprove us for our vice, But saying we are wise, take our advice. Johnnies Say David Kelsey (A61) married Marta Hoekstra Kelsey (A62) in 1962. Their four decades together have seen one adventure after another. Looking back, David says it hasn’t been riches, fame, or flattery that Marta wanted in their marriage. “I think it’s a sense of being a team that’s important,” he says. “There’s also a trust, an ability to depend on the other person without questions. “It’s always been that way for us. We’ve done lots of weird things, and we’ve always done them together. In 1964 a group of people paid us to take them to Alaska. We packed up two four-wheel vehicles with trailers and drove all the way to Alaska— Fairbanks, Anchorage, Denali—with our 16month-old son and an Irish setter. “We once found an old boat half-sunk in a river, dredged it out of the muck, and decided to live on it. We already had a sailboat and we eventually decided we would take both boats down to St. Croix.” This trip (which included a shipwreck on Ambrose Island) David and Marta Kelsey, turned out to have been remarkably illthen and now. advised (“totally stupid” are David’s words). But in spite of it, or because of it, their marriage has flourished. “Our marriage has been very satisfying for 40 years, with love and respect, consideration, communication. We have a sense of taking life as an adventure, doing interesting things and not settling for what everybody thinks you might oughta do.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �{Johnnies on Marriage} 23 “Giving up your set of program books— I think that shows commitment.” Jenna Palmer A Life of Love Partners in Books Wife of Bath Says Wife of Bath Says Praise be to God that I have wedded five! Of whom I did pick out and choose the best Both for their nether purse and for their chest Different schools make divers perfect clerks, Different methods learned in sundry works Make the good workman perfect, certainly. Of full five husbands tutoring am I. By God, he smote me on the ear, one day, Because I tore out of his book a leaf… Johnnies Say It’s a question directed at the heart of Johnnie marriages: What do you do with your two sets of program books? Andrea Ham lets us all in on this little corner of the life of married Johnnies: “Some of our duplicates are in boxes in the garage, some are in the living room, some we had to give back to my sister [India Williams (SF73)], some we passed on to our kids for high school,” reports Andrea. “I’m standing here in the living room looking at the bookcase where most of our great books are. Some are Jim’s, some are mine. It’s a total mishmash.” With graduation a quarter-century behind them, Andrea says that the books still play a role in their marriage. “We’ll periodically have conversations where we run to the bookshelf to pull out the book that supports our point.” Jenna Palmer and Jim Michel have finally narrowed down their collection to a single set. “Jim always sprung for the hard cover and took meticulous care of his books. I had mostly the dogeared paperbacks,” reports Jenna. “I finally sold most of mine, so we can never split up. Giving up your set of program books—I think that shows commitment.” x Johnnies Say “Our marriage has lasted a long time,” says Jacques Cartier of his 44-year (and counting) marriage. “It hasn’t all been easy, we’ve had a number of difficult times. But we’ve learned to accept each other, our strengths and our weaknesses. We live and let live for the most part. “There are those people who really want to be married, who want to be together with someone and because of that they manage to get through the difficult times. I think of the Symposium, of the two halves that want to complete each other. There are others for whom I don’t believe that desire is there, who don’t have a fundamental sense that this is the best way to live life.” Top: Jim Michel and Jenna Palmer Bottom: Andrea and Jim Ham { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �24 {The Program} STARS IN HIS EYES Curtis Wilson Remains Engaged in Discovery By Rosemary Harty I s Newton’s theory of planetary motion exactly right, and is it sufficient to account for everything in the moon’s movement around the earth?” Like a dedicated student in seminar, tutor emeritus Curtis Wilson (HA83) has been doggedly pursuing that question for more than 40 years. Since becoming fascinated with pre-Newtonian theory, Wilson has carefully explored the brilliant theorizing and errant conclusions of scientists drawn to study the stars. He has pondered their ideas and examined their proofs, read their life stories and taken note of their enemies and personal demons. “ They continue to intrigue him a dozen years after his “retirement” from St. John’s. At least once a week he spends the better part of a day conducting research in the rotunda library of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., where oversized portraits of historic figures such as George William Hill, a 19th century astronomer who studied the moon’s orbit, bear witness to his labor. “One feels,” Wilson says, “that one is surrounded by these people.” Indeed, when Wilson describes these historic figures, he talks about them as if they are living, breathing people still engaged in discovery. He becomes as caught up in their biographies as their scientific methods, relaying stories of Laplace’s political savvy with Hill’s reclusiveness. Some of these men he views with great admiration, and he’s grown to dislike some of them intensely. However, each one has played a role in advancing modern astronomy, and Wilson has given none of them short shrift in his study. In graduate school at Columbia, Wil- son studied medieval science, the precursors of Galileo, and, he notes wryly, “I did what I was told.” When he came to St. John’s in 1948, he was, by nature of the Program, required to learn astronomy— “of which I knew a little, but not enough,” he says. He soon fixed on Kepler’s laws of planetary motion as an object of interest. “I kept hearing about the three empirical laws of Kepler, but everything I read never explained in detail how he got to those laws,” Wilson says. He was intrigued by the reasoning that led the 17th century scientist to conclude that planetary motion must be elliptical. So he began researching Kepler, through his first tenure as dean of St. John’s (1958-62) and the two years he spent as one of the first tutors at St. John’s College in Santa Fe (1962-64). Kepler followed him to the department of history at the University of California, San Diego, where Wilson moved with his wife, Rebecca, and two sons. After his father’s death, he made the decision to move to California in order to be near his { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } mother, who lived near San Diego. The dean who hired him at UC-San Diego in 1966 emphasized that Wilson needed to publish scholarly work quickly. At 46, Wilson found himself encountering for the first time the pressure of “publish or perish” if he chose to seek tenure as a member of the university’s history department. “I worked fiercely, to the point of illness,” Wilson says. The result was a paper: “Kepler’s Path to the Ellipse,” published in Isis. “It was,” he says, with a smile, “a very good article.” In the paper, Wilson demonstrated that Kepler was aware that conjecture—rather than empirical data—was involved in his coming to the conclusion that the moon’s path was elliptical. “Kepler’s ellipse was not satisfactorily verifiable as what we would call an empirical law,” Wilson explains. “What Kepler adopted did have some empirical support but it was theory laden; his dynamics was wrong.” Only Kepler’s third law—that the period for a planet to orbit the Sun increases rapidly with the radius of its orbit—is empirical, says Wilson. Wilson became a full professor at UCSan Diego. But when asked to return to St. John’s as dean in 1973, he was ready to go. While he had enjoyed the physical environment in California, he found “academic politics at the university was not pleasing. I just wanted to do my scholarship. And in the classroom, I had students who were very competent, but I couldn’t get them to say a word in class.” Back in Annapolis, Wilson—by now an internationally recognized expert on the history of astronomy—continued pursuing his scholarship around his duties as dean and his return to the St. John’s classroom, publishing papers on Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, and Horrocks among others. Wilson’s initial inquiries into the Keplerian Revolution brought him to Jeremiah Horrocks, whose improvements on �david trozzo Kepler’s theories led him to correctly predict the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. Although he died at 22, Horrocks was, in Wilson’s view, “the greatest astronomer in the 17th century after Kepler as far as lunar and planetary theories are concerned.” Understanding Horrocks prepared the way for Wilson to begin to answer the questions he had fostered about Newton’s theories. Newton led to Euler, and Euler to Laplace. While many topics were covered in the St. John’s laboratories and math tutorials, Wilson’s interest took him ever more deeply into the history of astronomy. Wilson’s deep knowledge of these individual scientists has led him to form some sharp opinions of their approach to science and the times in which they lived. Laplace, for example, made great contri- Curtis Wilson in the college observatory. “I keep discovering things I don’t know.” butions to astronomy in the late 18th century, including his work on the inclination of planetary orbits and the motions of the planets. While admiring his science, Wilson is not terribly fond of Laplace, who tended to adapt his scientific postulations for the sake of political expediency when necessary. (Laplace should be given credit for managing to escape the guillotine in the Reign of Terror.) Lagrange made clear what he thought { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } of Laplace’s style in a letter written in September 1777: “I have always envisaged [mathematics] as an object of amusement rather than of ambition, and I can assure you that I enjoy the works of others much more than my own, with which I am always dissatisfied. Thus, you see that if you are free of jealousy because of your success, I am not less so because of my character.” “There is nothing charming about Laplace,” explains Wilson. “He may have had charisma but he was a very opportunistic politician who got along well with the nobility. Although his mathematics were opportunistic, he discovered a lot of important things.” Wilson’s modern heroes include George William Hill, who worked for the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, later �26 {The Program} absorbed into the U.S Naval Observatory. Hill, who discovered a way to accurately determine the motion of the lunar perigee, won the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of London in 1887. “That’s the beginning of modern-day lunar theory,” Wilson says. “It took 10 years for him to gain recognition for his discoveries, and when he went to receive the honor at Cambridge, they didn’t know who he was and put him up in a janitor’s closet.” Wilson recently completed a paper on Dutch astronomer Peter Andreas Hansen that is pending publication in the Archive for History of Exact Sciences, to which he has been a faithful contributor. Today, Wilson is up to Ernest William Brown, whose professor at Cambridge— George Howard Darwin—told him Wilson is not terribly fond of Laplace, who tended to adapt his scientific postulations for the sake of political expediency. “somebody ought to develop Hill’s theory on the orbit of the moon.” “Brown went to work,” says Wilson. “He came to the U.S., taught at Harvard and then at Yale, and worked out the details of the theory Hill had outlined.” When he’s not researching and writ- ing, Wilson practices Beethoven’s piano sonatas and t’ai chi, and visits family with his wife, Rebecca, who served for many years as public relations director for the college. Fascinated by his subject matter, Wilson works on. He comes to the St. John’s campus almost every day. His enthusiasm and energy seem boundless. Although he is pleased to continue to publish papers, something more fundamental drives his scholarship these days. “I keep discovering things that I don’t know,” Wilson says. He talks about Kepler—who started it all—with great admiration. “His theory is so wrong,” Wilson says. “But I admire his stick-to-itiveness, his imagination, his courage. He was an utterly charming person.” x Honoring a Scholar, Thanking a Colleague I n academe, a Festchrift is akin to the ultimate birthday party, with tributes serving as the gifts. Last April, the St. John’s community was honored to host such an event for Curtis Wilson, tutor emeritus. The event was organized by George Smith, professor of philosophy at Tufts University and acting director of the Dibner Institute, and Jed Buchwald, editor of the Archive for History of Exact Sciences. And though the event was timed very near to Wilson’s 81st birthday, enduring admiration for a scholar and a colleague, rather than a chronological marker, prompted the event. “[Wilson] has done far more than anyone else to provide all of us with a deep understanding of the three centuries of orbital astronomy from Kepler through Simon Newcomb,” said Smith, later adding, “Curtis, you are universally recognized to be a paragon of your field.” Speakers noted Wilson’s two decades of service on the editorial board of the Archive, his contributions on planetary astronomy to the General History of Astronomy, and his books, monographs, and many papers. The papers contributed in Wilson’s honor will be published by the Dibner Institute in 2003. Among the contributions is this story from I. Bernard Cohen, professor emeritus at Harvard University: “My path first crossed Curtis Wilson’s when I was writing a small book about planetary theory before Newton. My concern was to understand the significance of Newton’s Principia. I had in fact written a number of chapters, and had even arranged that this small book would be published in a new series being edited by Michael Hoskin. One of the features of the book was an analysis of the various approximations that were used by astronomers in place of Kepler’s area law. These approximations made use of the empty focus of the ellipse and postulated a uniform motion with regard to this empty focus. Various forms of correction were then introduced to make this approximation agree more closely with the data of observation. One of the features of this book was to find out how good these approximations were. I had difficulty in comparing these approximations with published tables and so… a student of mine and I tested the accuracy of these approximations by comparing the positions determined by them with the results of solving Kepler’s equation. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } We did this work on one of the new giant mainframe computers, where we were fortunate to be awarded a halfhour of computer time at 1:30 in the morning…While we were studying the results of our computer research, I received my copy of Truesdell’s Archive for History of Exact Sciences containing a long monograph by Curtis Wilson, his study ‘From Kepler’s Laws (So-Called) to Universal Gravitation: Some Empirical Factors.’ This monograph was a detailed study and analysis of the approximations to Kepler’s area law that was used in the decades before Newton. “My first reaction was one of extreme frustration…even though my book dealt with the subject somewhat differently, I was aware that Curtis’ beautiful analysis had taken the subject so far that there was no need of my book on a similar subject. Accordingly, I consigned my book to the graveyard of unpublished works. In discarding my partly finished book, there was one great source of satisfaction in that Curtis had done so masterful a study that it was a real joy to welcome it. In this work Curtis showed himself to be a master of older astronomy, someone who would make a real contribution to our knowledge during the decades.” x �27 {Homecoming} HOMECOMING, E A S T A N D W E S T, In July in Santa Fe, and October in Annapolis, Homecoming celebrations were lively, well attended, and of course, overwhelmingly sentimental. Top: Chris Labonte (SF92) with Anna Zinanti in Santa Fe; Bottom: Taking a break at the picnic in Annapolis. O moe hanson scott caraway verheard at Homecoming: “And you! You look exactly the same!” “No, you look exactly the same!” Whether these observations made by 30-somethings at a wine and cheese party in Annapolis were truthful or not, Homecoming in Santa Fe and Annapolis this year was all about the gleeful rediscovery of old friends. There was much sharing of memories (foodfights, Freshman Chorus, and spectacular senior pranks) and much catching up (new jobs, babies, and adventures abroad). And proving themselves still pursuing the examined life, Homecoming attendees packed lectures and took part in seminars, even after long nights of waltzing, talking, and Napa Valley wine. In July at Santa Fe, the campus enjoyed its largest event ever, with 130 participants. Homecoming opened on Friday night with a barbecue dinner on the Placita, followed by a rock ‘n’ roll party at the coffee shop. On Saturday, alumni could choose from seminars on Chekhov, Borges, Plato, Shakespeare, and Dinesen. They were released from the classroom to an alumni fiesta picnic on the soccer field— where the food was great and a mini-baby boom was in evidence—then lured back inside for a Saturday afternoon lecture on “The China-Burma-India Theater: Untold “And you! You look exactly the same!” “No, you look exactly the same!” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } Stories from 1945,” by Elaine Pinkerton Coleman (SFGI88). A uniquely Santa Fe Homecoming offering, the All-Alumni Art Show drew a large and enthusiastic crowd to the art gallery. And during the annual Homecoming dinner in the Peterson Student Center dining hall, Awards of Merit went to Peggy Jones (SFGI94) and Stephanie Forrest (SF77). A President’s Brunch for alumni at the Hunt House capped the weekend. In Annapolis, Friday afternoon events included an alumni career panel. Aaron Lewis (A96), press secretary for Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, described a job interview with another politician. Prepared to discuss current political issues, Lewis instead was asked who he thought had invented calculus: Leibniz or Newton. After a very enthusiastic welcome from her audience, Eva Brann delivered her lecture, “The Empires of the Sun and West,” to a packed house, with alumni and students spilling out into the corridors of the FSK Auditorium. Her observations about human sacrifices in the Aztec empire prepared lecture-goers for a wine and cheese reception. In spite of reports of very late hours kept at waltz and rock parties Friday night, �28 {Homecoming} scott caraway moe hanson In spite of reports of very late hours kept at waltz and rock parties Friday night, attendance was healthy at Saturday seminars. attendance was good at Saturday seminars; Sam Kutler had 14 alumni ready to plunge into The Demons, a 600-page tome. The class of 1952 had an afternoon picnic enlivened by class member Warren Winiarski’s Stag’s Leap wine. The wine also was served at the evening banquet, perhaps inspiring the enthusiastic participation in class toasts. A member of the class of 1932, Henry Shryock, who had the honor of being the oldest alumnus present, drew a standing ovation with his heartfelt toast that closed the evening: “On behalf of the old program, I’d like to toast the New Program— St. John’s forever!” x moe hanson Clockwise from top: Taking a moment to read in Annapolis; Jules and LeRoy Pagano (A48); Santa Fe President John Balkcom (SFGI00), flanked by Lee Goldstein (SFGI90)and Alice Mangum Perry (SFGI92). { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �29 {Homecoming} At a Glance: Homecoming 2002 37, 42, 47, 52, 57, 62, 67, 72, 77, 82, 87, 92, 97 67, 72, 77, 82, 87, 92, 97 Freebie gifts Travel mugs with McDowell Hall picture Paper cubes with four-season views of the campus Touch of nostalgia The St. John’s Story on continuous replay in the Coffee Shop President John Balkcom’s jaunty straw boater at the Fiesta Picnic Hot seminars Plato’s Phaedo, led by Peter Kalkavage “Sorrow-Acre” by Isak Dinesen, led by Don Cook, tutor emeritus Honorary alumni John Sarkissian, Al Toft, Robert Williamson Daniel T. Kelly Jr., Gregory D. Curtis Awards of Merit Candace Brightman (1967), lighting designer for the Grateful Dead; Howard Zeiderman (1967), tutor and founder of the Touchstones Discussion Project Peggy Jones (Graduate Institute 1994), founding board member of the St. John’s College Library and Fine Arts Guild; Stephanie Forrest (1988), professor of computer science and researcher at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque Uniquely Johnnie Homecoming Feature Great books story hour for kids Alumni Speaking Volumes lecture Top: Susan Zinanti (SF93), Heather Watts (SF00), Taeko Onishi (SF92) at the Santa Fe banquet; Below: Picnickers in Annapolis. moe hanson scott caraway moe hanson Reunion years scott caraway Santa Fe moe hanson Annapolis Lawrence Black, Jenn Coonce, Lori Freeman, and Tafetta Elliott spell out their graduation year. Top: Pauline Shryock enjoys the Annapolis Homecoming banquet; Bottom: Annapolis students Hayden Brockett and Jenny Lowe at the waltz party. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �30 {Bibliofile} The Clash Between Quantum Theory and Human Individuality Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature Peter Pesic MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2002 P eter Pesic explores fundamental and paradoxical questions about connectedness and separateness, identity and anonymity, in his new book, Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature. Pesic, tutor and musician-in-residence in Santa Fe, draws from the disciplines of philosophy and literature in shaping his discussion; however, it is physics that ultimately shapes his intriguing point of view. Specifically, modern quantum theory is presented as a tool for formulating and contemplating nontraditional definitions of individuality. Although he has expert knowledge of the subject, the author presents contemporary theoretical physics in a manner accessible to lay readers. The usual interpretation of quantum theory calls for an essential sameness in the elementary building blocks of matter, yet the prevailing cultural understanding of individuality demands that certain aspects of any object be unique unto themselves. A central component of being human, for example, is that each of us feels we are one of a kind, unduplicated across the arc of history. Although this clashing of basic assumptions would seem to pose an inherent contradiction, Pesic suggests that by refining our definitions of individuality and identity, we can make quantum theory more intelligible and less conflictive, while maintaining nonscientific claims of singularity. In the last section of Seeing Double, the author considers the defining property of identicality described by quantum physics, whereby subatomic particles have no individual identity. This notion begs challenging questions about how we are able to observe the movement of (identical) electrons or to define them (accurately) as either waves or particles. Santa Fe Tutor Peter Pesic tackles physics in his latest book. “What would happen if a human is cloned into two identical beings?” In exploring through classic literature a revised perspective on the queries he raises, Pesic recounts illustrative elements that begin with the Greek mythology of Homer’s Odyssey and continue through Janet Lewis’s The Wife of Martin Guerre and Franz Kafka’s The Trial, among others. Philosophical theories also are considered, including those of Gottfried Leibniz, Socrates, Benedict Spinoza, and Immanuel Kant. The author gives concise discussions of their ideas, but also aims to open a conversation with his readers. “We cannot refer our human questions about identity to a physicist, the way we refer our legal problems to a lawyer,” writes Pesic. “This realization is truly a philosophical matter.” Pesic moves next into the implications of the thinking upon which modern science rests, including Newtonian physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the electromagnetic studies of Michael Faraday. The author further expands the question of identity by acknowledging the powerful influences that personality, nature, and God may play in our interpretations of scientific theory. Although Seeing Double does not address such domains directly, it touches ultimately on identity-related aspects of biotechnology and cloning that also are worthy of analysis. Mr. Pesic wonders, for instance, what would happen if a human is cloned into two identical beings: “Which of these, then, is you? Both? Neither? Only one (but which)?” A satisfactory answer remains elusive. In addition to being a concert pianist, Pesic has published a number of papers on science-related topics over the years. His previous book, Labyrinth: A Search for the Hidden Meaning of Science, was published by MIT Press in 2000 and has appeared in Japanese and German trans-lations as well as paperback. x –by Richard Mahler { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �{Bibliofile} 31 Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading THE ODYSSEY and THE ILIAD Eva Brann Paul Dry Books “Reading Homer’s poems is one of the purest, most inexhaustible pleasures life has to offer—a secret sometimes too well kept in our time.” So begins Eva Brann’s “Homeric Moments,” a work inspired by 50 years of reading Homer and 40 years of guiding St. John’s students on their own journeys through the poems. In 48 concise and beautifully written chapters, Brann focuses on the crucial scenes—the moments—that mark the high points of the narrative. Much of her book is structured on the questions that students have posed in seminar over the years. (Editor’s note: The Spring 2003 issue of The College magazine will include a more thorough review of Homeric Moments.) Psychology and the Critical Revolution Anton G. Hardy (A51) James Publications Anton Hardy presents an odyssey of another kind in this work: the question of how knowledge of the human being may be attained. The book criticizes trends in present-day psychology—psychology that Hardy says is suffering in the grip of the philosophy of realism. How the Friday Night Dance Came to Glen Echo Park Owen Kelley (A93) Self-published (okelley@gmu.edu) Kelley’s book discusses the history of the Glen Echo Park dances, which grew from a small gathering of friends to weekly events attracting several hundred people. Kelley has interviewed dozens of dancers, musicians, and callers for his book on this famous dance hall right outside Washington, D.C. Several essays about the dances are also included. Love, War and Circuses Eric Scigliano (SF75) Houghton Mifflin Most children grow up loving elephants— either from the circus and the zoo or from favorite books featuring characters such as Babar, the wise elephant king. Seattlebased writer Eric Scigliano, whose articles have appeared in publications including Outside and The New York Times, first Japanese Cabinetry: The Art and Craft of Tansu David Jackson and Dane Owen (SF98) Gibbs Smith Originating from Japan’s Edo period (16151867), tansu refers mostly to wooden cabinets, boxes, and chests. This book provides a broad representation of cabinetry designs and chronicles the physical characteristics and details of tansu as well as the historical eras and societal factors that influenced the craft. 12 Japanese Masters Maggie Kinser Saiki (A85) Graphis Maggie Kinser Saiki spent 10 years profiling some of the greatest designers in postwar Japan for Graphis magazine. These profiles are collected here in a book that outlines the cultural and historical context in which the designers grew up and matured. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } became fascinated with elephants as a child living in Vietnam. The fascination has lingered into adulthood, prompting this volume examining man’s millennialong relationship with the pachyderm. Scigliano explains how elephants have shaped history, art, religion, and popular culture, how they have been revered, exploited for both labor and entertainment, and hunted to the point of becoming endangered. Periodically, The College will list or feature alumni books. Please send notice of books published or review copies (which will be donated to the library’s alumni author collection) for consideration to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. �32 {Alumni Notes} 1944 JOHN DAVIS HILL and Dorothy Murdock Hill celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary on June 15, 2002, in Omaha, Nebraska, with local friends. 1946 “Sued President Bush on June 12 on behalf of 31 members of Congress for terminating the ABOL Treaty without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate or a majority of both houses,” reports PETER WEISS from the Bronx. 1952 DAVID NAPPER writes that he enjoys the mild winters of Ponte Vedra, Fla., but summers are “steamy.” “I’m active in tennis, and we’ve found the Jacksonville Symphony worthwhile.” 1960 The New York Tri-State Speaker’s Association Inc. honored MARY CAMPBELL GALLAGHER with its Alan Cimberg Award for her years of dedicated service to NSA/New York. She has served on the board of directors and in various leadership roles. 1962 “Am busily writing a new paper called ‘Behaving with Shu [care toward one’s subordinates, usually translated as reciprocity] and Zhong’ [care toward one’s superiors, usually translated as loyalty] for, I hope, presentation next year in Sweden,” says DAVID SCHILLER. 1965 CAROL BENJAMIN JEFFERS is “happily single after a long marriage. I live squarely on the line between Maryland and Delaware and work at a job I love. I plan to retire and move back to the Pacific Northwest in about two years.” She would love to hear from classmates. ALLENNA DUNGAN LEONARD was recently elected to a three-year term as president of the American Society for Cybernetics. 1967 LOVEJOY DURYEA is chairman of the New York State Board of Interior Design Office of the Professions. In March, she will receive the Gold Medal at the National Arts Club in New York. 1968 ALEX HIMWICH (A) and Lynn Maguire were married on May 26, 2002. 1969 JOSEPH PRESTON BARATTA (A) writes that his history, The Politics of World Federation, will be published next year by Praeger Press. The book includes a chapter about A Gift of Books everal books from the library of the late PETER RINGLAND (class of 1944) have found their way into the college library. Peter’s widow, Valentina, brought an 18th-century volume of Ovid and two language manuals from his Greek tutorials. The Ovid, she said, came from a market in Rome where Peter was stationed when he worked for the government in the 1980s. The language manuals were for a class taught by John Kieffer, one of only two tutors who remained at the college after the New Program was instituted in 1937. A classics scholar, Kieffer taught Greek and developed early materials for the freshman tutorials. The Ovid will be kept with the library’s rare book collection; the manuals will join other source books, papers, and instructional materials from the early days of the New Program. x S Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan after they left St. John’s. MARK A. MANDEL (A) writes that his daughter Susannah interned last summer at a Paris publishing house midway through MIT’s M.A. program in comparative media studies. “As I write this (hopefully no longer the case as you read it!), I am searching for work as a linguist (the language-scientist kind, not the kind all security agencies want to hire, alas!)” Mam@theworld.com ference was held Oct. 30 to Nov. 4. Last September SARA ABERCROMBIE (SF02) was a houseguest of IRVING WILLIAMS (A72) at Happy House on Cliff Island, Maine. “We compared senior pranks of the ’70s and ’90s, and the true identify of the infamous ‘clapper napper,’ who exchanged the Annapolis Bell Tower clapper for a dog fish, was revealed,” reports Williams. 1974 In New York, N.Y., BENJAMIN TREUHAFT (A) is involved with a group called Send a Piano to Havana that does just that. “Just delivered our 210th piano to Havana last month.” The group’s web site: www.sendapiana.com SAM GOLDBERG (A) has written The Transference in Psychotherapy with William Goldstein, to be published this year by Jason Aronson Inc. 1970 Vancouver-Portland alumni: It’s time for another event, says DALE MORTIMER (A). “The last area alumni event was a reception for President John Balkcom on May 8, 2001.” For those with a suggestion, plus the willingness to organize the proposed event, feel free to contact Dale: 360-882-9058. Last summer, STEVE HANCOFF (A) saw a newspaper article reporting that musicians, especially American artists, were turning down concert dates in Israel, mostly because of a fear of violence, but in some cases, because of disagreement with Israeli policy. His response was to bring a concert tour to Israel. “The two principles I wanted to demonstrate were: There are indeed respected American artists who will not be intimidated by terror. And we wish to stand with the Israeli people.” Hancoff’s trio planned to tour the country during the fall—not just the major cities, he said. At each concert the group expected to be joined an Israeli artist. They also planned to offer master classes. Check his web site for updates: www.stevehancoff.com. 1972 Parental pride: “HANK (A70) and CHRISTINE (A72) CONSTANTINE’S extremely personable, intelligent and handsome son, Alex, is now a sophomore at Annapolis.” Last fall, CHRISTEL STEVENS (A) finally got to Greece. She presented her paper, “Images of Women in Indian Dance Sacred and Profane,” with colleague Lori Clark, at the annual conference of the International Council for Dance. The con- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } 1975 1976 ED KAITZ (A) is a musician currently performing interactively with children, elders and people with disabilities. Interested parties may contact him at EdsMusicMachine@aol.com. 1977 WILLIAM MALLOY (SF) has plans. “Because I was nine years older than you when we began, I get to retire in 2006! I plan on doing some sort of paralegal work for some left-wing public interest group (but not one as staid as the ACLU).” From PATRICIA MCCULLOUGH (SFGI) in Lanham, Md.: “I have just completed my 30th year as a teacher of English at Alice Deal Jr. High School in Washington, D.C., and I still love it.” Two years ago, MICHAEL (LEVINE) ST. JAMES (A) chose to leave law firm life after two decades to begin a solo practice. Good timing, he says: “I specialize in business bankruptcy!” �33 {Alumni Profile} Preserving the Ph.D. Anthropologist Peter Ellison Leads Harvard Graduate School by Rosemary Harty martha stewart W hen he became dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences two years ago, Peter Ellison (A73) knew he was sacrificing time: precious time that might otherwise be devoted to studying lactation and fertility among the Toba of northern Argentina, or time to produce another book in his field of human reproductive ecology. But in the bargain, Ellison gains a chance to make a long-lasting contribution to science in another way. Concerned that higher education could lose talented students to more lucrative fields, Ellison became increasingly active at Harvard in issues concerning graduate education. He believed that the crisis in secondary education—an inability to attract and retain talented and motivated individuals to the teaching profession—could be replicated in higher education. “As a society, we have so devalued secondary school education as a career that we have made it one that only saints and extremely motivated people of talent would pursue,” says Ellison. “I’m worried that we could do the same thing to the professoriate. The very best and brightest young minds are also capable of many other activities and there are many other professions that beckon to them.” Harvard’s call to action was prompted by alarming statistics. At Harvard in the ’60s and early ’70s, well over half of the summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduates went on to graduate school and careers in higher education; now that number is below 20 percent, says Ellison. Medicine, law, and business school beckon to many talented graduates who might otherwise become college professors. “Pursuing a Ph.D. and going into academia is a very long course with unpredictable rewards,” Ellison says. “Either we’re going to make higher education a career for second-class minds or go to work on that career so that some of these wonderfully intelligent people can still pursue that calling.” Before accepting the dean’s post, Ellison headed a faculty committee examining financial aid. The committee’s work even- Peter Ellison tually led to Harvard’s adoption of a policy to provide full funding for nearly all of its graduate students. That alone is a good start, but Harvard is also looking at ways to shorten the path to the Ph.D., improve the quality of life for graduate students, and make sure that doctoral candidates learn teaching skills along the way. “We’re providing much more self–conscious preparation of our students. In the past they’ve been trained to be wonderful researchers, and they figure out how to teach on their own,” he explains. “Now we integrate teaching into the curriculum, rather than making it just a job on the side, and we’re addressing pedagogy and professional development in general.” Ellison’s own path to research and teaching came—indirectly—through St. John’s. He studied Greek and Latin at an East Coast prep school and believed that St. John’s would prepare him to pursue a career in literature, languages, or philosophy. Science he dismissed as “dry and uninteresting.” That plan continued unaltered until Ellison read Darwin’s Origin of Species in sophomore laboratory. “That stopped me dead in my tracks. I had never encountered an argument that was so powerful and undeniably true,” he says. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } That led to his decision to leave St. John’s after the fall term of his junior year; he transferred to the University of Vermont, where he plunged into remedial science and biology, “loving every minute of this area of knowledge which I had previously spurned.” After earning a degree in anthropology, Ellison chose to study human biology. He went to Harvard, where he earned a doctorate in biological anthropology and joined the faculty in 1983. His research has centered on the biology of human populations, including issues such as fertility, stages of development, and reproduction. Ellison’s research has taken him to some of the most remote spots on Earth, from the Congo to villages in Argentina. He has hopped single-engine mission planes to get to research sites and suffered a bout of malaria. He has studied topics including anxiety and ovarian function, reproductive ecology and reproductive cancers, and agerelated decline in male salivary testosterone. There are sometimes constraints in his research, and not just those that hinder a man investigating female reproductive issues. “Even more than being a male studying reproductive biology, [it is difficult to be] a human biologist and to study human beings where your subjects are people who have lives and identities and struggles of their own, ethically, personally, and socially.” He may have less time to spend in the field, but Ellison’s research is continuing through his Reproductive Ecology Laboratory at Harvard. Ellison and colleagues developed techniques for measuring reproductive hormones in saliva instead of blood, allowing them to take research out of the clinic and into the field. Right now, that field is in Argentina, where Ellison and his co-investigators are studying issues of lactation, energy, and reproduction among the Toba women of Formosa, Argentina. Although he doesn’t plan to stay in administration for the long term, Ellison appreciates the broader perspective his post has afforded him. “I have a chance to get out of my own little niche and see a larger landscape.” x �34 {Alumni Profile} Striking a Balance Lawyer Martha Franks Integrates Idealism with Reality by Marissa Morrison, SFGI02 Santa Fe tutor Martha Franks maintains a private practice in environmental law and is involved in the controversy over water rights in New Mexico. S omewhere between passion and pragmatism, real change happens. Martha Franks (SF78) cites as an example the divergent paths of two historic figures. Abraham Lincoln was diplomatic and realistic. Abolitionist John Brown was radical and passionate. In common, they shared the desire to end slavery. Franks, a lawyer, environmentalist, student of theology, and St. John’s tutor, has been working in New Mexico water law since the mid-’80s. Her approach to the critical issues surrounding water allocation in the West take her somewhere between Lincoln and Brown. “Brown stands as an icon of personal principle, such principle that he was ineffective in what he wanted to do,” Franks says. “And then there’s Lincoln, who is far more equivocal in terms of principled objections to slavery, but he can get things to happen. He can see what needs to be done in order to be effective in the world. Yet you have to be careful, because you don’t want to be so seduced by realpolitik that you lose track of what you do. It is a very difficult line to walk.” Franks balances her environmental concerns with practical realities. “The theme in all my work has been trying to integrate an intellectual and a practical life,” she says, “and trying to understand when it’s appropriate to make deals, and when it’s important to pursue principle.” Water law goes beyond public policy and the law; philosophical and theological issues are also involved. Traditionally, water rights have been allocated among federal, state, city, Indian, and private interests. But how about allocating water to the environment? “There are two sides to the question about how much water is appropriate to allocate to the environment,” Franks explains. “There are people who argue that the answer is none, that species have become extinct since the beginning of time; our species is now ascendant and we’ll take what we want. Others say that the preservation of earth is the primary task of human stewardship and that water should be available first for the natural ecology. Only when that’s satisfied can “The more learning you do in real life, the more you can hear the truth.” human beings build a sustainable lifestyle on what remains. “Both positions can be defended on idealistic grounds, depending on your ideology, but the practical matter is that people try to work out compromises. Huge ideologies stand there and people sort themselves in relation to the one they’re closest to, but in the end, people struggle to find compromises.” Returning to the St. John’s program as a tutor last September offered Franks another opportunity to integrate practicality and intellect. “The more learning you do in real life, the more you can hear the truth,” Franks says. “I loved these books as an undergrad, yet I have to look at them and say, ‘I never could have heard this then.’ I would have missed these truths if I hadn’t been through what I have been through. And of course that makes it obvious that there’s tons of stuff in there that I can’t see { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } now, and maybe won’t see ever.” After working for five years for the federal government and about 10 years for the state of New Mexico, Franks started a new chapter in her legal career in January 2002 when she opened a private firm. But forging ahead in the practical world has not kept her from philosophical contemplation. Drawing on her seminary background (she has a master’s degree in theological studies from the Virginia Theological Seminary), she’s been exploring the connections between Christianity and environmentalism. Franks mentions one environmentalist’s claim that the Judeo-Christian tradition led to human kind’s dominion over—and destruction of—the planet. “I would like to do work addressing the truth or falsity of that and seeing whether there is a ground for an environmental ethic within Christianity,” she says. “It is astonishing that the Hebrew scriptures talk in terms of subduing the earth,” she says. “Instead of thinking of the earth as a giant nature god of mystery and power, it makes more sense in our century, in the wake of so much environmental destruction, to perceive the earth as weak and helpless, like a baby that can’t take care of itself.” x �35 {Alumni Notes} 1978 Update on the Blumes, from MICHAEL DAVID BLUME (A): “In the past year my son has graduated high school, my wife, BETSY BLUME (A75) has become a certified fund-raising executive, certification earned through the American Society of Association Executives. As well as organizing other educational activities, she has now joined the board of directors of the Washington chapter of the AFP; and she and I wrote a ‘how to’ book on an aspect of fund raising, published and promoted by the American Society of Association Executives. She continues to work for the Special Libraries Association, and continues to expand revenues for its projects, working with such companies as Lexis-Nexis, Factive, Standard & Poors, and many others. We have finally moved from Annapolis to Bethesda, Maryland, contiguous with Northwest Washington and intermingled with Chevy Chase. It is a beautiful area.” SUZAN M. PORTER (SF) will be teaching sixth-grade science and seventh-grade pre-algebra at the NOVA School in Olympia, Wash. “NOVA is a middle school which serves academically talented youngsters, and I’m very much looking forward to the challenges.” 1980 ANDREW KLIPPER (A) became a grandfather for the second time on Oct. 24, 2001, when Makayla Marie Anderson was born. “JUSTIN BURKE (A87) and I continue to coordinate an annual fund-raising effort for the Jimmy Fund and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Anyone wishing to participate can e-mail me at Aklip1@aol.com. See you all croquet weekend. I will be running the Bay Bridge 10K.” 1981 From Nashville, Tenn., ROBERT J. MONDLOCK (A) writes of his musical career: “For about the last seven years I’ve been touring with my wife and partner, Carol Elliott, who is also a singer/songwriter (we got married at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas in June of 2000). I’ve got three CDs of my own out and I’ve had the good fortune of having some of my songs recorded by other artists as well (Nanci Griffith, David Wilcox, Joan Baez, Janis Ian, Garth Brooks, Peter Paul and Mary). My latest project is a trio record with Art Garfunkel and Maia Sharp scheduled for release on October 8. The three of us will be touring to support the record this fall on into next spring. I’ve got a website like just about everybody these days. It’s BuddyMondlock.com. Please c’mon by and sign the guestbook and say hi. I’d love to hear from any of my old pals at St. John’s.” 1982 STEVE MULHOLLAND (A) is teaching Latin to middle and high school students at Chatham Public School. He began building a new house last September. “As if going to the 20th reunion wasn’t enough to make me feel old!” says LESLIE SMITH-ROSEN (A) “Eldest child, Marielle, is a college freshman now; Alyssa’s in high school and Sam’s in middle school. I’m still teaching and developing curriculum at a Baltimore Jewish day school and religious high school. My quest for a Ph.D., now spanning two millennia, is on its next leg: working on my language comps, nursing a dissertation topic. Too much stress, too much debt, too little time to read—but somehow very happy.” According to DAVID WEINSTEIN (A), “There is nothing like being the director of research for a national brokerage firm in these interesting times.” 1983 DEANA GLICKSTEIN (AGI) recently relocated to Tarpon Springs, Fla., after electing early retirement as an educational administrator with the school district of Philadelphia and as a graduate school professor. “Though there are many real Greeks here in Tarpon Springs, have not found any St. Johnnie alumni chapters here in Florida. Interested in creating one? please e-mail: deanashere@hotmail.com.” A Year in Congress TEVE HANF (A70) has been spending the past year S working in Congress, thanks to a fellowship from the American Political Science Association. “I’m serving the fellowship on the personal staff of Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) My issues are health and the elderly— totally new subjects for me. (For the past 15 years, I’ve been working on financial regulatory issues.) The congressional staff is young, smart, hard-working—exploding the myth that people who work for Congress don’t know what they’re doing. This is a wonderfully invigorating and educational experience for me. “On the personal side, my wife (Ruth Sievers) and I celebrated our 18th anniversary last March. She has become devoted to the cultivation and arrangement of flowers and wants to retire soon from her writing job at the Library of Congress so she can spend full time on those floral pursuits. Our 14-year-old son just graduated from middle school with a straight-A record for the entire three years. He enters high school next fall.” x 1984 that would outline the cultural and historical context in which these designers grew up and matured.” EDWARD ABSE (A) is completing a doctorate in anthropology this year at the University of Virginia, based on three years of field research with the Mazatec Indians of the Sierra Madre Oriental in Oaxaca, Mexico. ANTHONY N. SIEGEL (SF) married Linda Naclerrio in October 2001; he was promoted to vice president of CitiCorps last February. They live in Chappaqua, N.Y. 1985 1986 Remarried and with a brand new book, MAGGIE KINSER [SAIKI] HOHLE (A) writes: “As I wrote in The Reporter in 2000, I graduated in ’85 from Annapolis as Maggie Kinser. I spent 15 years in Japan. I returned to the U.S. in 2000. The new news is that I have a book coming out: The book is 12 Japanese Masters, and is being published by Graphis. (You can find it at amazon.com.) 12 Japanese Masters is the culmination of 10 years of writing about Japanese design. Because my parents are both designers, because I studied at St. John’s, and because I speak Japanese, I ended up writing for Graphis magazine while in Japan. I was fortunate enough to interview some of the greatest designers in postwar Japan, and through their work and the experiences they related to me, to learn about both Japanese design and the postwar period in Japan. I published more than 20 pieces for Graphis, and then, while home for my father’s funeral in 1999, pitched the publisher with the idea of bringing all these profiles together in a book MARGARET PARISH (A) received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Delphi University in 2000. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Austen Riggs Center, an open, psychoanalytic, psychiatric hospital dedicated to examined living in Stockbridge, Mass. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } LUCY E. DUNCAN (SF) gave birth to a daughter this spring. 1987 BETH MORRIS (A) has just returned from a year in London (spent with A87 classmate MICHAEL SMITH and his wife, Kristen). She’s working as a project manager for a software company. In September she wrote of her plans to be married—“INS willing!”—in November to Steve Tanner of Basingstoke, U.K. 1988 ERIN M. MILNES (A) has recently taken up whitewater raft guiding. “It’s great fun in a beautiful loca- �36 {Alumni Notes} tion: the south fork of the American River. Just last week I was joined on a rafting trip by JEFF FALERO (A88), who’s now living in the Bay Area. We had a fantastic time catching up and paddling in the sun. Anyone interested in some California whitewater can reach me at erin@milnes.de” Last fall, GRETCHEN JACOBS (A) wrote and directed a play called Brightness Falls: The Tragical History of Christopher Marlowe, at the Greenbelt Arts Center in Greenbelt, Md. 1990 New baby news from CLINTON PITTMAN (SF): “Samuel Shen Pittman born 02/22/02—George Washington’s real birthday and a numerical palindrome of sorts. Pictures available upon request.” 1991 SAPNA GANDHI (A) writes from Jersey City: “I am finally certified to teach yoga to children through a great program (www.yogakids.com). If anyone is interested in learning more, contact me: dreamsapna@ yahoo.com. I don’t know where I’ll go from here but will look into teaching at children’s hospitals and community centers.” She also plans a trip to India to get reacquainted with family and her culture. CYNTHIA GLINES (SFGI) completed her doctorate in psychology last spring. “Currently I work at a maximum security prison as a unit psychologist in the lovely state of Idaho.” 1992 LORIE BENNING (A) has been in Baltimore with her daughter, Sarah, for four years. “Sarah is 11 and is going into sixth grade. She’s a jock (swimming and soccer), but she’s also artistic and she loves to read. I work at Johns Hopkins as a statistical analyst for a women’s HIV study. I’ve published three papers on the impact of HIV on cervical disease, quality control of HIV viral load measurements, and the increasing importance of non- AIDS mortality in the era of potent anti-retroviral therapy.” NONNIE (SCHMITT) CULLIPHER (A) lives in the mountains of North Carolina with her husband, Sid. They have been blessed over the past year with the birth of daughter Greta and the adoption of Brittany, 11. Nonnie and Sid run a nonprofit. AARON GARZA (SF) is moving to Ogden, Utah, in August. He had a great time at the reunion: “Later, I laughingly discovered that I’d busted my shoes from much spirited dancing.” LAURA C. KNIGHT (A) writes from Corinth, Texas: “I recently graduated from DePaul University with a master’s in math education, and I’ve accepted a job with North Central Texas Community College, teaching developmental math. It’s good to be back in Texas. I would love to hear from fellow Johnnies. E-mail is: knightla@ mail1.aaahawk.com.” HANNAH STIRES (A) and JOEL ARD (A95) married at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on April 13, 2002. Johnnies in attendance included the best man, DAVID TRIMMER (A92), NONNIE (SCHMITT) CULLIPHER (A92), AMY ELIZABETH PARTON (A92), SARAH SCHOEDINGER (A92), KURT HECKEL (A93), LORIE BENNING (A93), AMY THURSTON (A95), ALEX LOMVARDIAS (A95), and EMILY MURPHY (A95). Hannah is an attorney at the Department of Justice, and Joel is an attorney at Latham & Watkins, both in Washington, D.C. They recently bought a home in Eastport and would be happy to hear from old friends and acquaintances at j-ard-10@alumni.uchicago.edu. ANNE SCHUCHMAN (started with the Annapolis class of ’91, graduated with class of ’92) and JAMES BERRETTINI (AGI93) are thrilled to announce the birth of their daughter, Stella Rose, on October 7. (Their excuse for missing the class of 1992 reunion.) “Stella joins big brother Samuel, now 3. We’re still living in Manhattan, but searching for larger quarters. We can be reached by e-mail at ams8050@nyu.edu (Anne) and jpb@alum.mit.edu (Jim).” 1993 AMY FLACK (A) is in her fifth year of ministry (Presbyterian Church of the USA) in South Dakota. In July, she wrote, her area was in the midst of a terrible drought. “The cattle don’t have enough grass to eat and people are forced to sell off their whole livelihoods. Keep the small farmer and our Western states in your prayers.” THORNTON LOCKWOOD (AGI) and his wife, Karen, announce the birth of Nicholas Charles, born August 15. JONATHAN PEARL (A) and his wife, Cheryl welcomed the birth of their son, Rembrandt, on April 15, 2002, at 10:46 p.m. 1994 DAVID BROOKS (SF) expects this is the year he’ll graduate with his Ph.D. in clinical psychology: “I have just completed a predoctoral residency at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center and will be building up a private practice as I complete my dissertation on contemporary Kleinian Psychoanalytic technique.” ALEX GAMMON (A) and BETH MARTIN (A) were married in the Great Hall on July 20. 1995 WILLIAM BOLAN (A) and JANICE THOMPSON (A) live in South Bend, Ind., where they recently celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary. Son Mathew James Thompson Bolon is now “a very active twoand-a-half-year-old. We are both nearing completion of our Ph.D.s in theology and hope that at least one of us will have a job soon!” KATE FELD (A) is enrolled in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. CARTER SNEAD (A) was recently named General Counsel for President Bush’s Council on Bioethics (www.bioethics.gov). LEIGH FITZPATRICK SNEAD (A98) is in her last year of doctoral coursework at the Catholic University of America { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } School of Philosophy. Leigh and Carter are living in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and would love to hear from old friends. The REV. JANET SUNDERLAND (SFGI) has a church in Kansas City and is having a wonderful time. Her web site is www.churchofantioch.org/coakc.html and e-mail is suncliff@planetkc.com. She would love to hear from old friends. 1996 CASEY PATRICK MCFADEN (AGI) graduated from Georgetown University Law Center last May and entered private practice in Washington, D.C. 1997 DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) moved to the D.C. area with AMANDA DULIN (A) to attend the MBA program at the University of Maryland in the fall. His plan is to start a board game company when he graduates. “I am extremely excited about the whole prospect of returning to school and working on a business plan. Plato must be turning over in his grave!” Samuel Davis Trares was born to ´ RACHEL TRARES, nee Davis, (A) and LUKE TRARES (A) on Wednesday, October 16, 2002, at 4:09 p.m in Fort Worth, Texas. He weighed 8 pounds and 9 ounces at birth and was 20 inches long. Both Rachel and Sammy are doing fine. Adds Luke: “We are both very excited to be given the opportunity to raise such a cute little person.” JUAN GONZALO VILLASEÑOR (A) has moved to New York, where he works for the American Civil Liberties Union as the William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow. 1998 RUTH BUSKO (A) is completing a master’s degree in acupuncture. She’s an acupuncture intern at the faculty-student clinic of the TAI Sophia Institute for the Healing Arts in Laurel, Md. “Feel free to contact me at 410-312-0991 or at rmbusko@hotmail.com.” �37 {Alumni Notes} Lighting up the Lawns are doing premed or med, or if you are in New York. Please contact me at artemisvela@yahoo.com.” 2001 usca croquet news/Holly Currier BASIL BRYAN CLEVELAND (A) is happy to talk about the University Professors graduate program at Boston University, which he says is “BU’s version of the Committee on Social Thought.” Contact him at basilcleveland@hotmail.com. TEPHANIE PADUANO (A94) graces the cover of the fall 2002 edition of USCA Croquet News, the publication of the United States Croquet Association. Paduano is also featured in “New Faces Light Up the Lawns,” an article about her introduction to the game and her first-place singles and third-place doubles victories in the USCA Mid-Atlantic/New England Regional tournament last summer. Paduano, who works for U.S. Trust in New York, plays croquet in Central Park as a member of the New York Croquet Club. Although her championship qualities emerged after graduation, Paduano credits St. John’s with sparking her initial interest. “Everyone pretty much knew everyone at St. John’s,” Paduano says in the article. “One day a friend of mine was playing croquet and I asked him to show me a few shots. I wasn’t really hooked then, but I thought it was fun.” x S DANE OWEN (SF) has published Japanese Cabinetry: The Art and Craft of Tansu. 1999 JESSICA MORGENSTERN (A) is teaching full time for Arthur Murray Studio in Santa Barbara, Calif. “Sometimes miss the good conversations, would welcome e-mail!” Sprout_1999@yahoo.com. TRACY NECTOUX (AGI) is currently teaching English at Parkland Community College in Champaign, Illinois. “It’s only now that I miss the ‘calm safety’ of being a student!” 2000 PAUL BRITTON SPRADLEY (A) recently earned his master’s degree from Ole Miss. “I am still teaching geometry in the Mississippi Delta and I recently bought a house.” ADRIEN STOLOFF (A) will be heading to Japan to participate in the JET program. Classmates can reach him at elemence@hotmail.com ANNE VELA (A) says, “Hi y’all. I have moved to New York to start studies in the Columbia University postbaccalaureate premedical program. Chris is staying in Savannah until May to finish his master’s degree in architecture. I would love to get in touch with other NYC Johnnies who KAREN COSTA (SF) sends reports for herself and other Santa Fe classmates: “HEATHER DAVIS is going to Haiti with the Peace Corps. EBEN LASKER, JOE BUCKLEY, BRIAN BALLENTINE, JEROME MOROUX, and KARINA GILL are living in New York City. Karina and Joe are both teaching. BEN JUDSON and IAN MULLET are in San Antonio, Texas. I am also living in New York City doing research and editing. But maybe this is all just gossip?” JUSTIN KRAY (SF) spent this past year teaching English in Epinal, France; he toured Eastern Europe before returning to the United States in June. NANCY R. LEWIS (HA) says it was “a pleasure” to pay her 2002 alumni dues—and she really means it. “When I was appointed registrar of the college in 1979, I never imagined that I would become the recipient of two such wonderful gifts. My years spent as registrar and now as an honorary alumna are extraordinary gifts and I am very grateful for both of them. Thank you for the opportunity to continue to share in the life of the college in such a meaningful way.” ANNE NEEDHAM (A) has left her job as a bookseller in Washington, D.C., to enroll in the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building in Port Townsend, Wash. She hopes one day to work in a boatyard and teach others the traditional arts and crafts of the sea. “Having discovered that, contrary to Socrates’ august opinion that ‘souls are not unalloyed,’ I am getting in touch with my ‘iron soul’ and hope to learn a trade as well,” she says. Needham is scheduled to graduate with an associate’s degree in { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } occupational studies in traditional wooden boat building in June 2003. KEE ZUBLIN (SF) reports from Eugene: “Have begun performing on the Winnamucca-Tonopeh circuit as a prestidigitator/family counselor.” 2002 “Life is good,” says CLAIRE DARLING (SF), in Beaverton, Ore. “I’m growing quite fond of our three chickens. Would love to hear from anyone local regarding reading groups, hiking, litter pick-up, whatever.” Bumpkins@aracnet.com. JULIA (GRAHAM) MESNIKOFF (SF) was married June 1 to Nathan Mesnikoff. They were married at the Unitarian-Universalist Church to which they belong, on the lawn and “under a huppah which I batiked with symbols of Nathan’s and my several religious traditions and other things dear to us. BILL AND NATALIE BLAIS (SF04) and CLAIRE DARLING (SF03) and her daughter, Regan, helped hold the huppah, and KRISTIE KESLER (SF03) read a Buddhist benediction. I finished my nurse practitioner training at Boston College; Nathan continues work on his Ph.D. in philosophy of religion at Boston University.” x What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in April; deadline for the alumni notes section is Feb. 15. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; reharty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College Public Relations Office 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87501-4599; tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu Alumni notes on the Web: Read Alumni Notes and contact The College on the web at www.sjca.edu — click on Alumni. �38 {Alumni Profile} The Search for a Bearable Sorrow Jonathan Aurthur (A68) lost his son to suicide. His new book retraces his son’s journey through the world of mental illness and asks: Was there a better way to help him? by Sus3an Borden, A87 onathan Aurthur’s son Charley— an intelligent, well-liked, handsome young man with a philosophical bent and a love for the piano—was 18 years old when he experienced his first psychotic episode and suicide attempt during a camping trip to Yosemite. Five years later, Charley jumped to his death onto the Santa Monica Freeway. The Angel and the Dragon is Aurthur’s account of Charley’s life and death—with most of the book dedicated to describing his son’s illness and the attempts made to treat it. Some of the most interesting—and troubling—parts of the book explore the nature of mental illness. Is the problem medical? social? psychological? spiritual? These passages are interesting because they show the real-life need to unravel philosophical questions about the relation between the mind and the body. They are troubling because they speak to a central failure in medical treatment for mental disorders. J Medical Model When his son returned, fearful and agitated, from Yosemite after his first psychotic break, Aurthur sought help for him from the medical establishment. “Charley’s first psychotic breakdown and suicide attempt appeared to happen so suddenly, literally from one day to the next, that it seemed like it had to be something physical. As a result, I eagerly tried to convince him that he had a simple disease like diabetes, and that just as diabetics need to take insulin, he had to take his antipsychotic medication or his lithium and then everything would be okay,” says Aurthur. “It was very comforting to think that Charley’s problem was relatively straightforward and understandable. Comforting to me, at least.” But as Charley struggled with numerous hospitalizations, doctors, diagnoses, and medications, Aurthur saw that mental illness was far more complicated than diabetes. Not only did the inability of medicine to treat his son lead him to see the shortcomings of the medical model, but In THE ANGEL AND THE DRAGON, Jonathan Aurthur tries to explain why conventional treatment couldn’t save his son Charley’s life. Aurthur’s son, like many with mental disorders, also had quite a different understanding of his problem. “There were times when he tried to believe that he had some simple, treatable physical illness, because I think part of him wanted to live a simple, uncomplicated life,” says Aurthur. “But another part of him knew that he and his life were not simple and uncomplicated no matter what anyone told him. His illness, or as he termed it, his ‘affliction,’ permeated too many parts of his psyche; it was too psychological and spiritual, too much a part of who he was and how he saw himself, to be isolated into some simple physical pigeon hole.” A patient’s complex vision of his illness, coupled with the often serious side effects of medication, can lead to resisting or refusing treatment. The standard medical viewpoint is that this resistance is a symptom of the illness and hinders treatment. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } But Aurthur is able to show readers of The Angel and the Dragon a patient’s view of resistance. When a patient is under medication, his negative symptoms are relieved to some degree, but his life is greatly diminished. No, he won’t kill himself. But to what degree is he living, facing side effects ranging from blackout spells and seizures to headaches, anxiety, and fatigue? The problem is magnified if the patient and doctor disagree about a fundamental issue: Where do symptoms of an illness end and a patient’s individual humanity begin? Is he suffering from delusions of grandeur, or is he particularly gifted? Is he suffering from paranoia, or is the world—locking him in a hospital, monitoring his behavior, forcing medication on him—really out to get him? As Aurthur pieces together the patient’s vantage point, the reader sees resistance for the complicated phenomenon that it is. Aurthur then introduces a more radical view (not one he shares, but one he finds interesting) that attributes resistance not to illness but to a freedom from illness: If you’re treated for behavior that those with more power see as illness, but that you believe simply reflects your differing vision of the world, then it is unwise to comply with treatment, especially when it is harsh or painful. Extreme examples of this situation include regimes that place dissidents in mental wards and societies that condemn left-handed people as tools of the devil. “It makes me think about scapegoating, in the old days in Eastern Europe,” says Aurthur. “There was the village idiot, the village beauty, the village whore, the village drunk. These designated social roles allowed the society to function in an organized way.” Although his family tried to avoid it, they often ended up scapegoating Charley. “Charley became the designated problem and family therapy turned into ‘how can we help Charley,’ not ‘what is going on in our family that has contributed to the problem.’ Of course he became terribly resistant, totally on the �{Alumni Profile} defensive. As loving as we tried to be, we were dumping on him.” As Aurthur explores the psychological reasons for resistance, he also investigates the physical reasons. While an intolerance for the side effects of antipsychotic drugs is a fairly well known cause of resistance, Aurthur points to one simple reason a patient might stop taking medication: It doesn’t work. For Aurthur, a key insight into the problem with antipsychotics came when Charley was in the hospital for a selfinflicted stabbing wound. Although he was on morphine for the pain, Aurthur was disturbed that no one was inclined to return Charley to his antipsychotic medicine. A doctor finally tried to put him at ease about the situation by explaining that morphine would work—it was the first antipsychotic. “That’s when the lightbulb clicked,” writes Aurthur. “So that was it. I’d been dimly aware before that antipsychotics didn’t ‘cure’ mental illness, they ‘treated’ it. Now for the first time I was finally seeing what that meant. Navane and all the rest—‘tranquilizers,’ the dictionary says— were clubs more than straitjackets. Basically they were just heavy, brain-deadening drugs, like morphine. They doped people up to the point where they were too zonked out to be crazy—or in the case of people who were suicidal, too indifferent to life to have the energy to end it.” In addition to their bludgeon-like mechanisms, there’s the possibility that the problems antipsychotics address aren’t the right problems—that hearing voices and self-aggrandizing are not what need to be fixed. All antipsychotics are basically tranquilizers, explains Aurthur. “That may be good for certain times, to calm the person down, to make the voices go away. But it does not address the fundamental problem: What is the person going to do with his life after the voices go away? What is going to take the place of being sick? “There were times when Charley would be in recovery, he’d be compliant, then he’d ask, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ He was 21 years old, he saw his schoolmates graduating and going on with their lives while he was still a sophomore. The life choices that young people like Charley have must be addressed. They can’t be satisfied with coping therapy, therapy that teaches how to take your Jonathan Aurthur “If only mental illness were less demonized and seen more as a spiritual condition...” medication better. This involves something much more profound.” Psychosocial Rehab Aurthur discovered something more profound in the world of psychosocial rehabilitation, often described as treating the person, not the disease. “Whereas the psychopharmacological model gives the mentally ill person medications to get rid of the so-called “primary symptoms” of the illness—the voices, the visions, the delusions—psychosocial rehab relates first and foremost to the person as a person, not a list of symptoms, and tries to deal first and foremost with the psychological pain or uncertainty or social isolation the person is experiencing,” he says. “The rehab model works from the premise that even very sick people have healthy parts, strengths that can be built on and supported. Psychosocial rehab focuses on the healthy to help deal with the unhealthy.” In his research for The Angel and the Dragon, Aurthur found two promising alternative recovery facilities: The Village Integrated Service Agency in Long Beach, California, and Windhorse Associates in Northampton, Massachusetts. The Village’s approach is to create a community within its treatment center that supports patients as they work to establish a life in the Village, and then build that life beyond the center. They call their approach “a high risk/high support environment that promotes hope and the recovery process.” Patients are supported in social activities in and out of the Vil{ T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } 39 lage, through substance abuse and recovery work, through employment and employment training, with money management systems and guidance, and through participation in the management and governance of the Village. Windhorse, featuring something of a Buddhist orientation, describes its program as working toward integration and balance for the patient and the community. The program calls for “basic attendance” to focus awareness on the immediate needs of the moment; “integrative medicine” to establish habits of good health through exercise, proper nutrition, adequate rest, and stress management; and a “working team” that can include a team leader, psychotherapist, team counselor, housemate, wellness nurse, and psychiatrist. As Arthur learned about psychosocial rehab, he began to develop a picture of what might have been a better course of treatment for his son. “If only we could see mental illness as a problem with many different aspects— social, personal, familial, historical. If only mental illness were less demonized and seen more as a spiritual condition that is much more prevalent than we have been led to believe.” Had that been the case, Aurthur says, he would have found someone “with real insight and understanding to make Charley feel he could communicate and unburden himself and discuss what was wrong. Someone to open up a dialogue where Charley could feel safe, could feel that nobody was leaning on him and telling him what was wrong and what he had to do.” Charley’s journal entries reflect that he was open to compassionate treatment. “Charley hated the condescension,” Aurthur says. “He needed somebody who could spend time with him and try to figure out what had happened at Yosemite. He needed somebody to just be there for him, as a sort of buoy in stormy water.” Aurthur looks back at his own attempts to guide Charley toward the medical hierarchy with some regret. In some ways, by accepting the medical model to a large degree, he was missing out on much of Charley’s experience of his illness. “It’s like we both had our hands on the knob of a radio and were struggling over the dial,” he says. “I thought I was trying to help him tune in to the music, but it was really the static he wanted to listen to.” x �40 {Obituaries} Tommy Turner From a Calvert County Farm to Teaching Generations of Doctors ne of St. John’s most loyal alumni, Thomas Bourne Turner, class of 1921, died at his home in Baltimore on September 22. Dr. Turner enjoyed an extraordinary career as a physician, researcher, and dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His generous support and enduring affection for the college never wavered, even as he saw the strict regimen and braided uniforms of the military school he attended give way to the great books with Buchanan and Barr’s New Program. Turner grew up in rural Calvert County, the son of a farmer and engineer who built steamboat wharves along the Chesapeake Bay. He was only 14 when he came to St. John’s—secondary education opportunities near his home being limited—as a scholarship student. He kept as a treasured memento the saber he won as commander of the best-drilled company in the battalion. He enjoyed other fond memories of his days at St. John’s. In 1999, in a letter accompanying a gift to the college in honor of the Liberty Tree after its loss, Turner wrote of his “vivid recollection” of a graduation ceremony in which Franklin D. Roosevelt was the speaker: “Not yet paralyzed, he was an unusually tall and handsome man who spoke with fervor. Recently Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he made us all proud of the U.S.A. and St. John’s as a small part of it.” Turner’s service to the Board of Visitors and Governors was unprecedented. It spanned four decades, from 1951 to 1985, and he twice served as board chairman, in 1956 and 1973. In 1957, he received the Alumni Association’s Award of Merit for his contributions to the field of medicine. As a young man, Turner leaned toward a career in the law, but his father—noting that two of his great-grandfathers had been physicians—asked him to consider the good he might do as a country doctor. Thus, Turner went to the University of Maryland to study medicine. Although O Thomas Bourne Turner “Affection supports life’s infrastructure, compassion underpins the world.” his medical career took a path divergent from his father’s vision, he gained the opportunity to make major contributions in medicine. After being trained as an internist, Turner joined Johns Hopkins in 1927, first as a postdoctorate fellow, then as an assistant professor and associate physician. He conducted research in infectious diseases as a member of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1939, he became professor and head of the department of microbiology at Johns Hopkins, where he continued his { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } work in devastating diseases such as polio and syphilis. During World War II, he served as a colonel in the Medical Corps in Washington, North Africa, and Europe. He studied Nazi Germany’s biological warfare capabilities and developed the Army’s venereal disease control program. As the dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1957 to 1968, Turner guided the school through a period of tremendous expansion as the size of its full-time faculty tripled, new research facilities were built, and new specialties such as biomedical engineering were developed. After stepping down as dean, Turner became the medical school’s first archivist and completed a detailed history of the institution. In the early ’80s, he became the first director of the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation, based at Hopkins. A 1995 Baltimore Sun article described Turner as “engagingly unaffected, unpretentious and egalitarian, qualities perhaps nurtured by his deep roots in Calvert County…He is a courtly man, �41 {Obituaries} easily erect in crisply tailored suits, a genial patrician.” In 1993, Turner composed a list of some of the wisdom he had attained, calling it, “A few things learned during a long life.” They included culinary tips: “Almost all soups can be improved by a dash of sherry” and cautionary advice: “Hold on to banisters going down stairs.” Finally, he shared the guidelines that ruled his own life so well: “Love, affection and compassion are all allied but not the same. Reciprocated love is rare; cherish and guard it well. Affection supports life’s infrastructure; compassion underpins the world.” His favorite toast, a newspaper article reported: “Let’s live it up.” St. John’s extends sympathy to his family: daughters Anne Pope and Pattie Walker, class of 1966; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. x DAVID B. REA David Rea, class of 1949, died in September, just short of his 76th birthday. Dave, as he was called by his fellow classmates and friends, came to St. John’s in January 1946 as a January freshman. At the end of the 1945-1946 academic year he was the only student to pass the Greek reading knowledge examination. In the ensuing years he exhibited a mind that remembered everything that he read and understood it all as well. Dave excelled in all the facets of the New Program. He never dominated a seminar. Rather he clarified the text, kept the discussion from floundering, and kept the seminar on track whenever appropriate. While a student Dave would read some of the seminal works in Greek, Latin, French, or German without a dictionary. “The Saga of Burnt Njal” would have a lasting influence on his life. He developed a love of classical music, especially opera. At the Commencement exercises in 1949 Dave was awarded the St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors Gold Medal for the student with the highest standing. He also received “Honorable Mention” for his senior thesis. After graduation Dave went to the Yale School of Law. He was selected among others by Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan to spend the summer of 1950 in Israel to observe the formation of a new state and to work on a kibbutz. En route to and from Israel via Paris, Dave met Jacqueline, whom he subsequently married. It was love at first sight. Upon graduation from law school in 1952, Dave joined the firm of Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher. There he practiced corporate law for almost 40 years until his retirement in 1991. During that time Dave was an active alumnus. Many times college meetings in New York used a Wilkie, Farr conference room. Dave was an active fundraiser for the college and a good contributor himself. He attended the Alumni Association New York Chapter meetings.The Reas hosted the New York St. John’s College prospective student reception in their New York residence many times. In 1974 he and Jacqueline accompanied Stringfellow Barr to Annapolis to celebrate Barr’s being made an honorary alumnus of the class of 1949 on the occasion of the 25th reunion of Dave’s class. After many requests Dave agreed to become a member of the St. John’s College Board of Visitors and Governors. He served two consecutive three-year terms. Dave’s abilities were quickly recognized and he soon became an influential member of the Board serving on the Executive Committee and the Governance Committee. At various times Dave and Wilkie, Farr did pro bono work for the college. Dave and Jacqueline grew fond of the eastern end of Long Island.They spent summer weekends on Shelter Island where Dave sailed, fished, and clammed. Eventually they bought a house in Sag Harbor. Dave was one of the founders of the St. John’s College Alumni Summer Montauk Striped Bass and Bluefish Charter. On the evening of the fishing trip Jacqueline and Dave would host a dinner for the participants and provide rooms for as many as possible. This was done for many years. To be invited on board was considered an honor. In 1991 when Dave’s kidneys failed, he used the time he was on dialysis to read and listen to classical music. He never complained. Over the next 10 years, he suffered a series of health setbacks. Dave Rea will always be among the best of whom St. John’s is capable and an example for all of how to live one’s life. He is survived by his wife Jacqueline Rea, a son David, a daughter Ann, and his brother Dr. Thomas Rea, class of 1951. —submitted by Allan P. Hoffman class of 1949. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } CHARLES PEACE III A retired banker and long-time activist in the Republican Party, Charles F. Peace III, class of 1936, died October 8 at his home in Towson, Md. He was 89. Born in Baltimore and raised in Anne Arundel County, Peace served in the Army Air Forces in World War II. He worked in sales before joining Maryland National Bank as an assistant vice president. He was described in a Baltimore Sun article as a “stalwart” of the Republican Party in Maryland, having served as a member of the Republican State Central Committee. ALSO NOTED ARE: WARREN K. BROWN, class of 1938, died in January. LT. COL. JOHN JOSEPH BYRNES, Annapolis class of 1980, died in 2002. HENRY A. CZLUSNIAK, class of 1937, died in March. EDWARD S. DIGGES, class of 1939, died in September. FRANK. R. GENNER JR., class of 1936, died in May. EDWARD W. GORRELL, class of 1955, died in January. MICHAEL C. KEANE, class of 1945, died in July. ERNEST A. OTTO JR., class of 1941, died in May. MARK P. ROGERS, Santa Fe class of 1972, died in April. JULIUS B. SHERR, class of 1942, died in April. �42 {Alumni Profile} The Bookbinder’s Apprentice An Aspiring Painter Finds Art in an Unlikely Place by Sus3an Borden, A87 christopher huston B en Frey (A02) received two copies of A Degree of Mastery: A Journey Through Book Arts Apprenticeship for Christmas his sophomore year. The book seemed so perfect for Frey, whose campus job was in the library bookbindery, that his mother and his father—unbeknownst to one another—each sent him a copy. In A Degree of Mastery, author Annie Tremmel Wilcox, now an expert bookmaker and conservator, discusses her apprenticeship and the book arts in general, describing the details of working on, making, and preserving beautiful books. While the book became a favorite read for those in the trade, Frey found it discouraging. “I don’t want to do that,” he remembers thinking. “I don’t want to work deep down in the basement of some archive trying to make old books hold together.” Fortunately for Frey, other forces were at work to make his life more interesting. Claire and Pierre Wagner, French expatriates from the Alsace region and longtime friends of St. John’s, had hosted him on their boat during the annual Sail Picnic the previous fall. Frey noticed the Wagners speaking French and spent the rest of the outing talking with them. “I said I was interested in learning French, and Claire said she knew a number of people in France who might be able to help me out. We exchanged a few letters, and in the middle of the summer I got a phone call. She’d found a family in France I could work for as an au pair.” Frey spent the next year living just outside of Paris and devoted a fair amount of time to thinking about what to do with his life. Having spent many years painting, he placed art high on his priority list, but also felt a sense of obligation to finish college. “My French professor in Paris one day asked why I wouldn’t just leave school and do what I wanted to do,” recalls Frey. “I said that I thought my family would be concerned: I have two grandparents who are teachers. He said, ‘yes, but you have to live your life. They’re not always going to When is a book more than a book? Ben Frey learns the art of conceptual bookbinding. “...If I didn’t try making it as a painter, I was going to regret it.” be around. You have to make this decision for yourself.’” The professor’s advice resonated with Frey, who was at the time reading Sartre’s The Age of Reason while continuing to contemplate life as a painter. “I realized that I sounded a lot like Matthew, the main character, except he was 35 and unhappy. At the end of the book he realizes he has to take his life into his own hands and drop all the things he doesn’t want and try to start with what he wants. I thought about that and realized that if I didn’t try making it as a painter I was going to regret it.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } After returning from France, Frey moved to New York with a cache of paintings and managed to sell quite a few. Still, he found himself just shy of his goal of supporting himself through art. With a move to high-rent Manhattan planned, he began to look for a day job. Given the two years of bookbindery experience on his resume, bookbinders seemed an obvious starting point. Among those he wrote to was Richard Minsky, a bookbinder whose name had come up numerous times during Frey’s Internet search for employment. Minsky contacted Frey immediately after receiving his letter, but saw that Frey lacked the skills necessary for working with a master bookbinder. “Minsky’s work is very exacting. He needs things to be done to a 32nd or even a 64th of an inch. In a library bindery, most allowances can be an 8th of an inch or even larger,” explains Frey. In addition, Minsky’s work involves fine carpentry and expert leatherwork. A beginner with a fine piece of leather and a sharp knife can easily make expensive mistakes. Minsky gave Frey the chance to sharpen his skills by working with him part time as a volunteer. To pay his bills, Frey worked �43 {Alumni Profile} Helping Enduring Works Endure I david trozzo as a security guard. This past August, Minsky offered Frey full-time work in his studio. Minsky, it turns out, is no ordinary bookbinder. Frey says that he’s excellent at restoration, as one would expect, but he also works in conceptual art. Minsky’s current conceptual binding project is the Bill of Rights—a set of 10 books, one on each amendment. “He has picked books that deal directly with the topic of the amendment and binds them in a way relevant to the subject, showing the struggle between the rights that are guaranteed and how they are taken away,” explains Frey. “For the First Amendment he has taken a copy of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, burnt the cover and the edges of the pages, and built a reliquary for it. For the Tenth Amendment, he chose the ruling on the Bush v. Gore case as the text. He printed it on nice paper and bound it in a binding that looks like any binding you’d find in a legal library, but all of the boards are a little crooked and the labels on the spine are slightly off-center. He used fake leather for the cover. It looks like goat leather, but it’s actually pigskin.” Frey is now working on his own conceptual binding project. The book he’s working with is Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec. “It’s a 400-page work about everything that’s happening in one apartment building in Paris for the duration of one second. It revolves around the theme of a puzzle,” says Frey. “One of the more influential characters in the book has decided that he has so much money he needs a project in life. He learns to paint watercolors, then turns the paintings into puzzles, puts the puzzles together, then separates the watercolor paper from the backing and washes the watercolor off so he has a blank sheet of paper at the end. In my project, the book will slide into a case with a box on it and the puzzle will be in the box. I’m going to make that puzzle.” x n a quiet room in the basement of the Greenfield Library, sophomore Dillon Wright-FitzGerald takes a scalpel to Ptolemy’s Almagest. Alice Kurs (SFGI71), working nearby, barely looks up; she’s seen this kind of thing before. Kurs has watched dozens of students cut hundreds of books in the 15 years she’s run the bookbindery on the Annapolis campus. Wright-FitzGerald has only been on the job since August, but she feels perfectly at home among the musty pages, marbled endpapers, and gold-leaf lettering she works with during her 10-hour a week campus job. “I’ve always been interested in history, preservation, and bookmaking. I’ve always loved books as objects,” says WrightFitzGerald. “My grandparents had a large library and they would tell me to poke around, to take any books I wanted. I remember I had a late 19th-century edition of Les Miserables. It was the greatest thing. It looked old, felt old, smelled old.” Kurs has been binding books for nearly half a century. She can give you the rundown on old glue and new (the new polyvinyl acetate is more flexible; the old hide glue was, with heat and moisture, reversible). She’ll point out the brittle pages of books printed during World War I and II and compare their rapid deterioration with the relatively good condition of books published one and two hundred years earlier. She has a hands-on appreciation for the bindery’s old wooden presses as well as for the trade’s modern materials, such as the plastic-impregnated book cloth that is easily wiped free of errors. And her approach to the history of bookbinding is not academic, but personal. “In my grandfather’s time, you’d buy a book with no cover and take it to your bookbinder and he’d put a cover on it,” says Kurs, reminding you that this now-quaint art was once a corner-store business. “When I started in bookbinding around 1953, it was still possible to get books from the publisher without a cover.” Bookbinding is again changing; today, a primary goal of restoration is to retain as much of the original book as possible. “We view the book in its original form as something having integrity. When you strip away the binding, you strip away a sense of history,” explains Lisa Richmond, library director. “To throw away the original cover and make a new cover for a book, that’s a last-ditch treatment. What we prefer to do { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } Dillon Wright-Fitzgerald (A05) works with a volume in the Greenfield Library. is catch books when the repair is still small so we can keep the original binding. Dillon spends as much time doing things like reattaching loose leaves as she does cutting into books and making new covers.” In the library’s efforts to keep books in good condition, Richmond says she relies on library patrons as much as the bindery workers. “We’d like it so that books don’t even have to go to the bookbindery because they’re being handled more carefully,” she says. “We’re not a public library that buys what people want to read today, knowing that five years later we’ll throw them out. The importance of the books we buy doesn’t change from one century to the next. When you use a library book you want to think, ‘isn’t it wonderful that students for hundreds of years have touched this book and benefited from it and students two hundred years from now will do the same?’ We buy books for the St. John’s community today, but we also have a community that persists through time.” Down in the bindery, Kurs also casts her thoughts toward future readers. “This polyacetate vinyl glue we’re using is not reversible. It will only come off with brute force. I don’t know what they’ll do with the next generation of books that needs to be repaired, but I’ll let the people who come after us worry about that,” she says. “If there are books after us.” —Sus3an Borden, A87 �44 {Campus Life} The Dance of the Muses by Noam Gedalof, A03 resent-day readers of Ancient Greek plays have surely felt the strangeness of what seem to be interruptions or interludes in the midst of the drama, all attributed to a “chorus.” We have been told—and rightly so—that this chorus sang and danced these words, but that the music and dance is now lost, even irrecoverable. But what if we could see what that original and extraordinary form of the poetry was—alive before our eyes—complete in song and dance? Or, better yet, what if we could ourselves breathe life into this poetry, experience it first-hand, renew it, and perform it? We have tried to do this very thing at St. John’s, and we believe that we have succeeded. P Concentration and choreography : Mr. David recites from AGAMMEMNON as students practice for a November performance. In November 1999, I introduced my mother, Miriam Rother, to tutor Amirthanayagam David (A86). My mother is a choreographer interested and experienced in dance and theater. And I had heard a talk Mr. David gave on Ancient Greek mousike, in which he emphasized the connection of poetry to dance in Ancient Greece. In his talk there were recitations that were musical (at the same time melodic and intensely rhythmic). { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } I learned further that he was an innovator in the theory of Greek accentuation. Mr. David had uncovered the single missing component of the pronunciation of classical Greek. What had been known thoroughly were the values of all the vowels, diphthongs, and consonants in the language, as well as the meaning of the melodic, or pitch, accentuation markings. All that remained in the way of an authentic reproduction of the pronunciation was wordlevel stress—which syllables in each word were stressed and which were not—something found in every spoken language. In Greek the union of these three elements makes a kind of music, because the vowel sounds are long and short—the long vowels being twice the duration of the short ones—and so produce a meter. The interplay of the lengths of vowels with the rising and falling of the voice (melodic accentuation) produces stresses. These stresses coupled with the meter form a rhythm. It was on account of this musicality of speech that rhetoric, the art of public speaking or stylized speech, was subsumed under music. Certain ancient writers describe choreia, the art and practice of the chorus, as dance that is dictated by the rhythm and harmony inherent in the spoken word. From their statements, certain principles underlying the art may be inferred: one step for each syllable, and strict correspondence of stressed syllables with the setting down of the foot. This means that the very words and their musical texture prescribe the motion of the body. In this way the text becomes a musical score for the dance, the meter resolves into feet, and all that remains to be uncovered is how the dance looked from the ankles up. Of this, Mr. David dreamed for 13 years. At that first meeting, Mr. David and Mrs. Rother began to consider the possibilities for the renewal of Ancient Greek theater as live performance, with its union of the spoken word, dance, and gesture. Over the next year-and-a-half, Mrs. Rother familiarized herself with Mr. David’s work, its sources, and the Classical Greek language. She also studied the array of extant Greek vases and statuary, because many of the depictions seemed to be of figures in mid- �45 {Campus Life} The dancer becomes the very content of the speech. motion. As she explains it, the postures and gestures bespoke dance. They suggested a particular energy and expression of the desired aesthetic of the time, so that she could imagine the steps that would connect the individual figures. Choreia was ubiquitous in the Ancient Greek world. In religion, it was central. Everyone participated in it; it was a citizen’s rather than an expert’s art—and on this ground we can claim a kind of right to the dance, and to our renewal of it as nonprofessionals. Through participation in this medium, through embodiment—what Plato termed mimesis (imitation)—Greeks encountered the great men of old and their stories, as well as the stories of the gods and of the gods’ interaction with men. This meant that an army general would be depicted on a vase in a manner so stylized and so full of motion that the figure manifests the gesture associated with a general; that is, it suggests movement itself. It was in the context of the dance—in the context of embodied gesture—that a Greek would have had his first, and surely most pointed, encounter with a personage such as Agamemnon. His notion of the personage would be inseparable from a danced gesture. And so it would have come naturally to the vase painter or sculptor to depict him in his characteristic “dance pose,” down to the precise placement of the hands and feet, the twist in his back, and the turn of his head. Mr. David suggests that the nounand-epithet phrases in Homer—phrases generated by a dance rhythm—are verbal correlates for these characteristic poses found throughout ancient visual depictions. So central was the presence of choreia, and its influence so profound in the Greek world, that it may very well have prompted Plato’s notion (in the Laws) that an entire city could be choreographed—that is, gov- sara white wilson 1 3 erned through choreia. In February 2001, Mrs. Rother visited St. John’s to coordinate the first of three workshops based on her choreography and Mr. David’s theory. About a dozen students participated in each of the workshops, which culminated in performances for the community in a packed Great Hall. I participated and performed in all of these workshops. My experience of choreia has been of the extraordinary union of the life of the body and the life of the soul. Meaning, accent, and gesture—already unified in everyday speech—are embodied in the union of the musical word and dance. The dancer becomes the very content of the speech, becomes the personage being imitated, and lives through the story being told. I now understand what Plato had in mind when he spoke about imitation, and how deeply what is imitated resounds in the soul; or how the embodiment of a person, emotion, or idea can take hold of a man, and somehow remove him from himself. In the dance, one feels the body carried by the words, as though it were being moved, and no longer moving itself. This is the power of choreia—the dance of the Muses. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } 2 4 5 Dancers perform the opening chorus of Aeschylus’ AGAMMEMNON (excerpt below, with numbers indicating corresponding photo). Picture 1 shows the characteristic “dance pose” of an army general. It is mine to declare the omens of victory Given to princely men (1) on the journey. I tell how the princes of the Achaeans, Twin-throned, single-hearted Lords of the youth of Greece, Were sent against the land of Troy With spear in hand to exact vengeance. (2) The furious omen-birds sent them, One black eagle, one white-tail, The king of birds to the king of the ships. (3) So a lord greater than the kings, Zeus god of guest-friends, Sends the sons of Atreus on Alexander; In this quarrel over a woman of many men,(4) He would lay upon Greeks and Trojans alike Many wrestlings(5) where the limbs grow heavy And the knee is pressed into the dust And the spear is shattered in the first rites of engagement. –translation by David Grene �46 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Dear Johnnies, Johnnies are a remarkable lot. You probably know members of your class who are making a difference in their communities and their professions. It is an honor to be a member of a group of such gifted and dedicated individuals. Twice a year, at Homecoming on each campus, the Alumni Association honors members of our community for their extraordinary achievements. Two types of awards are given: Honorary Alumni and Awards of Merit. On the SJC web site, you can view a list of persons who have received these honors in the past, but I would like to briefly describe this year’s awardees. Honorary Alumni status is awarded to members of the St. John’s College community who have contributed to the lives of students or alumni or to the well-being of the college and its program. Honorary Alumni receive all of the benefits of regular membership in the association, so they become permanent members of the college community. This year, five individuals were made honorary alumni. Two were recognized for their loyal support and work with the Board of Visitors and Governors. Bud Kelly supported the Santa Fe campus in its early days and helped set the foundation for the college in New Mexico. Greg Curtis, immediate past chair of the Board of Visitors and Governors, led the college through deliberations resulting in a unified governance structure that will provide a solid foundation for the college as a whole in the future. Two revered tutors were welcomed into the Alumni Association. Mr. John Sarkissian and Mr. Robert Williamson have served the college well and supported generations of alumni in their academic and personal pursuits. The fifth honorary alumnus designation went to Mr. Al Toft. Though most alumni do not know Mr. Toft personally, we all depended on the fruits of his labors. For decades, Mr. Toft has designed and constructed the equipment we use in the St. John’s laboratory program. We are happy to welcome these dear and generous people into the circle of St. John’s alumni. Awards of Merit are bestowed upon alumni who have made significant contributions to the college, to their professions, or to the nation. This year, four Awards of Merit were given to recognize a wide variety of work. Peggy Jones (SFGI77) has helped to build and maintain a bridge between the college and the community in Santa Fe. She has served many roles in support of the college, including a term on the Alumni Association Board. She continues to support the college with enthusiasm and energy. Stephanie Forrest (SF77) is a world-renowned researcher and scholar in applications of computer simulation modeling and nonlinear dynamics. She attributes her love of science and mathematics and her ability to work at the frontiers of science to her St. John’s education. Howard Zeiderman (A67) is a tutor in Annapolis. He received his Award of Merit for his work with Touchstones, a project that brings great books and great conversations to communities outside the college campus. Touchstones has been implemented internationally among disadvantaged groups including prison inmates and inner city youth. Candace Brightman (A67) was recognized for her creative and ingenious work as lighting director for The Grateful Dead and other performers. Soon after she left the college, Ms. Brightman joined the band to develop the visual extravaganzas that shaped the concert-going culture for the last three decades. Congratulations to these four remarkable alumni for their courage and commitment! Every year, as the Nominating Committee considers candidates for these awards, I am struck again by the diversity and excellence of our community. I am proud and honored to be among a collection of individuals who continually redefine what it means to live a life grounded in the liberal arts. I am sure that you know Johnnies, either alumni or beloved members of the non-alumni community, who are doing extraordinary things for their professions, the college, or the nation. Would you like to nominate someone for these awards? If so, please send a brief description and contact information to Bill Tilles, chair of the Nominating Committee, or to Tahmina Shalizi or Jo Ann Mattson, the Alumni Activities directors on the campuses. For the past, present, and future, Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76) President St. John’s College Alumni Association { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, undergraduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program or New, graduated or not, all alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The Board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the Association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates Alumni Association news and events of interest. President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary –Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair – Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76) Web site – www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-275-9012 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 215-465-0244 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin 410-280-0958 PITTSBURGH Robert Hazo 412-648-2653 AUSTIN Bev Angel 512-926-7808 PORTLAND Dale Mortimer 360-882-9058 BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen 410-472-9158 SACRAMENTO Helen Hobart 916-452-1082 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 619-423-4972 CHICAGO Lorna Johnson 773-338-8651 SAN FRANCISCO, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA Jon Hodapp 831-393-9496 DENVER Lee Goldstein 720-283-4659 LOS ANGELES Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 NEW YORK Joe Boucher 718-222-1957 NORTH CAROLINA Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 SANTA FE John Pollak 505-983-2144 SEATTLE Amina Stickford 206-269-0182 WASHINGTON DC Jean Dickason 301-699-6207 ISRAEL Emi Geiger Leslau 15 Aminadav Street Jerusalem 93549 Israel 972-2-6717608 boazl@cc.huji.ac.il �{Alumni Association News} Johnnies Online Whether you’re missing seminar discussions or want to find Johnnies living in Chicago, virtual communities of St. John’s alumni and friends beckon. Recent topics on the Johnny Digest have included “Capitalism vs. Whatever,” “Up Next: Proponents of Flat-Earth Theory Demand Equal Time,” and “Martha Stewart’s Continuing Woes.” To join, e-mail Johnny@charm.net with the message “subscribe johnny-digest” for the digest or “subscribe johnny” if you prefer the list format. This lively group is for alumni only. JohnnyXpress is an unmoderated bulletin board for alumni, friends, faculty and staff: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ johnnyXpress/join or e-mail johnnyXpress-subscribe@egroups.com. Johnny2 promises that “no topic is offtopic, no word is forbidden,” but requires members to treat one another with the “respect suitable for senior seminar.” E-mail join-johnny2@lists.holocausthistory.org with the command “subscribe johnny2 your name.” Alumni interested in homeschooling can network with like minds: Visit the group’s web site at http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/JohnnyEducation-Homeschooling. Note: Neither St. John’s College nor the Alumni Association is involved with or monitors these web communities. x Big Apple Chapter Booming From swing parties to seminars, alumni in the greater New York chapter have no shortage of events to choose from, thanks to creative leadership and a core group of Johnnies ever ready to meet compatriots, sometimes for intellectual pursuits, sometimes just for a night out. When chapter president Joe Boucher (A89) first moved to New York, he was quickly drawn into the chapter. “When I moved here Justin Burke (A87) was president. Justin helped me get one of my first jobs, and I was working with him and saw him all the time. If a seminar was going on and he was worried no one was going to show up, I’d get recruited. “That’s how I ended up being part of the chapter leadership,” he says. Boucher served for three years as chapter secretary and now heads up the chapter, sec- 47 an enthusiastic response Are these Johnnies in Boston: A) volunteering to pick up the dinner check? or B) offering to lead seminars, programs, and other chapter events in a revitalized Alumni Association chapter in the Boston Area? The dinner gathering November 17 at Elephant Walk in downtown Boston drew close to 50 alumni to an event designed to gather steam for a more active chapter. Chapter president Ginger Kenney (A67) helped plan the event, which featured fine Thai food, networking, and brainstorming for seminars and other events in the coming year. ond only to Washington, D.C., in size with a mailing list of about 800 alumni. Some of the chapter’s most popular events draw up to 250 participants. “The good thing about our chapter is that we can have a lot of events that smaller chapters can’t, so we can be more active and take chances,” Boucher says. “Even if we draw 20 people that’s a good-sized event.” Like most alumni chapters, the New York alumni strike a balance between intellectual offerings and purely social events. A swing party in August at the Brooklyn home of Michael Barth (AGI96) drew 60 people. Attendance was also high at a seminar last fall on Job, led by Santa Fe tutor Michael Wolfe. Likely topics for future seminars include Beaudelaire and Pascal, and Santa Fe President John Balkcom is scheduled for a March seminar and reception. The chapter tries to offer a seminar-style event every month or so, because even in a city with so many cultural offerings, “there’s a real hunger” for these opportunities, says Boucher. In addition to seminars oriented toward Program authors, reading groups periodically form around a particular Johnnie’s interest. Even social events often include some food for thought, as was the case with a summer picnic on Long Island at the home of chapter secretary Edith Updike (A86). Seeking a read- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } ing to celebrate New York, group members included a discussion of selections from Hart Crane’s The Bridge. Building on the success of seminars and parties, the chapter recently launched a mentoring initiative. Poets are meeting poets, those in the legal field share news of job openings, and Johnnies eager to break into the theater are connecting through the chapter, Boucher notes. Networking is also a goal of the chapter’s annual new alumni reception. Fifty Johnnies attended the November event this year. And with new alumni moving to New York all the time, there’s no shortage of new blood. For Boucher, the opportunity to connect with alumni from different generations and hearing about their adventures and interests are the best perks of his chapter involvement. “One of the nicest things about these events is the opportunity to meet people from other eras at St. John’s,” Boucher notes. “I might find it difficult to talk to a lot of 80-year-olds, but since we all more or less studied the same thing, we have that common ground to start with, and then we move on and find other things to talk about.” The chapter has a sharp new web site, frequently updated with chapter events and contacts. Visit www.sjcalums.com/nyc. x �48 T {St. John’s Forever} he St. John’s Story has achieved something of a cult classic status for many of the students and alumni who have seen it. Its stiffly choreographed scenes and somber narration prompt amusement from modern audiences, but when it was produced in 1954 The St. John’s Story was a creative answer to a slump in enrollment: In 1953, enrollment was only 125. Funded by the Old Dominion Foundation, the 28-minute film by Fordel Films of the Bronx, N.Y., was sent to secondary schools across the country, depicting seminars, waltz parties, coffee shop banter, and traditions such as senior orals. The college administration had high expectations for the film. In his 1954 President’s Report, Richard Weigle said, “The entire student procurement program will be built around its use during the coming year.” The film was shown in 435 public schools and 95 prep schools to about 75,000 people; it even had a showing at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1955. Combined with other recruitment efforts, the film was credited with bringing in a freshman class of 90 students in 1955. In this scene replicating senior orals, William H. Barrett, class of 1956, played the role of the defending senior, baking under the hot klieg lights used in the production. Barrett served as the star of the film. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �{Alumni Events Calendar} DATEBOOK April 26, 2003 Croquet Weekend, Annapolis June 29, 2003—July 4, 2003 Week One, Summer Alumni Program, Santa Fe July 4-6, 2003 Homecoming Weekend, Santa Fe July 6-11, 2003 Week Two, Summer Alumni Program, Santa Fe September 12-14, 2003 Homecoming Weekend, Annapolis For information on events, contact the Offices of Alumni Activities: Tahmina Shalizi Director of Alumni and Parent Activities Santa Fe: 505-984-6103 tshalizi@mail.sjcsf.edu Jo Ann Mattson Director of Alumni Activities Annapolis: 410-626-2531 alumni@sjca.edu Santa Fe Art Show More than 50 pieces were entered in the Alumni Art Show at the Santa Fe Campus last July. Artistic alumni are again invited to enter their work in the Third Annual St. John’s College Fine Arts Gallery Alumni Art Show. Timed to coincide with the Summer Alumni Program and Homecoming, the show will run from Saturday, July 5, through Sunday, July 27. All types of media are welcome; artists can also place their work for sale during the show. An opening reception will be held concurrent with the Homecoming reception. For details call Maggie Magalnick at 505-984-6199, or contact her by e-mail: Maggie@mail.sjcsf.edu Top: Inya Laskowski (SFGI97) entered this print, “Equus”; Above right: Betsy William (SF87) crafts clay pots that combine Karatsu training from Japan with New Mexican material and landscape. “Diamond” is shown. A return to traditional form is seen in Jo Basiste’s (SFGI91) Greek gods and heroes. This tempera painting is called “Polyphemus and Galatea.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2003 } �P ERIODICALS P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED � 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, Winter 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 1 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Winter 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_Winter_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/2af56e11a45b8d3aba5f39661265e33b.pdf 34e7470ef8c8719f57ecabb40f92fa18 PDF Text Text The College St. John’s College • Annapolis w i n t e r • Santa Fe Adam Smith The life of the Marketplace 2 0 0 4 �On Adam Smith verybody wants a piece of Adam Smith. Comb through articles in major newspapers and trade journals, and you’ll find him embraced by the right, “reclaimed” by the left, quoted in Congress, and tapped in propaganda by free trade advocates and anti-globalization groups alike. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a fan: “I am more comfortable with an Adam Smith philosophy than with Keynesian Theory,” said the man hitherto famous for the line “I’ll be back.” Smith has even been tapped as a “witness” in a recent criminal case. After former Sotheby’s Chairman A. Alfred Taubman was convicted of conspiring to fix commission prices with rival Christie’s, Taubman’s attorneys argued that his conviction was tainted by this oft-quoted passage from The Wealth of Nations: “People in the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment or diversion, but the conversation ends in conspiracy against the public and in some contrivance to raise prices.” Taubman’s lawyers claimed that the quote, included in closing arguments by the prosecution, constituted improper use of expert testimony. The appeals court upheld the conviction, but told prosecutors to leave Smith out of it in the future. Born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, Smith lived during a remarkable time, had remarkable friends— David Hume, Voltaire, Samuel Johnson, to name a few—and penned one of the most important treatises written in the English language. He is credited with founding what later would be called the English School of Classical Political Economy. But biographers suggest this major contributor to the Scottish Enlightenment was a fairly quiet, socially awkward, and absentminded individual. He remained a bachelor all his life and lived with his mother. Smith was born in 1723. His father died before he was born. After attending the burgh school and the University of Glasgow, he was sent to Oxford, where he learned Greek, read Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, and developed a disdain for Oxford’s indolent professors. In 1751, at age 28, Smith became a professor of Logic at Glasgow, and the following year took the Chair of Moral Philosophy. In 1759, he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which won him widespread acclaim. In 1764 he gave up the chair in Glasgow for the more lucrative post of tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch. The job allowed him to tour France, enjoy admiring and attentive audiences in French salons, and advance his study of the French physiocrats and their laissez-faire ideas. That post also left him with a pension that freed him from academic work and allowed him to devote himself to writing. He published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, won appointment as Commissioner of Customs and of Salt Duties, and became a founding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In the last years of his life, he hated to be away from his family and his library, a collection of several thousand volumes of Latin and Greek classics, literature and art, science and philosophy. He died on July 17, 1790, leaving a fairly modest estate. He had given away much of his wealth in secret acts of charity. In April 1776, Smith’s good friend Hume wrote his fellow Scotsman to congratulate him on his accomplishment, warning Smith that the public might not embrace it right away. (He was wrong; the book was an instant sensation.) But Hume’s praise, so warmly offered, is similar to the words modern economists use today when describing The Wealth of Nations: “…it has Depth, and Solidity, and Acuteness and is so much illustrated by curious facts, that it must at last take the public Attention.” E — RH The College (usps 018-750) is published quarterly by St. John’s College, Annapolis, md and Santa Fe, NM Known office of publication: Communications Office St. John’s College Box 2800 Annapolis, md 21404-2800 Periodicals postage paid at Annapolis, md postmaster: Send address changes to The College Magazine, Communications Office, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, md 21404-2800. Annapolis 410-626-2539 reharty@sjca.edu Rosemary Harty, editor Sus3an Borden, managing editor Jennifer Behrens, art director Advisory Board John Christensen Harvey Flaumenhaft Roberta Gable Barbara Goyette Kathryn Heines Pamela Kraus Joseph Macfarland Jo Ann Mattson Eric Salem Brother Robert Smith Santa Fe 505-984-6104 alumni@sjcsf.edu Laura J. Mulry, Santa Fe editor Advisory Board Michael Franco David Levine Andra Maguran Margaret Odell Ginger Roherty Roxanne Seagraves Mark St. John Magazine design by Claude Skelton Design �winter 2004 Vo l u m e 3 0 , I s s u e 1 The College The Magazine for Alumni of St. John’s College Annapolis • Santa Fe {Contents} 12 Money Talks d e p a r t m e n t s page 2 • Johnnies succeed in finance not by breaking the rules, but by figuring them out faster than their competitors. 17 Santa Fe’s Martial Artists • • • • page • • • page 12 Santa Fe tutors find serious practice of the martial arts complements their work at St. John’s. 9 32 35 20 Remembering Freshman Year Christopher Nelson: Double Duty Search Update Meet the Alumni Directors A New Face in the Great Hall Santa Fe Bikes to Work Being Green in Annapolis Thai Summer Philanthropia letters bibliofile alumni notes P RO F I L E S page Annapolis alumni share memories of Jascha Klein, dorm mishaps, Seducers and Corrupters, and fateful first meetings. from the bell towers 34 Francisco Benítez (SF89) finds artistic inspiration in Dionysiac frescoes. 37 Eileen Renno (A82) helps welfare clients find dignity and confidence in work. 38 Wine expert Jake Kosseff (A95) and his brush with reality television. page 26 44 alumni voices Photographer Vivian Ronay (class of 1965) captures Petra, the Lost City of Stone. 26 St. John’s vs. The Naval Academy page 46 48 The stakes in this contest were much higher than a croquet cup. 30 Annapolis Homecoming page page 30 on the cover Adam Smith Illustration by David Johnson alumni association news st. john’s forever �2 {From the Bell Towers} A Conversation with Christopher Nelson Q. Let’s talk first about the sheer physical challenges of running two campuses that are 2,000 miles and a couple of time zones apart. How are you managing this? A. Being in each place half the time means that on each campus, everyone has sandwiched in as many meetings, ceremonial occasions, and social functions as possible. While I’m still doing less than a full-time job on each campus, all this means that I have no evening time, no time for catching up on work, and less time for exercise. It’s just going from one meeting to another meeting. Of course, I expected that I’d be attending to the needs of two campuses instead of one, but I don’t think I realized how much I’d have to squeeze in. While I’ve always done a fair bit of travel for the job, these flights to Santa Fe and back are longer flights than usual. I’ve cut back on other travel as a result of this. I don’t think the travel itself is all that exhausting. It takes a lot of time to get from one city to the other, and that does give me some time to read. We have deliberately designed the presidency here to preserve two separate individual campus communities and to avoid centralization. I think that’s a healthy thing. But it does mean I feel like I’m literal- david trozzo In the past six months, Annapolis President Christopher Nelson (SF70) has become one of Southwest Airlines’ best customers. Serving as interim president in Santa Fe while the board searches for a successor to John Balkcom (SFGI00) has meant frequent travel to the college’s Western campus. At the end of a busy fall semester, Nelson sat down to discuss the challenges and opportunities of serving two campuses. Christopher B. Nelson ly two people. I had an Executive Committee dinner the other day at the board meeting and I counted out 14 places for all the people who were there. There was this empty chair at the end of the table and I could not figure out for the life of me who it was. There were two special guests, four officers of the board, four at-large elected members of the board, and then the two deans and the two presidents. And it didn’t strike me until the salad course that I was the two presidents. Q. How do you establish priorities for your work with two campuses to attend to? A. I tend to concentrate on the needs of the campus when I’m there, but invariably there are needs of the other campus that come up during the course of the day. Both campuses have a very good staff of officers and directors, and a lot can be done without my being present. But a number of surprises that come up during the course of the week require some presidential work, so I am always in touch with the away campus. I schedule the calendar around board meetings, joint instruction committee meetings, Parents’ Weekends, Homecomings, and other major events. Most of the calendar is scheduled a full year in advance here in Annapolis. In Santa Fe, with an interim situation, there aren’t nearly as many activities scheduled, but I need to make as much time as I can to be available to the Santa Fe community. Instead of attending nine faculty meetings a year, I now attend 18. This winter, I’ll be in Santa Fe more than Annapolis, but that’s because this has been a very busy fall in Annapolis. Q. What are you gaining from this experience? Will it change the way you look at the college as a whole, or how things are done in Annapolis? A. I see things in Santa Fe that would be interesting to try here in Annapolis: programs that faculty and staff have done with students, things that have been organized by students that are different in Santa Fe that seem to be very nicely done—a community clean-up day at the beginning of the semester, town hall meetings, and faculty-student social hours, for example. Parents’ Weekend is different on the two campuses. In Santa Fe there is no meeting such as we have in Annapolis with the parents, the dean, and the president getting together to talk about any questions that parents might ask related to the Program. But in Santa Fe, and not in Annapolis, there is a panel of students and alumni who speak to parents about the experience of living on campus and being a Johnnie. Parents seem to really appreci- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } ate this, especially the parents of freshmen. I thought that this was proof once again that any time we want to see the college shine, we just need to introduce people to our students—they really are amazing. There are differences that go along with the physical setting of the two campuses. We have more centripetal forces at work here in Annapolis, because we have a center to campus and most things look to it physically. In Santa Fe, people are always looking outwards, because you’re surrounded by these beautiful mountains and great big skies. You also don’t have as much of a center of the college. As a result you’ve got more centrifugal forces in Santa Fe, and you have to work a little harder to bring about a strong community. I think that a lot of credit goes to those people who are doing just that in Santa Fe, organizing special projects, social hours, and other functions to bring faculty and students together. Q. The Management Committee is due to become a permanent part of the college structure [by an act of the Board of Visitors and Governors] in 2004. How has this committee contributed to the overall operation of the college? A. The Management Committee is responsible for all advancement activities of the college, including public relations and alumni relations, for preparing the budgets for both campuses, for overseeing finances and information technology, and for approving admissions and financial aid policy. The management committee consists of the two presidents and two deans, and the chair of the management committee will always be one of the two presidents. I’ve been the �3 {From the Bell Towers} Q. Since you’ve had some experience in the job, what advice do you have to share with the search committee that will help find a new leader for Santa Fe? A. I don’t think it needs to be somebody from within our own community, although that would be a very fine thing. I don’t think it has to be someone who’s been a president of another institution or even a dean. But someone who has the qualities and the capacities for leadership— that would be good. The new president has to understand that the Program comes first—that everything at the college is in the service of the Program, that the college is in a certain sense the Program. This means that we’re not looking for a president to make his reputation at this college, to take the college someplace new, or to change what it is. We need to have a president who will help us improve what we do all over the college and particularly in Santa Fe. There are criteria used for selection of tutors that would be useful to apply to the presidential search. The first is a rather elusive qualification, which is excellence of intellect and imagination. I hesitate to bring it up because I haven’t been told that I will be grandfathered in this position with reference to that qualification, but I do think it’s an important one. No college can survive well if the president isn’t up to the quality of the faculty and is unable to get the respect of the faculty. So a president who is out of step with the faculty or board is going to have a hard time at any institution, particularly here because of the Dyal in the Great Hall There’s a new face in the Great Hall in Annapolis. An oil painting of William Dyal Jr. (HA89), who served as president of the Annapolis campus from 1986 to 1990, has joined the portraits of other great figures of St. John’s history: Stringfellow Barr, Thomas Fell, Hector Humphreys, John Kieffer and others. Dyal was an effective president, and his tenure was shorter than the Annapolis campus community would have liked. He stepped down in May 1990 after recovering from surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. In presenting the portrait to Dyal in Annapolis this past October during a meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors, President Christopher Nelson said his immediate predecessor “made an enormous and lasting impact on the college during his time here.” “He was loved and admired by faculty, and the students looked up to him,” Nelson said. “He was called accepting, wise, kind, friendly, and courageous.” Prior to joining St. John’s, Dyal served as president of American Field Service, was the founding president of the Interamerican Foundation, and served in various capacities for the Peace Corps. primacy of the Program. All in all, however, if I had to use one word for what we are looking for, it would be ‘fit.’ We want a president who belongs at the college and fits well with its ways, its program, its structures and its people. support, both within and outside the college. We have a very strong Board of Visitors and Governors, and an active body of alumni. Friends in the community are helpful. We’re entering into a capital campaign with a set of strategic goals that we think make sense for our community, and we have a high probability of achieving most of those goals through a good campaign. So a new president comes into a very nice situation. He or she will not have to reinvent the wheel. A new president has an opportunity to get to know the place, to listen and learn, to come to join the community rather than worrying about finding a new place to take it. Any president who wants to leave a legacy is probably a president we don’t want or need. The Program will be the legacy of this college; the alumni will be the legacies of this college. We—the presidents, the staff members, and faculty— we’re trustees of the Program. We care for it, and hope that we will leave the college in a little better shape than when we came. x Q. Let’s consider a candidate’s viewpoint of the presidency of St. John’s College in Santa Fe. Is this a desirable position? A. The college is in good shape. It’s hardly a wealthy institution. But considering the state of the world right now and the difficult financial times we’ve been facing in the last three years, St. John’s has fared extremely well. We have a strong student applicant pool, although we’d like to improve the number of applications to the Santa Fe campus. We have filled our freshman class at expected levels every year as far back as I can remember. We’re able to maintain a strict needbased financial aid policy, which most colleges in the country have abandoned. This is a sign of real strength. The faculty is strong. The Program has never had greater William Dyal Jr. joins distinguished ranks in the Great Hall. He was known for his work in civil rights and social justice, and he brought an international perspective to the college, Nelson said. Adept at fund raising, Dyal secured funds for faculty salaries, additions and renovations to campus buildings, and the college endowment. Dyal said he was pleased to have a place in the Great Hall, one of his favorite spots on campus. “I loved my years at St. John’s,” Dyal said. “They were too brief. I loved the faculty, I loved the students, I even learned to love the board.” As for the portrait, “the picture’s not too bad,” Dyal said. The portrait was painted by Anastasia Hoffman Egeli (A92). Dyal and his wife, Edie, now live in Fredericksburg, Va. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } daniel houck chair since it began but expect that the chair will be moved to Santa Fe sometime after we have a new president permanently in place. I think the management committee has helped us come to know each other a lot better and to bring together policies that help to strengthen the college. We’ve been able to accomplish a few of the big tasks that had been eluding us. We now have common tuition, common admissions policies, and a common financial aid policy for the two campuses. We have equal faculty salaries, class sizes are the same, and we just now are getting to equal faculty development opportunities. �4 {From the Bell Towers} Homecoming Queens: Alumnae Return in New Roles Meet the Alumni directors in Annapolis and Santa Fe. They work with the Alumni Association to plan your Homecomings, they make small talk over wine and cheese at chapter gatherings, they persuade tutors to lead just one more Saturday morning seminar. In short, they work hard to make you—the alumni—happy customers. Both are multi-talented women: a minister, storyteller, stiltwalker, teacher, stand-up comedian in Santa Fe; a potter, artist, teacher, and singer in Annapolis. Both are moms. Both have interesting tales of how they found themselves back in the St. John’s College community. Jo Ann Mattson (A87) Jo Ann (Lautenschlager) Mattson was a freshman at Wellesley College when she came to Annapolis with her then-boyfriend (now husband) Walter Mattson (A87). Walter was visiting St. John’s as a prospective and Jo Ann, happily studying English literature at Wellesley, was merely along for the ride. “I started the visit with a snobby attitude,” she admits. “The buildings all seemed run down. I was thinking: ‘you call this a library?’ Our guide was barefoot and wearing a poncho.” Mattson, who had no serious intention of transferring, was planning to skip seminar; an incident at dinner made her reconsider. “There was a menu board outside the dining hall that said: ‘Philadelphia cheesesteak, penny carrots, French fries.’ ” Mattson recalls. “During dinner, someone stood up on a chair and said, ‘I just want to say that I’m from Philadelphia and these sandwiches in no way resemble Philly cheesesteaks.’ About 30 seconds later someone else stood up on a chair and said, ‘Well, I’m from Chicago and I just want to say that these penny carrots in no way resemble currency.’” Something about that joke, says Mattson, something about the whole atmosphere of the dining hall, made her think that maybe St. John’s was the place she was looking for. With her mind now slightly open, she attended a seminar on Plato’s Republic. “It blew me away,” she says. “The conversation was so intelligent, so passionate. It was hard to be in the room and not be allowed to speak.” She did get her chance to speak later that night, as conversation continued after seminar in the Coffee Shop. “The scene in the Coffee Shop was exactly what I was looking for, exactly what I wanted college to be,” says Mattson. That winter, she and Walter joined the Febbie class of 1987. She threw herself into the Program and loved everything, particularly freshman seminar with Mr. Williamson and Mr. McDonald and sophomore language with david trozzo Annapolis Mr. Lenkowski. She canoed on College Creek, took life-drawing classes with artist-in-residence Burt Blistein and had a campus job in the dishpit. After her sophomore year, Mattson decided to return to Wellesley and finish her degree in English, but her heart never really left St. John’s. Before she left Annapolis, she found her way into one of the most famous St. John’s photographs. Todd Reichart (A84) happened to be taking pictures outside of Walter’s Chase-Stone room during library call-in. The library was then in Woodward Hall (now the Barr-Buchanan Center), and while students and tutors paraded past Walter’s window on the way to return books, Mattson, Ralph Stengren (A86), Chris Reichert-Facilides (A86), and Doug Gentile (A86) sat in the window, clowning around. Reichart seized the opportunity to shoot what is one of the most iconic photos of the college and its students. Although St. John’s and Wellesley have nourished { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } Mattson’s intellect, she also has a strong artistic side. In addition to designing jewelry and hand-made beads and working in ceramic arts, she has had leading roles in community theater productions and singing groups. After Mattson left St. John’s, she married Walter and graduated from Wellesley. In 1991, the Mattsons moved to Connecticut where Walter taught English and geometry at Avon Old Farms School. Early in her marriage, while Mattson stayed home with their three children, she fed her creativity by making polymer clay jewelry, Halloween costumes, and “the most stupendous, over-the-top birthday cupcakes ever brought to an elementary school classroom.” When the family returned to Annapolis eight years later, Mattson started teaching at the Key School (founded by Johnnies) and volunteered in the Alumni Office, creating Jo Ann Mattson is happy to be back at St. John’s. �{From the Bell Towers} Program-inspired drawings and paintings for then-alumnidirector Roberta Gable (A78). Her work illustrated a Homecoming brochure and a croquet match poster, and ultimately led her to apply for the position of alumni director when Gable became the director of Career services. Mattson has been in the position for over a year now and finds that she loves the challenges of working with different personalities and that her diverse background is particularly suited to the everchanging needs of running an office and managing alumni events. At a recent alumni party, Mattson met Chris Denny (A93) and their discussion turned to why they came to St. John’s. Denny told her his story: When he was a high school junior he received the college catalog. Inside was a photo so evocative of the joy and camaraderie of the St. John’s experience that, based on its allure, he decided to apply. The photo, of course, was the famous Reichart Chase-Stone photo. It now hangs in Mattson’s office in the Chancellor Johnson House. —Sus3an Borden Santa Fe Roxanne Seagraves (SF83) When Roxanne Seagraves describes her amazing careers so far, there’s one that never fails to raise eyebrows: standup comedian. Night after night, she took the stage in smoky comedy clubs with a daringly wholesome act, eager for laughs, but ready for the inevitable times when she would bomb. It’s this experience, those in the know believe, that might have best prepared her for her newest job—where you can’t make all people happy all the time. After graduating from St. John’s, Seagraves moved to Chapel Hill, N.C., where she taught kindergarten at Carolina Friends School. She became involved in storytelling and performance art, discovered she was good at it, and started her own business. She took her stories to churches, community groups, and schools all over the eastern Carolinas. She created and wrote more than 300 stories for children, incorporated dance and movement in her performances, and engaged kids in the narrative. To keep herself “sane and in an adult mode,” she developed a standup comedy routine and took it on the road. Some nights, she’d have her audience rolling in the aisles; others, she couldn’t wait to get off the stage. “I sometimes thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if they were sober when they listened to my act?’ But I always resisted the temptation to get cheap laughs from sexual tawdriness and self-deprecating humor.” When the recession hit, fewer schools and nonprofit groups had money for stories, and comedy club gigs were drying up. It was time for a new plan, and Seagraves was drawn to the ministry—“it’s kind of like storytelling.” Although she was raised a Quaker, she chose Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian-Universalist seminary in Berkeley, Calif. During her years in graduate school, her St. John’s education helped sustain Seagraves. “In the basement, the seminary had a library of rare Roxanne Seagraves has been a teacher, storyteller, and stand-up comedian. books from the 16th century: religious texts, Bibles, books in Greek and Latin. I’d kept my skills up and got a job reading and writing abstracts of the different books.” While studying for a doctorate in American Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Seagraves took note of the poor state of public schools in nearby Oakland. She raised funds for an after-school tutoring program, found churches to serve as hosts, recruited students, and set up a system to communicate with the students’ teachers. She kept the project going for several years while earning her degree, and she’s pleased to see it’s still thriving today. “I think one of the things St. John’s gives students is the way we’re taught to think. We have the creative resources to engage a problem,” she says. Along the way, Seagraves decided to become a parent on her own, and is raising Thandi, now three, as a single mother. After her daughter was born, Seagraves curtailed working { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } 5 and completed her doctoral dissertation on the annual pilgrimage to Chimayó, a sanctuary in New Mexico believed to be built on sacred earth with miraculous healing powers. “I used to ride my bicycle to Chimayó, and found it a very powerful place,” Seagraves says. After Seagraves finished her doctorate, she took a job as a prevention specialist in the Tucson public school system. She worked to help deter atrisk youngsters from gang involvement, drug and alcohol abuse, and crime. “You have the challenges of poverty and the challenges of second- and third-generation gang and drug culture, and they have to be faced in order for kids to be successful in public education,” Seagraves said. With a daughter to care for, she began to worry about the physical risks of the job. When the position came open at St. John’s in Santa Fe, she was eager for a new opportunity. “I really loved the chance to come back and work with St. John’s and alumni,” she says. “Our alumni are phenomenal people—trained to be thoughtful, caring citizens. There’s a lot of good energy there.” Seagraves, who began her official duties in September, believes that most alumni will continue to gravitate back to the college. “You become so close with your classmates because you work with them so hard during your years at St. John’s. And they shape you in such profound ways,” she says. After settling in to her new job, Seagraves hopes to continue some part-time involvement in the performing arts. She has found the time to design and sew intricate costumes for another hobby almost as risky as stand-up: walking on 12-foot stilts. x —Rosemary Harty �6 {From the Bell Towers} ‘Idealist’ Promotes Alternative Commutes in Santa Fe “I don’t know if I was born an idealist or became one while studying at St. John’s,” says Circulation and Public Services Librarian Laura Cooley (SF92). “But reading books influenced my being an idealist.” Cooley is one of more than a dozen St. John’s College community members who uses alternative transportation to commute to campus. Inspired by an idea of the Santa Fe Chapter of the New Mexico Bicycle Coalition, Cooley coordinated a “Walk or Bike to Work Day” at the college on Wednesday, October 8. She promoted the event through e-mail, flyers, and word-ofmouth on campus. She staffed an information table in Peterson’s hallway outside the Coffee Shop, promoting alternative transportation, with help from students, tutor Linda Wiener, and Mark St. John (SF82), director of Athletics and Outdoor Programs, and students. They handed out cookies and lemonade provided by Aramark Food Service, free safety lights, a lottery for free bikes to those commuting from off-campus, safety tips, and bike maps of Santa Fe. Santa Fe’s Public Relations Director, Laura Mulry (SFGI02), spent two hours walking to and from work that day, surviving aching calves, SUV drivers blind to pedestrians, a steady rain, and a stiff uphill climb in places. But the walk was worth it, Mulry said, because it gave her time to contemplate a master’s essay on The Idiot and the opportunity to really notice her environs. Cooley hopes to make the event an annual happening. x damian taggart Santa Fe Search Laura Cooley’s ride to work has a nifty windshield. Thai Summer Last summer, Santa Fe tutor Linda Wiener and her children traveled to Thailand to live and work at the Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden, 30 kilometers outside the city of Chiangmai in the northern mountains. Thailand’s tropical environs are famous for orchids, ferns, lotus, and other exotic plants. Wiener spent the summer helping to start a natural history museum on the grounds of the garden, a challenging task since staff of the fledgling museum had no prior museum experience. She assisted in planning the exhibits, helping to create a prototype exhibit on pollination and flower form, and led a workshop for the staff of the garden on museum philosophy and management. With a Ph.D. in entomology, Wiener devotes her summers to her work as an entomologist and field biologist. When she wasn’t working directly with the museum staff, A specimen from Thailand. With the help of an executive search firm, a committee is beginning to cull through applications coming in from candidates seeking to become the next president of the Santa Fe campus. John Balkcom (SFGI00) resigned from the Santa Fe presidency in June. Created by the Board of Visitors and Governors, the search committee comprises both deans, a faculty member from each campus, and five board members. Last fall, the committee retained the Boston-based firm of Isaacson, Miller to assist in the search. The firm will conduct screening interviews and extensive background checks before recommending candidates to the search committee. The search committee will then interview finalists before presenting a single candidate for the board to consider at its April or July meeting. The search committee is chaired by Michael Uremovich, a Santa Fe board member and current student in the Graduate Institute. x Wiener surveyed the butterflies at the garden, examined spiders, and studied the local flora. She loved being in Thailand during the rainy season, when the rainforest is vibrantly green. Thailand, Wiener notes, benefits from an enlightened monarch. “When the Thais were trying to stop the opium trade, they did not spray defoliants and other poisons, burn fields, and shoot people,” says Wiener. “The king reasoned that they were taking away these peoples’ livelihood and so had to do something for them. He set up the King’s Royal Projects, a series of state-of-the-art organic farms in the former opium-growing regions. They train the indigenous people who traditionally grew opium to run the organic farms, and the king supported the projects until they became self-sufficient.” Visiting Thailand, a Buddhist country, has provided a valuable experience for Wiener’s work at St. John’s, where she has just begun teaching Eastern Classics seminars. “I think that the ideas, rituals, and practice of Buddhism have a very significant effect on the culture, and experiencing that difference from our culture every day and speaking with Thais about their religion and the way it affects their daily life, really enhanced my understanding and appreciation of Buddhism.” x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } —Andra Maguran �7 Annapolis’ ‘Green’ Dormitory The newest dormitory on the Annapolis campus won’t be hooked up to the college’s steam plant. Instead it will use an innovative geothermal heating and cooling system that will save money and conserve energy. Geothermal systems use the earth’s constant subsurface temperature of 51 degrees to 55 degrees to provide more efficient heating and cooling. In winter, the system draws heat from the ground to heat buildings; in summer it extracts heat from buildings and transfers it to the ground. It’s estimated that the system is 40 percent more energyefficient than conventional airto-air heat pumps. Tanks of frozen water in mellon cool the building. During site preparation for the system last fall, the campus playing field looked like the set of the movie Holes. Dozens of narrow holes were drilled 300 feet into the ground. High-density polyethylene pipes were inserted, and a bentonite grout packed around the tubes to protect the groundwater from surface contamination. The closed-circuit piping will carry a biodegradable anti-freeze type solution that will be heated or cooled by the earth. The grid of pipes ultimately will be connected to a main feed that will deliver the solution to a heat exchanger in the new dormitory building. This innovation, says Steve Linhard, assistant treasurer, is environmentally friendly, efficient, and cost-effective. “After a payback period of about five years, we’ll have virtually no energy costs for heating and cooling the building, save for the nominal electricity cost to run the pumps,” he says maryirene ruffin {From the Bell Towers} The 18,000-square-foot dormitory will house 48 students and is expected to open in time for the fall semester. Annapolis’ playing fields also will be back in shape for teams to begin using in the spring. Linhard, who came to St. John’s from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, has earned the reputation of “Mr. Green” around Annapolis. With other campus and community participants in Annapolis, he was involved in a project to restore the marshland around College Creek by planting spartina and Workers install a geothermal system for the new dorm. other natural grasses and shrubs. And as the supervisor of the renovation and expansion of Mellon Hall, Linhard promoted the installation of an environmentally friendly cooling system. That system involves tanks of freezing water in the Mellon basement. The system runs during off-peak hours and releases cool air through the building during the day. x maryirene ruffin Justice O’Connor Speaks in Annapolis Forum On October 11, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor attracted a crowd of more than 500 people to the college’s first “Great Issues” forum in several years. O’Connor spoke on “The Supreme Court and the Shaping of Law,” and community members afterward met in seminars to discuss the groundbreaking decision Marbury v. Madison. “Without Marbury, the rulings of our Supreme Court on questions of discrimination, church-state relations, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press would be less important and less enduring,” O’Connor said. The Great Issues Series, sponsored by the Friends of St. John’s College, was created to engage the Annapolis-area community in thoughtful discussions and debate. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �A Coffee Shop, Now and Then Marion Warren’s blackand-white photographs are among the most distinctive in the St. John’s archives in Annapolis. Warren handled much of the public relations photography for the college during the 1950s and 1960s. The portraits, publicity stills, and candid photographs he took are set apart by their rich blackand-white tones, an expert sense of composition, and a special talent for capturing a moment in time. “They called me the besteducated photographer around because of all the time I spent at St. John’s,” says Warren, now in his 80s. When Philanthropia volunteers and college staff wanted to replicate an archival photograph for this year’s Annual Fund appeal, Warren’s Coffee Shop photo was an easy choice. Although it was taken in 1954 in Annapolis, the St. John’s Coffee Shop experience of dialogue and community spans generations and speaks to Santa Fe and Annapolis alumni alike. Powerful klieg lights were already set up for the filming of {From the Bell Towers} the St. John’s Story, a promotional movie about the college that was released the following year. Warren stepped in and took his photo quickly, recalls Carolyn Banks-Leeuwenburgh (class of 1955). The first woman to apply to the college, Banks-Leeuwenburgh says the Coffee Shop was her favorite haunt. “It seemed like it was full all the time. We were a small class—there weren’t even 200 students in the whole school—and people would just go to the Coffee Shop and talk about all the hard work,” she recalls. After graduating, BanksLeeuwenburgh became an opera singer in Europe and New York, taught, raised three children, became a therapist, and with her husband, Helge, led travel tours. She served on the board of the Alumni Association. Now enjoying an active retirement, she audits classes at Princeton University. In the photo, BanksLeeuwenburgh is looking across at classmate Emily Martin Kutler, class of 1955. “I don’t remember what we were laughing about, but clearly, we weren’t entertaining the rest of marion warren 8 the group,” Banks-Leeuwenburgh says. “They looked a little bored.” Sitting in Banks-Leeuwenburgh’s spot in the contemporary photograph was freshman Emma Plaut. On campus for less than a week, Plaut was minding her own business in the quad when she was recruited for the photo. Plaut is the daughter of alumni Richard Plaut and Carol Katrina (A77 and A79). Her interest in St. John’s was fueled by her parents’ enthusiasm. “They dragged me on a visit to St. John’s, and I sat in on a seminar,” she recalls. “Then I went to other colleges where I sat in on lectures and what other colleges called seminars. I thought, ‘what is this? No one’s even talking. Nobody even looks like they want to be here.’ At St. John’s, everybody was really interested. They all wanted to be there and they all wanted to be learning.” Another subject in the original photo, Everett Wilson (class of 1956), turned down scholarships to several colleges and instead enrolled at St. John’s. He became only the second black student to graduate from the college (after Martin A. Dyer, class of 1952). “St. John’s was difficult and rigorous, but I’m glad, because it prepared me to go to graduate school, where I got straight-As,” Wilson said. david trozzo top: The Coffee Shop circa 1954. Counter-clockwise from the page-turner at the front table: William H. Barrett (class of 1956), Emily Martin Kutler (class of 1955), Hugh McKay (class of 1955), Caroline Banks Leeuwenburgh (class of 1955), Peter McGhee (class of 1955), Barbara Dvorak Winiarski (class of 1955), Everett Wilson (class of 1956), and tutor Hugh McGrath. The two students on the right at the front table are unidentified, as is the man with his back to the photographer at the back table. At left: 2003. Counter-clockwise, from the front table: Alex Constantine (A05), Deborah Mangum (A06), George Pogiatzis (A07), Emma Plaut (A07), Joshua Suich (A05), Janae Decker (A05), Natalie Rinn (A05), tutor Erik Sageng, Dave Prosper (SF02), Lord Thomas Bainbridge (A06). The student in a white t-shirt at the back table is unidentified. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �{From the Bell Towers} Annual Fund Facts The Annual Fund provides critical support for the college each year and is a key component of the college’s operating budget. Tuition covers 70 percent of the cost of educating current St. John’s students. The remaining 30 percent comes from endowment income, state and federal grants, and gifts from alumni, parents, and friends. • The Annual Fund provides about 6 percent of the operating budget on both campuses: tutor salaries, financial aid, student services, and college offices. • Last year, 34 percent of alumni participated in the Annual Fund, up from 19 percent four years ago. • This year’s Annual Fund goal: $2.25 million. • The Annual Fund year runs from July 1, 2003, through June 30, 2004. The college mails out four appeals in that time, but once an alum makes a gift, no other appeals are sent. • Reunion classes, led by volunteers from Philanthropia, usually increase their participation rate by 10 to 20 percent. “At St. John’s, I really learned how to study, how to read to understand.” After graduation, Wilson went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees in counseling. He worked in psychiatric social work, became the first director of the Anne Arundel County Economic Opportunity office, then taught at the University of Maryland. Next, he joined the Maryland Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration as deputy director, where he remains now in addition to maintaining a part-time counseling practice. Fifty years after his picture was taken in the coffee shop, Wilson remembers it well. He also remembers Hugh McGrath, the tutor he was sitting next to. “Oh, he was my favorite tutor,” Wilson says. “He was my adviser for my senior thesis. Because I came from the Eastern Shore (of Maryland) and had difficulty with reading Shakespeare, he would work with me. He really befriended me. The school was so small that any time you asked for help, you would get it.” Annapolis tutor Erik Sageng cheerfully gave up his Saturday morning to impersonate McGrath in the photograph, bringing a book to pass the time during the lengthy setup for the photo. Sageng joined the college in 1990 after earning his doctorate in the history of mathematics at Princeton University. Taking Wilson’s place at the table was Natalie Rinn, a junior from St. Cloud, Minn. She was passing through the Coffee Shop on her way to pick up her mail when she was buttonholed for the photograph. Rinn spent a semester at Dickinson College before she transferred to St. John’s as a Febbie, following her brother Alex (A03). “I think St. John’s provides the best college education there 9 is, because it really addresses being a good citizen and the best way to live life,” she says. After graduation, Rinn hopes to spend a year studying French or Spanish, then go to law school. David Prosper (SF02) was the primary recruiter for the contemporary photograph. The St. John’s community during Prosper’s more recent years could be a “weird place.” “People were eccentric, but nobody cared if you were eccentric. You could have the most random and interesting conversations at lunch,” he says. From setup to the last shot, the photograph took almost two hours. Soda cans and water bottles took the place of the classic Coca-Cola bottles. Cell phones and PDAs took the place of cigarettes and ashtrays. Annapolis photographer David Trozzo—a steady contributor to The College—had fun replicating a master’s photo, although it was painstaking work. A professional photographer in the Baltimore/ Washington region for 15 years, Trozzo has earned many awards for his work. x {Letters} Latin Revival Diversity Initiative The Fall 2003 issue of The College has some interesting articles about language, mentioning both Esperanto and Latin. Readers may be interested in knowing that Latin as an actual spoken language has experienced something of a revival in recent years. Among other efforts, the Familia Sancti Hieronymi (507 S. Prospect Ave., Clearwater, FL 33756) holds nearly every summer a cenaculum in which Latin is the common language for instruction, socializing, and worship. They also sell tapes and books to aid in acquisition of oral Latin skills. Although Esperanto could do a good job of uniting the world linguistically, spoken Latin could also do that, as well as uniting us culturally to our past. While I applaud The College for its readable and interesting articles about the campuses, alumni, and continuing life of the mind at St. John’s College, I am extremely distressed by the sentiment displayed in… “Admissions and Diversity, East and West” (Fall 2003). I am very disappointed to see that our admissions department is looking “I found that skin color contributed nothing to any conversation I ever had or heard in class.” Erin N.H. Furby, A96 Thomas Storck, SFGI80 at race as a consideration among its applicants. St. John’s College has been the subject of derision by many of the unwise who looked only at the race and sex of the authors on the curriculum without seeing that the ideas presented in the Program are universal and applicable to all thinking people. I have always been proud that St. John’s did not alter the Program to appease the sensibilities of the immoderate fashions of contemporary academia. I prefer to think that this is a poorly chosen and written article rather than think that the admissions offices are truly falling prey to contemporary university politics. “Minority” in this article refers to different groups of people with regard to each campus, discrediting the implication of a unified goal held by St. John’s College continued on next page { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �10 {Letters} or the solidarity of the described applicant pool. In Santa Fe, “minority” refers to Hispanic and American Indian high school students while Ms. Harty only mentions black high school students as the prospective “minority” for Annapolis. Also, “minorities” for Santa Fe are being sought from around New Mexico, while Annapolis is said to be looking for black students from all over the country. I am pleased to learn about the Santa Fe campus’ grant for recruiting more students from around New Mexico, but I find the giver to be rather misguided if the grant requires the college to be on the lookout for only certain skin colors. Having the ability to visit the smaller high schools in New Mexico is a tremendous boon to St. John’s College, but why should admissions officers be pressured to seek out students of one race over another? Meanwhile, I am appalled that the Annapolis campus was mentioned in this article only in terms of having a small number of black students each year. While I was a student at SJCA, there were foreign as well as American students. Among the American citizens, non-white students were of EastAsian, Middle-Eastern, Indian, Latin American, Amerindian, and Hispanic descent as well as black (not to mention students of mixed race). I found that skin color contributed nothing to any conversation I ever had or heard in class. All that ever mattered while I was in class was the individual perspectives each person brought to class and the bond between us created by our struggles with the text. In my experience, students’ perspectives were more influenced by religion, age, home state, and economic background than by complexion. Erin N.H. Furby, A96 Remembering Vernon Derr Having just read the fall issue of The College, I very much appreciated your inclusion of my note regarding the Class of ’44, as well as the excellent obituary for our Vern Derr, in the view of his classmates, one of nature’s noblemen. A minor caveat: we few surviving members of ’44 are a jealous lot and object to his promotion to the Class of ’48! We hope that this true membership in our class may be restored. J. Rodney Whetstone Class of 1944 Moving Day I just received the Fall 2003 issue of your interesting The College. My connection with SJC is two-fold. In addition to four years of attendance, I lived on the campus from 1913 to 1916. My father, John C. Gray, was a member of the SJC faculty for that three-year period as the chemistry professor. He completed his teaching career at the Naval Academy. For most of the time he was on the SJC faculty, we lived in an apartment on campus. As you look at the campus from College Avenue, it was the left-hand building (Paca Carroll House). My brother, Joseph, class of 1936, was born in this building, and he must be the only graduate who was born on campus. I was very interested in the “Moving Day” article. While a student at SJC I lived in the Delta Psi Omega Fraternity House, which was on St. John’s Street right next to the Baptist Church. Unfortunately I do not remember the historic name of the structure. I thought that it was similar to the Carroll Barrister House. That kind of information did not survive my several moves. One time I visited the DPO House in its Conduit Street location. I do enjoy very much receiving and reading the SJC alumni publications. Edward Gray Class of 1934 Education for its Own Sake I have just finished reading, cover to cover, the Fall 2003 edition of The College and I must say that it gets better with every issue! I look forward to each edition to catch up with SJC and all its activities and those of the alumni. It is the one thing that keeps me in touch with the wonderful educational program that is the great books dialogue. As legal counsel most of my professional life to a university in the higher education industry (and make no mistake, higher education has become an “industry” with all the pejorative baggage that word conjures up), I feel uniquely qualified to express an opinion on the position St. John’s College currently occupies as an institution in this peculiar environment. The college stands out because it has courageously decided not to succumb to the trends, fads, or “new direction” other institutions feel they must in order to be “competitive.” A shining example is the college’s refusal to submit to the numbers { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } ranking game amongst other institutions. When I talk with faculty colleagues at my and other institutions across the country about the lack of departments, rigid grading systems, numerical admissions criteria, and the like at the college, many seem befuddled. It’s like the Grinch wondering how it could be Christmas without numerous presents or colorful decorations. And, like the Grinch, it takes some further thought to get the point. The college values education for its own sake; enlightenment must come from within. To be a true free thinker, one must challenge and be challenged; ask and be asked difficult questions; work hard at understanding and either confirm convictions or not be afraid to set aside or modify a way of thinking. This is, of course, easier said than done, but that is precisely why the college exists and why I cherish its existence. “Maybe I’m naive but I can’t imagine an educational philosophy that is more diametrically opposed to the St. John’s approach than this belief in the supremacy of testing.” John Scow, A71 There are some things in the human experience that remain constant. One of those constants is our dialogue: an openminded but frank discussion amongst ourselves to help us further understand the human condition. While we cannot solve all problems or make the world right for all people, those who have the willingness and ability to participate in this human conversation advance the interest of peace and harmony. The college accomplishes this important feat by conducting a conversation with humans in the classroom (with precepts, tutorials, seminars) and with humans from time gone by (the books which become the subject of the discussion). As the last issue of The College points out, such a dialogue can even occur in prison! Just think of the possibilities if this human dialogue were conducted in the Middle East. �11 {Letters} In looking at other schools offering a liberal arts education, I remain firm in my conviction that the new curriculum is the linchpin of the college’s success. However, one should not overlook the importance of keeping the college religion-free. Part of preserving an open mind is the avoidance of any sanctioned belief system; the choice of what and whether to believe must necessarily be left to individual choice. For the foregoing reasons, the college continues to stand out, stronger today than ever, amongst other higher education institutions as the place that offers the truest opportunity for an enlightened education; and from my personal experience, it is an education that will mean more to every student with each passing year. It is a further credit to the college that it has not been distracted from its core mission. Even the Grinch, in that last moment of revelation, understood that all the flashy decorations and bells-and-whistles were merely distractions from what really mattered. Sean P. Scally, AGI89 Small Awakenings I read with interest your article about the two St. Johnnies who are making a stab at the teaching profession. I was surprised to read that one out of five Johnnies go into education. I did not realize I have so much company. On the other hand, maybe it shouldn’t surprise me that so many of us get involved in education. After all, what makes St. John’s so unique is it’s unique concept of what an education is, and how its best [attained]. Assuming that, I would surmise that the St. John’s community must be in some kind of state of shock over what is happening in schools across the country. Of course I am refering to what might be described as the “test driven” approach to education. Maybe I’m naive but I can’t imagine an educational philosophy that is more diametrically opposed to the St. John’s approach than this belief in the supremacy of testing. As I recall, at St. John’s we didn’t even have an official grading system, and any mention of what grades one might have was taboo. I never saw scores of any kind posted on the doors of classrooms, along with corresponding student I.D. numbers. In fact one of the things that attracted me to St. John’s in the first place was my disenchantment with high school… After visiting Annapolis as a prospective student and witnessing a riveting discussion of the Iliad (wanting to blurt some- thing out the whole time), I thought to myself, “Well that’s more like it!” Learning for the sake of learning. Going deep, tackling the big questions...why are we here anyway, and what are we supposed to do with these big brains? And now we are told that running a school is no different from running a factory. It’s all about churning out “good numbers” (sort of an educational body count). And what happens to that question the kid in the back of the class asks that’s not covered by the standards? The other day a student in my sixthgrade grade class of poverty-level minorities came up with such a question. I was introducing some of Picasso’s “one-liners.” I said, “These drawings may seem silly, but the same artist produced paintings that people pay millions for.” A hand went up. “How can a painting cost millions?” I congratulated the young fellow for having an original thought, and told the class that he could only have arrived at that question after self-initiated deliberation, which I said is a good thing (not to mention a prerequisite to democracy). So what is to happen to these small awakenings of consciousness in the future? Are they to be relegated from the classroom? Do we care about the “souls” of our students anymore, or is that just an antiquated concept? Perhaps the modern educational industry has no use for such anachronisms. John Scow, A71 Night Crawlers Just got the Fall ‘03 The College. In regard to the new dorm sites on back campus: I had a student aide job as a chemistry lab assistant in my sophomore year. I was asked to report to campus a few days early, in August 1957, to help with the move from the old lab building, Humphreys, to the new lab building, Mellon. The storeroom for the old chemistry lab was a really scary place. It had all the supplies and groceries for the current inorganic chemistry lab, and also a large collection of old stuff from years earlier when there was also an organic-chemistry lab. It was crammed full and had not been even cleaned, much less culled and organized, for many, many years. I am certain that there was stuff in there from the “old school” St. Johns of the 1920-30s. And I did not have a clue as to what 90 percent of this stuff was. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } So, what to do? The Buildings and Grounds crew dug a big trench down on the back campus. I am remembering it as probably 15-feet long, 10-feet wide, and 6or 8-feet deep. We used a pickup truck to carry load after load of “stuff” down there and threw it into the trench. There was no sorting or choosing—absolutely everything in that old storeroom was carried out, carefully set into the truck (hey, some of this stuff would have eaten the truck right up), driven down to back campus, and thrown into the trench. It seemed a bit gross, but…that’s what we were told to do. By time we got to about the third truckload, it began to get interesting. Strangelooking clouds of smoke and steam began to rise from different areas of the pit. The job took on a new slant: You’d pick up an old, rusty container, with a long-faded label, and try to pick a likely spot in the trench to start up a new chemical reaction. Some stuff smoldered, but nothing ever really exploded, and no one fainted from the gases, but it did look touch-and-go there for a while. The next day, the Buildings & Grounds folks covered it all up again. Still there I suppose...I’d look out for the Night Crawlers back there. Lewis Kreger Class of 1960 Errata: James Cobern is a member of the class of 1994 in Annapolis. He was incorrectly included with the class of 1990 in the Fall 2003 edition of The College. Benjamin Bloom (A97) is studying at the University of Miami, not the University of Maryland. The College welcomes letters on issues of interest to readers. Letters may be edited for clarity and/or length. Those under 500 words have a better chance of being printed in their entirety. Please address letters to: The College Magazine, St. John’s College, Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or The College Magazine, Public Relations Office, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. Letters can also be sent via e-mail to: reharty@sjca.edu. �12 {Johnnies on Finance} M O N E Y TA L K S … A N D J O H N N I E S K NOW H OW T O L I S T E N By Sus3an Borden, A87 he life of the marketplace is often considered antithetical to the life of the mind, the pursuit of money opposed to the pursuit of virtue. So why do a noticeably large number of St. John’s alumni enter the world of finance? And why are they so successful? T In Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” celebrated hunter Sanger Rainsford is shipwrecked on an island owned by General Zaroff, a sportsman who hunts the most challenging of prey: man. Zaroff gives Rainsford a six-hour head start, and the two men apply all their “courage, cunning, and…reason” in a contest of kill or be killed. Ron Fielding (A70) says that the thrill Zaroff seeks in matching wits with his peers reminds him of the excitement he finds in working in the financial world. “You can be more competitive and make money by outsmarting or outfiguring other people who are also very bright,” says Fielding, who, as vice president with OppenheimerFunds manages $13 billion in municipal bonds. “Part of the attractiveness of working on Wall Street is that it’s not soft. There’s a measurement of intellect that’s applied to problems, and results are measured. It’s not a place where you can get a promotion by impressing the boss. On Wall Street, your scorecard is quantified and published for the whole world to see. It’s like Zaroff going up against the best and brightest.” A surprising number of graduates, Fielding included, succeed at the highest levels of the financial world. And it’s no fluke. A St. John’s education, Fielding says, provides sound training for the high-stakes world of finance. Graduates can gain an advantage with advanced courses in economics or business, but the skills they develop at St. John’s have enduring value. “Years after you leave business school, there will be new problems to solve that didn’t come up in your classes,” he says. “You’ll have to figure them out faster than other people. St. John’s is valuable because it teaches us to analyze the world for ourselves rather than have someone explain it to us.” The story of Warren Spector’s career has a plot similar to Fielding’s and that of nearly every Johnnie who succeeds in the financial world: A bright mind encounters a { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �{Johnnies on Finance} “A vibrant financial market is truly one of the greatest assets of the United States.” christopher huston Warren Spector, A81 Warren Spector’s ease with the unknown contributed to his success in the field of finance. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } 13 �14 {Johnnies on Finance} david trozzo new market where the rules are not yet established, the textbooks have not yet been written, and the best strategy will reap the greatest rewards. Armed with intellect, imagination, and analytical prowess, the Johnnie explores the opportunity, grasps its principles, and fine-tunes a winning approach. Spector (A81) had not been working long at the banking, securities trading, and brokerage firm Bear Stearns when he had the chance to enter the emerging mortgage-backed securities market, investments backed by a pool of mortgage loans. “It was an exploratory time. It was not all derived and established and written down. Everyone was learning it for the first time. If you could understand the concepts, you could get an advantage over other people,” Spector says. “I had had an education consistent with being in that exploratory world, an education where no one told me the answers because no one knew the answers.” With Spector’s ease with the unknown and the resources of his firm’s research and analytics department, Bear Stearns became one of the leading firms in the market, and Spector became an expert in his field. Later, Spector branched out to other parts of the business and, in June 2001, was promoted to president of the firm, which has $209 billion in assets. Lawyer Steve Thomas’ (SF74) version of the story is roughly similar. Thomas found himself assigned to a project in what was then a new field—structured finance, which includes mortgage-backed securities. Thomas quickly became good at it and was well-rewarded for his understanding. “One reason Johnnies do well is that we’re not afraid to do things on our own,” he says. “A lot of people just say ‘I don’t have the math brain so I can’t think about it.’ Johnnies tend to start thinking about it.” Thomas, who is active on the Johnnie Ron Fielding (A70) welcomes the List, an unofficial listchallenges of Wall Street. serve for St. John’s alumni, says that he recently re-read postings to the list from the days following 9/11. “It was weird reading them,” he says. “It brought back what those days were like. The most interesting things to read were the posts where people started speculating about why the towers collapsed. We had a bunch of non-engineers trying to figure out the structural stuff, and some of them were astonishingly right.” In Thomas’ mind, St. John’s deserves the credit: “There’s a sort of intellectual fearlessness you achieve by going to a place that starts you out reading Homer and Plato.” There’s a nearly universal prejudice, as pervasive in the academic world as elsewhere, that thinks of money-making as a brutish pursuit, that hesitates to call “intellectual” the fearlessness necessary to succeed in the financial world and resists comparing the challenges of the classics to the challenges of the marketplace. Johnnies in the { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �15 {Johnnies on Finance} “Many of the best venture capitalists are not focused on money but on developing an opportunity and creating a successful business.” Stewart Greenfield, Class of 1953 of the people who invested in Enron stock took what Enron published at face value. But there were some smart people who didn’t settle for that, who dug in and started asking the right questions and found answers that, frankly, weren’t very happy answers. But they were able to gain tremendously from a financial standpoint as a result of being a little bit smarter.” The philosopher must ask: what does it mean to profit from the wrongdoing of others? Those already uncomfortable with wealth become suspicious: Perhaps a great crime does lie behind every great fortune. Venture capitalist Stewart Greenfield (class of 1953) is proof to the contrary. Green-field made millions funding and developing many of the hightech start-ups that have revolutionized our working environments, such as Seagate, Compaq, Genzyme, Sandisk, and Polycom. Yet he lives relatively modestly, using his money to preserve tropical rain forests and fund ot her environmental projects. david trozzo financial industry give little thought to this prejudice. They’re more concerned with the intellect of their colleagues, with whom they compete every hour of every day. Look no further than the debacle of Enron’s deceit and collapse for a lesson in the importance of analytical practice. According to Bob Elliott (A77), co-founder, coowner, and managing director of the investment banking firm EHS Securities, Johnnies have the competitive edge because they know how to ask the right questions: “Financial analysts ask questions to get beyond what is shown to them on financial statements,” says Elliot. “There’s a lot of information in t he public domain that can be taken at face value. But there is a gain to be made from digging in and finding out what’s not on the cover of the report.” Elliott says that it doesn’t matter if the information uncovered is good or bad; there’s profit either way. He illustrates this point with an infamous example: “Enron was a public company that published all kinds of information about itself, as it was required to. 99.9 percent { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } Stewart Greenfield found success as a venture capitalist. �16 {Johnnies on Finance} “The life of the mind depends on the commerce of thought.” Harold Hughes, a84 Reading list Classics: An Investor’s Anthology, Charles D. Ellis, ed. the perfect system. In the best scenario it He says that he is not alone in his choice: Money of the Mind, James Grant would have no flaws, but there would be no “Many of the best venture capitalists are Moneyball and Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis. opportunity for others to say, ‘Hey, there’s not focused on money but on developing a better way to do things.’” When Genius Failed: The Rise and an opportunity and creating a successful Fall of Long-Term Capital ManSpector offers a similar defense of the business.” agement, Roger Lowenstein marketplace: “Financial markets are Where the focus is reversed, Greenfield Extraordinary Popular Delusions among the cornerstones of the success of sees trouble for the financial world. “Many & The Madness of Crowds, the U.S. economy. Do those financial marof the recent problems stem from the fact Charles MacKay kets create the opportunity for greed? Yes, that the emphasis has turned from creating Engines that Move Markets, they do. Do they create the opportunity for a business to creating wealth,” he says. Alasdair Nairn abuse? Yes, they do. But the people who “People who run companies have been Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph A Schumpeter benefit from those abuses ultimately get seduced into producing numbers that are Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith brought down. That’s part of how markets more oriented to satisfying stock analysts work. A vibrant financial market is truly and investors than controlling or one of the great assets of the United States.” understanding what’s happening with the Good for the country, granted. But is financier a worthy business. The drive for earnings growth has become very occupation for a student of virtue, a lover of knowledge, a St. corrupting.” John’s alumnus? Harold Hughes (A84), senior vice president Elliott agrees about the causes, but says that they are a necat the financial services company Legg Mason Wood Walker, essary evil in an imperfect—but worthy—system. “The course says yes, absolutely. “The life of the mind relies on the comof economic conditions and financial markets in the U.S. merce of thought,” he says. “And the Socratic method is a means there will always be the potential for an Enron,” says facilitation of that commerce. The work I do is a natural extenElliott. “But that’s not entirely a bad thing. The alternative is sion of my St. John’s education.” x to have a system that somebody in his great wisdom defines as The Wit and Wisdom of Wealth Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Money is like muck, not good except it be spread. Francis Bacon John Kenneth Galbraith Money is the worst currency that ever grew among mankind. This sacks cities, this drives men from their homes, this teaches and corrupts the worthiest minds to turn base deeds. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. Andy Warhol Sophocles If there’s no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money. Money’s a horrid thing to follow but a charming thing to meet. Robert Graves Henry James Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. Money doesn’t mind if we say it’s evil, it goes from strength to strength. It’s a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy. Woody Allen Martin Amis { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �{Tutors} 17 THE VIRTUES OF MARTIAL ARTS Santa Fe Tutors Walk Two Paths by Caroline Knapp, SF01 rishnan Venkatesh brushing up on his whip practice is a sight to see. He begins slowly, giving the whip a few preliminary spins and twists. Soon, holding the butt end in one hand, then the other, he is walking slowly, meditatively, the whip whizzing and slicing through the air, its ends cracking rhythmically. The practice makes him think of Euclid. “When the body is lined up correctly, with purity of intention,” explains Ventakesh, a Santa Fe tutor, “very little effort will generate immense force.” The reflection isn’t an idle one. The tips of the whip can travel at a seemingly incredible 900 miles per hour. And it isn’t a reflection Venkatesh can afford to make while practicing: A whip cracker in Australia recently cut off his own ear. Welcome to the wonderful intersection of the martial arts traditions and the Program. For the tutors and students who study a martial art on the Santa Fe campus, and the alumni who continue or undertake a martial practice after graduating, it’s a realm where analogy reigns, experience is everything, and pitfalls lurk for would-be generalizers. Students, tutors, and staff members on the Santa Fe campus currently have the opportunity to enter into the study of one of two disciplines of the bu-do, or martial ways. The college’s karate-do program, which has been run by tutor Jorge Aigla (6th Dan) since 1985, has an average of 12 participants per year, and includes tutor Bill Kerr, a third-degree black teri thomson randall K belt, and Joaquin Baca (SF95), an admissions counselor and firstdegree black belt, as well as Aigla’s son Andrés, who at 13 just joined the ranks of the black belts. Aigla’s students can be discovered slipping out the door early from Friday-night festivities: All three weekly training sessions are mandatory, including Saturday’s 8 a.m. practice. Tutor Claudia Honeywell has been training daily in aikido since her graduate school days, though she asks just two days per week from students in her St. John’s aikido program. The program, which Honeywell began last year, aims to introduce students to the basic principles of aikido; at the end of the school year there were eight participants, all undergraduates. In addition to these more or less “official” martial arts programs, students and tutors in Santa Fe train in a half dozen other assorted martial arts, including judo and tae kwan do. Tutors Michael Bybee, James Carey (A67), and David Starr hold black belts in various forms of karate. Venkatesh practices not only the whip art mentioned above but also a Korean striking art called Ja Shin Do and has studied escrima and Brazilian jujitsu. Tai chi, historically closely related to the martial arts, is practiced on the Placita before Monday and Thursday seminars by a dozen undergrads and graduate students. Taken together, these practices form a substantial undercurrent of martial arts activity and thought on the Santa Fe campus. For the tutors and students who undertake both the study of the great books and the study of one of the bu-do, or martial ways, the relationship between the two is rich with complication, and often with contrast. But it also encompasses elements of analogy and mutual illumination. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �18 {Tutors} “When the body is lined up correctly, with purity of intention, very little effort will generate immense force.” teri thomson randall krishnan Venkatesh Certainly, the martial arts practiced at the college cultivate many of the same virtues as the “practice” of the Program. In particular, campus martial artists focused on how learning to “listen” and respond with their bodies had sharpened their conversational skills. Honeywell, a second-degree black belt in aikido, emphasizes the sincerity required by both studies. In aikido, an art often characterized by its fluidity, students strive to “act without personal intent, preconception, or prejudice.” St. John’s students are familiar with the struggle for sincerity in the classroom. Sometimes, there is nothing more difficult than admitting what one really thinks, or putting aside one’s own opinions long enough to be persuaded by a new argument. On the mat, that sincerity might be expressed by giving one’s partner a “genuine” attack, or by allowing oneself to be moved by such an attack. Like the intellec- Tutor Krishnan Venkatesh practices several martial arts. tual variety, cultivating this spontaneous physical sincerity is the work of a lifetime. Venkatesh explains that even in the physically safe space of the classroom, there are advantages to having a familiarity with the threat of physical violence. The latter encourages a process of “calm, intelligent threat assessment” that on the streets might mean the difference between giving an aggressor an even gaze and giving him a well-aimed punch. Facing a difficult student, “sometimes it is sufficient to redirect the aggression in a politely educative way, but other times you might need to voice a clear opposition to unacceptable behavior.” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �{Tutors} All of that said, for Johnnies accustomed to talking their way out of (or around) situations, these “conversations” on the mat can be more challenging than the spoken variety. Jorge Aigla, in his book Karate-do and Zen: An Inquiry, notes that in the dojo, “one constantly deals with facets of students’ lives and personalities that are simply not disclosed or available in the classroom.” Issues like fear, self-control, and anger, which in their more subtle forms sabotage intellectual discussion, arise in the physical conversations between training partners and are addressed physically. As Honeywell says, “problems have to be worked out dynamically.” In her aikido class, she points out, there is no talking. On a structural level, it’s easy to see why students and tutors from St. John’s might feel an affinity with traditional martial arts programs. Barr and Buchanan could have been taking a cue from the Japanese when they recognized that creating a formal structure for study was one way to encourage creativity and even selfexposure. Both disciplines are marked by what can seem to outsiders an absurd degree of formality. While dojo etiquette varies from one martial art to the next, it invariably includes the use of specialized, formal titles, ritual openings and closing for each session, and the wearing of clothes reserved exclusively for the dojo. Dojo observers, like prospective students, are generally allowed to watch classes in session but are not allowed to participate. Just as St. John’s students quickly realize that their study extends far beyond the hours they spend reading, martial artists strive never to completely leave the dojo. As Honeywell puts it, “Being a martial artist is how you live your life. Being a St. John’s tutor is how you live your life. There is no ‘on duty’ and ‘off duty.’” Nor is there a clear distinction between teachers and students. As at St. John’s, the best senseis are those whose teaching is really no more than their ongoing study. In fact, the dojo, frequently criticized in the West as being “too hierarchical,” is in some ways less so than a St. John’s seminar: in the dojo, students of all levels train together. While nearly all of the college’s martial artists can point to skills cultivated in the dojo that pass by osmosis into their study of the great books, all are quick to assert that martial arts, like the Program itself, are not a means to an end. “What we do in the Program is an end in itself,” Aigla says. “The Greeks thought that, and so did the Japanese.” This commitment to process may be the single greatest shared characteristic of the study of 19 martial arts and the study of the St. John’s Program. The freshman who completes the Metaphysics is no more “done” with Aristotle than a senior writing on Hegel has “understood” him, or for that matter, than a faculty member who spends a sabbatical on Proust has “finished with” Remembrance of Things Past. One of the great purposes of the Program would seem to be teaching the simple lesson that our study of great texts is never completed. In the martial arts, this understanding is often associated with the ZZZ ideogram, the one-stroke circle whose end is its beginning. Martial artists with varying degrees’ experience continue to study the same basic moves—not to “perfect” them but to understand them. Accepting study as an endless process seems to hinge in both cases on recognizing that at the heart of the study lies a fertile mystery. Like a Euclid proposition, a karate kata has an internal logic followed by the student; innovation in both situations would be inappropriate. And yet, the beautifully executed kata, like the beautifully presented proposition, is an individual expression of a universal truth. The attentive aikidoka, like the attentive reader, misses no nuance of her partner’s motion, and the technique performed as a result is as much an expression of the one partner as of the other. “Why” this should be is at some point no longer a helpful question, whereas in what way contains a lifetime of absorption. Certainly for many students, each study makes the other more possible. Karim Dajani (SF91), a psychologist and karate-do brown belt who had Aigla both as a sensei and in the classroom, explains that “reading the great books, I realize how infinite and exciting our exploration of the world in and through ideas can be. Studying karate and medicine, I realize how infinite and exciting the exploration of my direct embodied experience can be.” Do the two ways lead up the same mountain? Can virtue be taught? “I don’t know if karate-do makes me a better tutor,” Aigla says. “Perhaps it might make me a better person. After 35 years of practice I would hope that I may do something for the world of karate-do, and not necessarily the other way around.” x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } Caroline Knapp, of Berkeley, Calif., is a freelance editor and a 5th kyu student of aikido. Santa Fe tutor Jorge Aigla runs a karate program for St. John’s students in Santa Fe. �20 {Nostalgia} MEMORY L ANE Meets COLLEGE AV E N U E by Sus3an Borden, A87 request for stories of alumni’s earliest memories from freshman year brought a deluge of responses, spanning five decades, from Annapolis alumni. Not all of them, of course, were fit for publication, as their authors were the first to note. Many claimed faulty memories and boring first semesters: “All I can remember is pretty bland,” wrote Matthew Braithwaite (A97). “Just the usual freaking out over Greek, and upperclassmen trying to electrocute pickles to see if they would glow.” Others were concerned that their stories were not suitable for a college publication: “Would a story that involved skipping seminar, putting on red leather boots and running around campus in nothing but those boots and a twin sheet with two other freshmen maenads similarly clad, be too risqué for your story?” asked Mary Haber (A97). With so many stories to choose from, we were able to let the unpublishable remain unpublished. The rest we’ve collected in this sampling of stories recalling the fun and folly of early freshman year. A Way Back When Allan Hoffman, Class of 1949 My first day at St. John’s was in September 1945, a strange time because that August the atom bombs were dropped and the war ended. Almost all young men were on an accelerated high school program—you went to school during the summer to get as much education under your belt as possible before you were drafted. I was scheduled to graduate from high school in January of ’46, but when the war ended I had already accumulated enough credits for a high school diploma. I learned of St. John’s from my brother, who had gone to Harvard as a pre-med and told me that when he graduated he knew a lot about organic chemistry but little about anything else. We called and spoke to the dean’s office. They said, “come on down and pack a bag. If we like you, you’ll stay and send your things from home.” When I arrived, school had already started—I missed the opening seminar. My first impression of St. John’s was that it reminded me of the prep school I had graduated from: It was kind of Ivy-Leaguey, the buildings were brick, the campus was small. I felt that it was not a big step physically. Little did I realize what a step it was going to be. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �21 {Nostalgia} Bookstore Manager Kitty Lathrop (in the campus bookstore circa 1945) caught Allan Hoffman’s eye. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �22 {Nostalgia} I went to McDowell Hall and entered the dean’s office. There was a desk piled high with papers in neat stacks and it seemed that nobody was there. Then someone sitting behind the desk rose and I could see her head above the papers. She was a very short woman, very plain, bespectacled. She was Miriam Strange, who was both the dean’s secretary and the registrar. She sent me into the dean’s office and there was Scott Buchanan sitting behind a desk, also with papers in various piles, but not neat. He was smoking and during the 20 minutes that we spoke he never stopped smoking. I did not understand 90 to 95 percent of what he was talking about. Next, Scott Buchanan sent me to see the president, Stringfellow Barr, who was very different from Scott Buchanan. He had flaming red hair, was dressed very nattily in a blue blazer, gray flannel slacks, and a vest that did not match his pants or jacket but was complementary. We spoke for about 5 minutes, and I understood 95 percent of what he said. His final words were, “Well, Mr. Hoffman, if you want to be a student here at St. John’s, just tell Miss Strange and she’ll make all the arrangements.” I told Miss Strange I was going to be a student. She said, “You’re going to be in West Pinkney on the second floor and I want you to be in the Coffee Shop tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock to meet Mr. Klein. He’ll be one of your tutors and he’ll explain to you more of what we do here. You’re a couple of days behind— here is the reading list. These are the books you’ll have to purchase.” I found my room in Pinkney, unpacked, and made my way to McDowell. When you entered McDowell, on the left were mailboxes, on the right were bathrooms, and in the middle was the Coffee Shop and that’s all they sold, coffee, which Leroy poured at a nickel a cup. There were individual seminar tables and in the middle was a larger table where students were sitting around talking with one another. This was the ongoing Coffee Shop seminar. When the dean and the president weren’t busy, they were at that table. When they weren’t there, Jascha Klein or Ford K. Brown or Richard Scofield were. If a space was vacated another student took his cup of coffee and sat down and joined the con- versation. If a tutor had to go to class, chances were some other tutor would slip in. This Coffee Shop tradition was a very vital thing, ongoing from morning with a break at lunch and very often continued after lecture. The next room, the fireplace room, was a bookstore with couches, chairs, a long low table, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and people milling about looking at books. There was a stockroom near the Humphrey’s exit that was also the office of the bookstore manager. She walked in and, as plain as Miriam Strange (her sister) was, this woman was beautiful: blonde with a beautiful face, shapely, delightful to look at. Her name was Kitty Lathrop, and As in years past, freshmen still struggle with Greek. she told me I’d have to buy Homer, Euclid’s Elements, a Greek grammar, a lab manual, a T-square and a drawing board. I took the equipment, went to my room, and read the first books of Homer’s Iliad. And that was my first day at St. John’s. Soldier, Scholar Dick Cahall (class of 1959) Seth Benardete was a Greek scholar of considerable renown who spent a year on the faculty at St. John’s. I remember being awestruck by his grammatical dissection of a passage from Thucydides...incredible erudition! He went into all the tenses and verb endings and why they were as they were. It permanently changed me from a Marine to a scholar! Words of Wisdom Sharon Bishop (class of 1965) Memory 1: My first or second day on campus (I’m still unpacking), I hear this exchange outside my Campbell window: Student One (male): “Hey, what do you know?” { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �{Nostalgia} Student Two (male): “Man is born, he suffers, and he dies.” Memory 2: I am in the Coffee Shop after seminar with Bob Bart, one of the seminar leaders, and he says, “Miss Bishop, the only cause worth losing yourself in is the search for truth.” 23 Grandfather Jascha? Jerry Caplan (A73) maryirene ruffin My excitement at the prospect of my very first St. John’s seminar was dimmed by the news that our senior seminar leader, Dean Innocence Lost and Robert Goldwin, would not be with us for Found some time due to a back ailment that required immobility. Entering the semiHoward Zeiderman (A67) nar room for our first discussion of the Iliad, one saw in the place of the senior Before I came to St. John’s I attended leader a white-haired, pipe-smoking, Dartmouth to study mathematics. I had kind-looking old man, dressed in a dark John Kemeny who was then the chair up suit. Just out of high school, I naturally there and had been Einstein’s math assisassociated a “substitute” teacher with tant when he was 20. We were a class of someone good-natured and incompetent, eight students, and I realized mathematso I had drastically lowered expectations ics was not my destiny. I quit twice and for the first few weeks of seminar, assumeventually came to St. John’s. ing that the quality would depend decidOn my first day in class—Friday—I went edly on the quality of our senior leader. to math tutorial. The tutor, Molly To my surprise however, our guest had Gustin, gave the assignment. Excited, I some remarkably provocative things to rushed back to my dorm room to work on say about the tragedy of the Iliad and it. I heard that we should read the postuAchilles as the tragic hero, thoughts lates and then figure out what the first which both intrigued and confused me. proposition must be. So I read those five Later, during my first after-seminar postulates over and over again and had visit to the Coffee Shop, an upperclassno idea what should come next. I had too man engaged me in conversation, curimuch pride to check. So I was getting ous to know how things went and who more and more depressed as it seemed were my seminar leaders. When I that everyone else was having a relaxed explained to him the circumstance of our and fun weekend. I felt I had stumbled temporarily losing our “real” seminar into a place of the most extraordinary Today’s freshmen, dissecting cow hearts. leader and identifying for him our “subpeople in the world and I was not one of stitute,” his eyes widened, his jaw them. Finally I decided I was not meant dropped, and he exclaimed with awe and to be here and planned to drop out. I envy, “You had Jascha Klein for freshman decided I would go to the picnic at the president’s house, pack up seminar on the Iliad ?!” He proceeded to explain to me just who and leave—one more defeat, the third time I had dropped out of Mr. Klein was, although the significance did not sink in entirely college. There I discovered that the assignment was to read the on that occasion. Still, I left the Coffee Shop that night feeling a postulates and read the first proposition. So I did the assignment bit better about my first seminar experience knowing that our and stayed. However, that weekend always stayed with me. Those “substitute” was not just someone’s grandfather who had been hours must have pointed me in the right direction. gently coaxed to fill in. Sometime later I finally learned to read the postulates more innocently. I was reading the fifth as a parallel postulate. However, it isn’t about parallels but about triangles. It states the condiStrange New World tions under which we would get a triangle. It took me years of St. John’s to learn to read innocently. Had I been that already I Leah Casner (A78) would have at least had a shot at thinking that the first proposition might be the construction of an equilateral triangle. St. John’s was a whole new world to me. I was so giddy my first months...I felt I finally had found a place, slightly off kilter from the rest of the world, where I fit in. When I had been a prospec- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �24 {Nostalgia} tive student, Tricia Kulp and I were amused in a freshman math tutorial by Sara Anastaplo’s proof of a line being straight; the proof was something like, “well, it has to be or it would be warped, and that’s just wrong.” St. John’s, we felt, was a bit warped and, unlike the line, we felt that made it right. must be removed. Nobody thanked me for preserving the tradition. I dutifully passed it on to incoming freshmen in following years. Not an Ice Breaker I’d Choose Chris Denny (A93) Marion Betor Baumgarten (A82) I spent the night of Seducers and Corrupters walking back and forth from the party in the FSK lobby to the sycamore tree on back campus, sitting down alone under it, and saying to myself, “How can I possibly spend four years with these lunatics?” The answer proved to be simple—I became one of them. My first day at St. John’s: After I spent about 15 minutes in my room crying after my parents left (that door closing was so, well, final), I decided to iron something so I would look nice for my first dinner. I ended up burning my hand on the iron and having to eat dinner with a giant ice pack on my hand. Which did not attract the kind of attention I was hoping for... If You Can’t Beat ’Em… A Match Made in Iglehart Paula Rubin Swann (AGI97) Preserving Tradition Wendell Finner (A82) My freshman-year roommate was a returning student, who hadn’t completed freshman year the year before. He told me that it was “traditional” for someone to ask at the orientation with the Instruction Committee why Eastern classics weren’t in the Program . When nobody else asked the question, I stuck my hand up and asked. Dean Sparrow’s answer was practical rather than philosophical—any addition to the Program means something John [Swann] (AGI97) shows up at the gym for the first time in January as he’s starting in the GI program in the Spring semester. No one knows that John is a decent ball player (or, that he is left-handed). We start playing (Hustlers vs. Green Waves) and I’m stuck guarding 6'4" John (I’m 5'6"). After the fourth or fifth time John gets a rebound from over the top of my head after I have him boxed-out, I get upset that I’m not getting an “over the back” call and decide to take matters into my own hands. The next time he goes up for a rebound and I have good position on him, I under-cut his legs and send him crashing to the floor! While lined up next to each other at the next freethrow, he says to me, “Nice under-cut.” I say back to him, “If you stop coming over my back, I’ll stop under-cutting you.” To that, John apologized which I thought was very sweet of him! After getting to know each other better in class, we started dating and you know the rest! Note: Paula and John married June 7, 2003. Happily Ever After Annemarie Catania (A97) I met my fiancé, Allen Ziegenfus (A96), at a waltz party on my first night at St. John’s. My roommate, Céline Bocchi (now Abramovich), had been asked to dance right away. Except for one waltz with a GI who smelled like wine, I had only been observing Eagerly taking in a tutor’s wisdom after seminar. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �{Nostalgia} until this person I’d identified as a potential dance partner sat down next to me, in conversation with the woman he’d just danced with. He was facing her, so I couldn’t get his attention (I found out later he had a crush on her). It took me half the length of the song that was playing to gather all my freshman courage, lift my hand, and with one finger… tap him on the shoulder! Allen danced with me for three more songs, and spent a while talking to Céline and me. I remember him asking what I thought of “old Homer” (not much, because I’d barely survived the catalogue of ships at that point), and showing us a pocket watch he’d bought in China that summer. He held the door for us as we left the Great Hall, and even got my name right when he said goodnight (instead of calling me Emily or Emory, which often happens when people first hear my name). As Céline and I walked up the stairs to our new home in Randall, she told me that at some point in history, people considered three dances grounds for marriage. She was recently delighted to hear that Allen and I are planning to get married on January 17, 2004. Not in the Stars Jenn Coonce (A97) On the day the dorms opened, my roommate and I and our families were doing the awkward, nice-to-meet you formalities. When everyone left the room but the two of us, she asked me “What’s your sign?” When I told her Gemini, she said, “I knew it! We’ll never work out as roommates. I’m a Virgo.” And we didn’t... Spartan Existence Rudy Hernandez (A99) After I read Plutarch’s “Life of Lycurgus,” I decided that I wanted to be a Spartan. This involved me giving everything I owned away except for my sheets and a Melissa Etheridge CD because Spartans weren’t real big on personal property. x Coming Soon: Freshman Year, Part II It is hoped that Santa Fe graduates are hereby provoked to send along a freshman year memory for a future edition of The College. E-mail stories to: s-borden@sjca.edu, or put them in the mail addressed to Sus3an Borden at The College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401. In the meantime, here’s a teaser: Of Rainbows and Aristotle Philip Horne (SF85) I’d like to pass along a memory of my first days on the Santa Fe campus in the fall of 1980. Even before the first class had convened, I was sitting at my desk reading and rereading the same sentences from the first assigned lab text—30 or so pages of Aristotle’s Parts of Animals, which, I think, is assigned to sober up (and scare the bejeezus out of) the incoming freshman. I was going to get that first assignment licked, and had allotted the entire afternoon and evening to its study so that by class time the following morning I’d have a sure grasp of Aristotle’s every nuance. Suddenly there was a great, hollering, screeching, whistling, clapping, cheering wave of noise—inappropriate in the lower dorms, where it 25 was supposed to be quiet—which interrupted my profound meditations on Aristotle. I was not amused. Giving up on the nearly memorized yet still inscrutable sentences from the text, I turned around from my desk to look out the window only to witness further horrors. Although we had been warned in our orientation that the tops of the buildings were strictly verboten, they were now crowded with students staring into the west, whooping and hollering. So, leaving Him open on the desk, I went outside to see what all the fuss was about. As the sun set through the clouds, there was a great big double rainbow over the mesa. It was spectacular. Usually in double rainbows, one of the two is bright, and the other is more muted. Here, both of the rainbows were vibrant. The folks up on the roofs said that a few minutes before it had been a triple rainbow! Thus the cheering. I joined in the noise, which then faded to a kind of meditative quiet as the sun set and the rainbows themselves faded away. By then it was dinner and one by one the other students slipped away. After eating and drinking a glass of flat dining hall coffee, I went back to Aristotle. There was enough study time left to read seriously through only the first few pages, so I sort of skimmed the rest. That’s my memory of the first day or so in Santa Fe, capital of the Land of Enchantment. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �26 {History} “A P R E T T Y P I E C E OF LAND” How ROTC Saved St. John’s College by Ginger M. Doyel In 1945, the U.S. Navy needed more offices and the U.S. Naval Academy needed more space. The Academy looked across King George Street at the tree-lined grounds of a small liberal arts college that was struggling to survive, and pictured a site for a sprawling dormitory and mess hall for midshipmen. Lined up on the Academy’s side were military supporters, civic groups, the Chamber of Commerce, the daily newspaper, and seemingly, most of Annapolis. How St. John’s fended off the attack makes for a classic David vs. Goliath story. bered 800, and its dormitory was designed to house just 2,500. This lack of space prompted the Academy to pursue a $70 million expansion. It planned to annex and build academic buildings on three acres belonging to the city of Annapolis, and acquire land in West Annapolis owned by the Naval Academy Athletic Association. The third phase of its plan called for taking over St. John’s (for a suggested purchase price of $750,000), razing its buildings, and replacing them with a dormitory. While the plan’s first two parts met little opposition, the third created a storm of controversy. The Naval Assault onditions were ripe for a thunderstorm on C July 26, 1945, as nearly 100 women marched to the Maryland State House. Led by Mrs. Morden Rigg, they were coming to protest the Naval Academy’s plan to annex St. John’s College—a plan that pitted the U.S. Naval Academy and its many ardent supporters against a small, financially struggling liberal arts college. Rumors that the Academy had designs on St. John’s had begun in 1940 and resurfaced again during the war. In 1945, the Naval Academy announced its expansion plans and began an aggressive campaign to take over the 32-acre St. John’s campus—a campaign that would take a fight in Congress to settle. Underlying the Academy’s effort was a need to expand. World War II brought sweeping changes to the school, especially an increase in its student body. While about 3,200 midshipmen attended in 1945, postwar estimates predicted that this figure could soar to 7,500. At that point, the Academy could not handle such an influx; most of its facilities were built when the enrollment num- From the mayor to the media, most locals, 80 percent according to the Annapolis newspaper the Evening Capital favored the proposed takeover. First, citizens feared losing the Academy—and the $17.5 million that the Navy injected into the economy each year. In 1945, congressmen from the West Coast, Midwest and South fought to relocate the entire school, or at least part of it, to their areas of the country where space was abundant. Not surprisingly, the Evening Capital, sided with the Academy. Throughout the conflict it ran pro-Navy editorials with headlines such as: “Back the Academy,” “Annapolis Must Act,” and “Academy Expansion Assured.” The paper’s president and publisher, Talbot Speer, also belonged to a booster group called the Citizens’ Committee for the Retention of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce (another pro-Navy group), the committee consisted of community leaders including Speer; Annapolis Mayor William McCready; Cary Meredith, president of the Farmers’ National Bank; Chris Nelson, president of the Annapolis Yacht Yard; Willis Armbruster, manager of Carvel Hall (the large hotel in Annapolis at the time); and Annapolis insurance broker Joseph Lazenby. Under Lazenby’s { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �maryirene ruffin/archives {History} Had the Naval Academy annexation attempt succeeded, McDowell Hall would have been replaced with a sprawling dormitory. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } 27 �28 {History} the college. Many of its signers were among the women who protested at the State House in July. Yet they, like the others who favored the college, were clearly in the minority. usna special collections and archives, nimitz library leadership, the committee produced a petition with more than 4,000 signatures in support of the annexation. The Maryland General Assembly passed a resolution urging the Academy’s expansion into Annapolis, the Annapolis City Council voted to support the takeover, and civic groups such as the Rotary, Civitan, Kiwanis, and Lions clubs were all willing to give up St. John’s for a bigger, better Naval Academy. But St. John’s also had its champions, especially its alumni. “Save St. John’s” was the theme of the Alumni Association’s annual meeting in June 1945 at which Stringfellow Barr, St. John’s president, addressed a crowd of 150. During the four-and-a-half-hour session Barr labeled the Navy’s plan a “coup to try to grab a pretty piece of land” and urged alumni to voice their opposition. Alumni answered the call. Many wrote letters to the editor. Herbert Fooks, class of 1906, took up his pen and wrote a passionate poetic defense of his alma mater,“O, Hallowed Ground of Old St. Johns.” Appearing in the Evening Capital on July 25 it began, The College Fights Back Several alumni, including returning veteran Andrew Witwer, testified before Congress. “None of us went off to war in order that we might return and find that the place where we had begun to learn about a free society was being moved out from under us,” Witwer declared, as reported in the St. John’s Yearbook, 1945-46. “It is for such institutions that men go to war. It is through the lack of such institutions that men make war.” In addition to the support of its indignant alumni, St. John’s received backing from preservationists, the Severn River Association, and 100 prominent citizens who signed “An Open Letter” urging locals to preserve st. john’s college archives “O, hallowed ground of Old St. Johns! Let no one dare profane thee, Nor greed, nor gold, nor want of soul Seek ever to enchain thee....” Top: Vice Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, U.S. Naval Academy Superintendent during the climax of the proposed takeover. Bottom: Stringfellow Barr, St. John’s president. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } In late April, St. John’s Board of Visitors and Governors drafted a policy in response to the Navy’s intentions, which at that point were only rumored. The board, chaired by Dr. Thomas Parran, held that St. John’s would only consider the sale if it were given enough money to relocate and if the national interest required it. As Board Secretary Richard Cleveland later proclaimed, the school will “cheerfully accede to genuine national necessity, if such necessity as distinguished from convenience, is formally declared by the Navy,” as reported in the June 20, 1945 edition of the Evening Capital. The board sent their policy to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. The Academy could only annex St. John’s if both the House and Senate Naval Affairs Committees approved its plan. Congressional hearings on the proposed takeover began in May 1945. The House Committee tentatively approved the acquisition on June 4, but deferred from taking final action until a subcommittee explored other sites for the Academy’s expansion in Annapolis. Much to St. John’s dismay, the subcommittee concluded that the college should be taken. Other options such as moving the Academy to 850 acres across the Severn River were deemed impractical. Architect John Root, retained by the Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks to make an independent study on the subject, Academy Superintendent Vice Admiral Aubrey Fitch, and Chief of the �{History} 29 Reading list For more detailed accounts on the college’s history, recent and distant, the following works are recommended: Bureau of Yards and Docks Vice Admiral 50,000 officers. Since it was impossible Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial AppreciaBen Moreell concurred. for the Academy to produce this figure, tion of His Life and Work, and Scott St. John’s, they argued, would simply Secretary Forrestal and Vice Admiral Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation of have to relocate. Annapolis real estate men Louis Denfeld created a board to explore His Life and Work, Charles A. Nelson, interviewed by the subcommittee advised other options for officer training. Ed. that Holly Beach Farm and Hillsmere, both Chaired by Rear Admiral James about six miles from the city, would make Holloway Jr., the “Holloway Board” A Search for the Liberal College: The ideal sites. Dorothy Strickland declared presented three solutions for producing Beginning of the St. John’s Program, J. that a 100-acre farm near the South River more naval offices. The first called for conWinfree Smith. “would be perfect.” As she wrote in her letverting the Academy into a postgraduate ter to the editor of the Evening Capital, school and was rejected. So was the secThe Early History of St. John’s College in “The lovely old brick college buildings ond, suggesting an entirely new Academy, Annapolis, Tench Francis Tilghman could be torn down and erected on the perhaps for the West Coast. The last, same plans...” called the Holloway Plan, proposed bringOther locals fond of the town’s quirky liting the Naval Reserve Officers Training tle “Great Books” college tendered suggesCorps (NROTC) to civilian colleges and tions for its survival, according to a somewhat sarcastic recap in the universities in order to produce more officers. 1945-6 St. John’s College Yearbook: “The Annapolis Roads Club While the plan became law in August 1946, Secretary Forrestal offered us their site and bathhouses and suggested we save McDowapproved it in October 1945 as hearings about the Navy’s plan to ell Hall by moving it out there to the beach stone by stone. Innuannex St. John’s persisted in Congress. Experts continued to testimerable 10-room ‘great estates’ were offered to us at only three or fy on behalf of the Academy and St. John’s, including James four times their normal value, and many chambers of commerce, Edmunds, president of the American Institute of Architects. embarrassed by their lack of local culture, invited us to bring our Unlike the majority, Edmunds believed that the Navy could expand ideals to fruitification in their sylvan neighborhoods where, they in Annapolis without annexing the college. assure us, the folk were particularly warm and responsive to new Congress was expected to make a final decision on October 24, ideas...” yet failed to do so until spring. On May 22, 1946, by a vote of 11-7 Initially, the House and Senate Committees planned to wait until the House Committee declared that “the national emergency Congress reconvened in October before making a final decision. neither justifies nor warrants the proposed acquisition of St. John’s However, they surprised the public in late July when both approved campus.” the acquisition. After Forrestal notified Parran that the Navy would no longer try The St. John’s board remained unconvinced that the annexation to annex the college, Parran asked the Senate to “drive the third was a “national necessity.” As Emily Murphy documented in A nail in the coffin of the project,” which it did on June 12. Thanks to Complete and Generous Education: 300 Years of Liberal Arts, its alumni, supporters like Mrs. Morden Rigg and her band of outSt. John’s College, Annapolis, meetings followed among board raged women, and a board that stood up to no less a foe than the members, Navy officials and Committee Chairmen Senator David U.S. Navy, St. John’s was able to celebrate its 250th anniversary Walsh and Representative Carl Vinson. It was in these meetings that later that year—freed from the vision of a Naval Academy dormitoit became clear that the committees had only approved negotiations ry taking the place of McDowell Hall. x between the Navy and the college, not the college’s annexation. When St. John’s refused even to negotiate, additional hearings were postponed until October. Sources for this story include: the 1945-6 St. John’s College Yearbook; Emily A. Murphy’s A Complete and Generous Education: 300 Years of Liberal Arts, St. John’s College; the Showdown in Congress Evening Capital and Jack Sweetman’s The U.S. Naval Academy: In the interim, a plan was gaining support that would reduce the An Illustrated History. Academy’s need to expand and impact Congress’s final choice. Officials predicted that the postwar navy would require about Ginger Doyel is an Annapolis freelance writer and illustrator. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �30 {Homecoming} Annapolis Homecoming: Tropical Theme Brightens Rainy Weekend ith 306 enthusiastic alumni turning out for the party, who could complain if a little rain fell on Homecoming 2003 in Annapolis? A Hawaiian luau planned for the front lawn came off splendidly in Iglehart Hall, with beach balls and inflated palm trees livening up the gym, along with the outlandish Hawaiian shirts and leis alumni donned for the event. Held September 12-14 in Annapolis (a few days before Tropical Storm Isabel left downtown Annapolis underwater and caused widespread power outages), Homecoming this year was marked by lively seminars, a packed awards banquet in the lobby of the Francis Scott Key auditorium, and a strong turnout by Graduate Institute students. W Seminars filled quickly and were well attended. Among the all-alumni offerings this year was a contemporary book by Bernard Lewis on What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Reliable standards, including Sam Kutler’s seminar on Plato’s Republic and Brother Robert’s on Pascal’s Pensées, proved equally popular. The class of 1953 celebrated its 50th reunion with a special luncheon for the 13 members who traveled to Annapolis for Homecoming. Mark Middlebrook, a member of the class of 1983 and expert on fine wines, arranged for a selection of vintage 1980s wine for his classmates to enjoy at the banquet. And the class of 1993 wins bragging rights for biggest turnout: 36 members of the class attended their 10th reunion. x Rain moved the luau indoors, but spirits were sunny. Above: Tutor Peter Kalkavage regales alumni. Right: William J. Schweidel (Class of 1963, AGI86) raises a toast to his class as Owen Kelley (A93) looks on. Top right: Mary Pat Justice (SFGI71) enjoys reunion conversation. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �{Homecoming} In addition to the usual picnics and waltz parties, Homecoming this year featured two big to-dos: Saturday luau for lunch and an elegant evening banquet in the Francis Scott Key auditorium lobby. Clockwise from left: Adam Pinsker (class of 1952) and Francis S. Mason Sr. (class of 1943); 1993 alumni enjoying the luau; more luau conversation; Henry Shyrock (class of 1938) and his wife, Pauline Lemarie, with Roland Bailey (class of 1935) and his wife, Helen. photos by gary pierpoint { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } 31 �32 {Bibliofile} MR. PESIC: I think it is, not so much for practical reasons but just to show that numbers aren’t as simple as one might have thought when one thought “well, there are fractions and whole numbers.” The word “imaginary” is probably not the right word, although it is the word that we commonly use, but maybe it’s right in the sense that it shows there is an imagination at work in the realm of numbers so that it’s a realm of poetry or vision of a certain sort. In that sense I think it’s very valuable to know because it opens our minds further and makes us aware that in considering mathematics we are thinking about something that does call for imagination. Proof: A Dialogue Abel’s Proof: An Essay on the Sources and Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability Peter Pesic The MIT Press, 2003 he story of Norwegian mathematician Neils Henrik Abel is a tragic one. Abel’s brilliant paper, On the algebraic resolution of equations (1824), failed to win acclaim until after Abel died. In Abel’s Proof, Santa Fe tutor Peter Pesic traces Abel’s exploration all the way back to the Greeks in a quest to understand Abel’s problem and his proof. Annapolis tutor Samuel Kutler (A54), a mathematician at heart, sat down to discuss the book with Pesic, a physicist. T MR. KUTLER: Peter, what’s so intriguing about Abel’s proof that you should write a book about it? MR. PESIC: My interest in mathematics and Abel goes back to when I was a student in college. I used to go to the mathematics library and dip into the books. I was amazed that anyone could understand such abstractions. I didn’t understand them myself, but I was fascinated by the thought that they were intelligible to someone. I guess at that point I heard about Abel. Over the years, in the course of my reading about mathematics, I kept hearing the story that he had proved that not every equation has a solution. After I became a tutor at St. John’s College, I learned more about the fact that there were numbers that were not rational. I began to wonder about their relation to Abel’s discovery. Is it possible to understand what he proved when he found that equations that are of the 5th degree or higher in general don’t have solutions, by which he meant a solution that could be expressed in terms of a finite number of multiplications and divisions and square roots or cube roots? I knew that he had found a certain answer, namely that equations don’t have MR. KUTLER: You’re a friend of Barry Mazur, the Harvard mathematician, and you mention him in your book. He’s written a popular book called Imagining Numbers, and he, too, is interested in producing imaginaries and the complex number system. Could you describe the differences between your two books? solutions, but I wondered: What was the real question that lay behind it? MR. KUTLER: I think that is just what I’d like to hear about, because the way you’ve written your book is to provide a wonderful context for Abel’s proof. You went way back to the pre-Greek and then Greek works. Could you say why you started so far back? You could have started with the origin of algebra, but you chose to provide a very rich context. Why is this? MR. PESIC: I suppose it’s a temptation of all St. John’s tutors to go way back before the beginning of something to try to understand where it came from, in this case, algebra. I wanted to write the book in such a way that it would address people who were interested in mathematics, curious about it, but maybe also frightened of it. I thought that beginning way back would put people at ease and allow them to reconsider these elements, these origins. Maybe as a result it would all take a different look for them, as it did for me. MR. KUTLER: I want to ask something a little bit technical. In order to talk about Abel’s proof, one has to use the complex number system. Is it important that all educated people know about the complex numbers—imaginaries and the whole complex number system? { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } MR. PESIC: Barry’s book is really devoted to the question you just asked me: How can one understand imaginary numbers? How did it take so long for us to reach any understanding, and what understanding do we have after all? I was interested in something that also seemed neglected. It seemed to me that Abel had done something very great and important, and I’d never heard a word about it. So I guess my book begins where [Mazur’s] leaves off. I think his really goes as far as Abel; he talks about complex numbers and how they were represented in the 17th and 18th centuries and then stops. He does mention Abel at the very end, and I guess that’s where I thought of mine as beginning, although I wrote mine quite independently of his. The great challenge of my book was to try to give an account of abstract mathematics that would neither on the one hand be completely technical so that it was only addressed to people that already at a certain point understood it, nor so non-technical that it never really touched the living heart of what was going on. I looked at every math book I could find, because I thought that surely somebody had said something helpful in all these books that had been published in the 200 years since Abel did his work, something that would help me understand what was the heart of that proof. And I didn’t discover any such account. �33 {Bibliofile} excerpt: Mathematical symbols may indicate hidden truths that have deep human significance, even as they transcend the human. Abel’s proof contains a prime secret; how can a search for solutions yield the unsolvable? Perhaps if I tried hard enough, I could understand. I studied modern texts, but the key remained elusive. Absorbed in advanced studies, experts may cease to wonder about the elementary. They might not notice the kind of basic insight I was seeking. To find it, I needed to return to the sources, retracing the journey recounted in this book. The story begins in ancient Greece and has climatic scenes in Norway and France in the 1820s. What Abel found is indeed surprising and strangely beautiful. —ABEL’S PROOF Finally, I worked through Abel’s original paper, which is very short, because he lacked money to pay for anything longer, but as a result the paper is telegraphic and hard to understand. But I still didn’t understand. The argument made sense, but I couldn’t see what it was based on or what was behind it. After a long time, and trying to read those who came after Abel, notably Galois, who carried Abel’s ideas much further, I was able to find something that suddenly seemed intelligible. My book tries in a kind of slow, groping way to reach that realization to make Abel’s ideas intelligible, maybe even visual, as best I could. This was an interesting experience, because I was not a mathematician and I was struggling to keep up with the mathematicians I did talk to or read. I asked myself, How is it possible to find a guiding thread in this mathematical labyrinth? The clue was that things may not commute. That is the heart of the story that I tell in the book. MR. KUTLER: You mention that the death of Abel was premature and it certainly was, because he lived, as you mention in the book, to be only 26 years old. Did you have a feeling for Abel and when he lived? And how a mathematician even of great powers could at 26 years old do something that no one before him had ever done? MR. PESIC: For Abel, mathematics was a felt experience. What for us are abstract concepts were for him felt and palpable realities that he experienced with an almost emotional or perhaps even physical directness. My book wonders at that kind of a talent, the kind of sensibility he had, which I certainly don’t have myself. I am certainly not an insider to the level of mathematics as Abel practiced it, yet I hope that it helped me mediate between his extraordinary mind and ours, as we try to understand: What did he really see, and what did he feel? Plato and the Founding of the Academy John Bremer University Press of America, 2003 John Bremer says he has come into possession of a letter purporting to be from Plato himself, and addressed to his great nephew. Bremer, a former St. John’s tutor, describes how the letter came into his possession, presents its text in English, and in 100 pages of footnotes and other tabulations and analyses develops and clarifies the letter’s contents. In the letter, the author elaborates a scheme of the design of the Republic based on a 12-hour reading period, beginning at noon and ending at midnight. The way into duration is the syllable count. The Republic may be divided into 240 three-minute units—each of roughly 750 syllables. (Bremer calls them Bremer Units.) The speed is fast, but not unrealistic. Plato would have composed on wax tablets, most likely of equal size, and in this way he could keep track both of the number of syllables on each tablet, as well as the tablets themselves—by numbering them. He could follow the time frame in which each part of the conversation played out. And he could also—as he surely did—compose each numbered tablet with reference to other tablets, and often with them side by side. What emerges when the Republic is viewed through this lens is an architectural marvel—suffused with symmetries musical, astronomical, geometrical, even choreographic. The famous Divided Line, for example, itself divided in extreme and mean ratio, comes at precisely the Golden Section (the point which divides in extreme and mean ratio) of the duration of the conversation. An elaborate and precise ring composition also reveals itself. Bremer has shown this with a table that places summaries of tablets 1 and 240, 2 and 239, and so on, side by side. The design of the Republic for once finds a concrete exposition in Bremer’s work—a truly new way to read the ancient text. — Noam Gedalof, A03 A Reader’s Companion to Augustine’s Confessions Kim Paffenroth (A88) and Robert P. Kennedy, editors Westminster John Knox Press, 2003 In this book, a tool for teaching and studying the Confessions, 13 scholars look at each of the 13 books and interpret their chapters in light of the whole and in light of the rest of Augustine’s works. In addition to co-editing this collection, Paffenroth, an assistant professor of religious studies at Iona College in New York, contributed an essay on the 9th Book, “The Emotional Heart of the Confessions.” In putting together this collection of interesting essays, the authors in their introduction say they have attempted to offer “a useful and challenging introduction to Augustine’s most famous work, as well as a unique contribution to scholarship on the Confessions.” x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �34 {Alumni Profile} Inspired by the Classics Francisco Benítez, SF89, Pursues the Bacchae by Teri Thomson Randall he Dionysiac frescoes found in the Villa of the Mysteries outside of Pompeii have been a rich source of inspiration to Santa Fe artist Francisco Benítez (SF89). Unearthed in the excavation of the villa outside of Pompeii in 1909, the frescoes were almost perfectly preserved thousands of years after they were buried in the eruption of Vesuvius. The three panels depict a woman undergoing the secret initiation rites—the socalled “mysteries”—of the cult of Dionysus, god of wine, ecstasy, and passion. Profoundly moved by the frescoes, Benítez spent three months in Naples during the summer of 2002, studying each panel in depth and visiting Herculaneum and other archeological sites. His latest series of paintings, called The Bacchae after the play by Euripides, reference the Dionysian frescoes with their intense blood-red backgrounds, faux architectural details, and sensually rendered life-size figures. But their content differs from the mythological imagery of the original work, which includes the god Bacchus, his sidekick Silenus, a winged demon, a faun, and the ritual flagellation of a frightened maiden. Instead, Benítez’s paintings depict beautiful women in quiet moments of reflection. The walls behind the women are painted in the style of the ancient Roman villas, with elaborate faux architectural motifs and painted vistas. Trompe l’oeil cracks and crumbling plaster also reflect elements of the original fresco. In discussing the inspiration for his work, Benítez describes his years at St. John’s as a type of initiation, a lifechanging and “intense” experience. “It made me develop who I was and come to grips with the gifts I had and didn’t have,” he explains. “If I didn’t have that experience, I might have been lost another 10 years. It’s a place that pushes you to your limits.” Benítez took his first formal art class, a life drawing course, at St. John’s. Several of his classmates shared his passion for fine arts, and the group regularly checked teri thomson randall T out art history books from the library and discussed them together. His soul-searching at St. John’s led Benítez to realize that his destiny was to become a painter. He left the college after two years to study at the Art Students League in New York City. He finished his fine arts degree at the University of New Mexico, including a study- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } Francisco Benítez (SF89), shown here with “Bacchic Trio,” renders his figures life size, a tradition called megalographia that dates back to the classical Greeks. continued on next page �35 {Alumni Notes} abroad experience at Facultad de Bellas Artes in Granada, Spain. Though Benítez is a product of a contemporary art school education, his highest aspiration is to emulate the figurative painters of the Renaissance and the master painters of the ancient Romans and Greeks, who Benítez believes give Michaelangelo and Raphael a run for their money. “The nuances one finds in the Old Master figurative paintings are lost in contemporary painting,” he says, although contemporary painting, with its “rawer” depiction of the figure, “expresses our period best.” Almost from the beginning of Benítez’s formal art education, he was drawn to the works of the Old Masters because of their “sense of atmosphere, and the way the human body is presented that seems so unobtainable technically. I wanted to reach it,” said the artist. “It became an ongoing struggle to get to that place 1932 where one can express certain realities of the human experience.” Benítez soon found that the techniques of the Old Masters were not given much weight in his art school syllabi. “In art school, the past is ignored,” he said. “It is a dictatorship of the contemporary. Not that everyone should be obsessed with history. But there should be room for everybody.” Benítez had to learn from the old masters on his own, by studying the masterpieces in the museums of Europe and through endless trial and error with materials and technique. The seeds for Benítez’s interest in classical figurative painting were probably planted by his parents. The artist is the son of the nationally recognized flamenco dancer and choreographer María Benítez and her husband, Cecilio, a set designer who also sculpts and paints. Benítez credits his parents for influencing his interest in tenebrism, a technique introduced by mainly humanities, literature, and history. 1942 HENRY SHRYOCK and his wife, ERNEST J. HEINMULLER writes: “The Pauline Lemarie, were featured in an article by Angus Phillips in the Washington Post sports section on November 9. The couple was interviewed on a hike with members of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. In the article, Lemarie, now in her 90s, says that she limits her hikes to five miles, no rocks. “My husband still likes rocks. He’ll leap from rock to rock. He’s like a goat—in more ways than one!” she’s quoted as saying. Talbot County Commissioners have recently appointed me to the Talbot County Emergency Services Board. This board coordinates fire department and ambulance services.” 1935 “I am still practicing law in this small upstate New York village,” writes RICHARD S. WOODMAN, from Waterville, N.Y. “I wonder where all of the Class of 1935 are, for I don’t see any information about them in the alumni news.” 1943 MARTIN ANDREWS has begun his sixth year as Commander of the Nassau-Suffolk L.I. Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War. “I have no important news, but I ask that Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way be restored to the fourth-year reading list (seminar or language tutorial),” writes MILTON PERLMAN. 1948 PETER DAVIES and his wife, Phyllis, plan a trip this coming April to visit son Ken and five grandchildren in Uganda, where Ken is the country director of the UN’s World Food Program. Peter writes that he is “still very active in community activities in N.Y.” 1951 “This past May, I had a quadruple bypass operation that has now slowed down my singles tennis game to such a pace that my classmate H.R. Bixby would have a chance beating me,” writes DR. LAWRENCE G. MYERS, from Vermont. 1947 JOHN BRUNN is continuing his education by taking classes at the Fromm Institute in San Francisco, { The College Caravaggio, that involves the use of extreme contrasts of light and dark in figurative compositions. His father exposed him to the masterpieces of Velázquez and Goya. And his mother, he says, “gave me the sensitivity of expressing strong feelings to the viewer. There has to be emotional content in the work. The cerebral has to be balanced with the heart, the emotions. After living with them, I don’t think I could have become anything other than an artist.” Ultimately, Benítez would like to expand his Bacchae paintings to a series of perhaps 20 pieces. In the meantime, his next body of work will explore what he calls “the confrontations between Christian mysticism and ancient paganism.” These works are destined for a group exhibition in Provence next spring that will center on the concept of juxtaposing images and texts. x John’s College • Winter 2004 } 1955 “We are fortunate to live in a town with a large university that allows residents to attend classes (with the permission of the professor),” CAROLYN BANKS-LEEUWENBURGH writes from Princeton, N.J. “There are a few of us who take advantage of this opportunity, after which we swim each day, to keep from falling apart. Our socalled retirement years are full and about the same as before except for our obsession with our grandchildren. Greetings to all of our friends of yesterday and today at St. John’s.” 1959 MIKE and BLAKELY MECHAU, classes of 1959 and 1958 respectively, are alive and well and retired from the judicial system and public school teaching. They’re currently raising fruit in Palisades, Colo. They recently read Eva Brann’s book on time with “much enjoyment.” �36 {Alumni Notes} 1964 2004, he will be teaching at Semester at Sea, a branch of the University of Pittsburgh that takes place during a voyage around the world. LORRAINE A. MARTIN was recently appointed to serve as chair of the Connecticut Society of Certified Public Accountants’ Federal Income Taxation Committee. Martin, who owns the firm of Lorraine A. Martin, CPA, is also president of the board of directors for Habitat for Humanity of Greater New Haven and treasurer of the North Haven Opportunity for Affordable Housing Inc. 1968 ANTIGONE PHALARES (SF) writes: “Our 35th reunion was the best one yet. The seminar, the meals, the conversations, the weather, the landscape, the memories recalled, all conspired to welcome us back with open arms. We love being members of the first class. Our reunion numbers will always coincide with the age of the Santa Fe campus. I just discovered that one of my neighbors is a descendent of Francis Scott Key (class of 1796). She showed me a daguerreotype image of Francis Scott Key and another of the man his daughter married!! She was as tickled to show them to a St. Johnnie as I was to see them!” 1969 MICHAEL ANTHONY (A) writes to say that his wife, Dr. Sharon K. Anthony, Ph.D., died on February 3, 2003. She taught English for 30 years. MARIA KAYANAN (A) writes: “After Send a Piana to Havana, a project started by BENJAMIN TREUHAFT (SF) in 1995, opened a school of tuning and instrument repair in Havana in 2001. This year the Cuban Government gave the project a large building in the former Country Club of Havana (an architectural gem) so it can expand, provided the project’s sponsors can raise the money. 1970 BRONWEN BERLINER (A) writes: “My sister, Shirley Stickney, died suddenly and unexpectedly on July 25, 2003, at our parents’ home. I am working as a nurse practitioner in Falls Church, Va. News from HENRY CONSTANTINE (A70) and CHRISTINE CONSTANTINE (A72): “Hank has taken a job as marketing director at Zoll Medical Corp. in Massachusetts. Christine is still with the New York State Appellate Court in Rochester. Living apart and commuting madly— they are still madly in love. Oh, yeah: Son ALEX is a junior at SJC.” E. M. MACIEROWSKI (A), associate professor of philosophy at Benedictine College, was selected as one of 12 participants in a seminar on teaching about Islam and the Middle East to be held in Amman, Jordan, at the American Center for Oriental Research in January 2004. The selection was made by the Council of Independent Colleges; the seminar is being funded by the Department of State. JOSEPH P. BARATTA (A) reports: “My big book, The Politics of World Federation, will finally be published (by Praeger Press) in December 2003. DR. G. DENNIS RAINS (A) has published a textbook, Principles of Human Neuropsychology (McGraw-Hill, 2002). In spring 1974 1972 RICHARD A. RHODES (SFGI) writes to say that his local reading group has met September through May continuously for more than 40 years. { The College 15 years of clerking for Judge James R. Jorgenson on the Third District Court of Appeals in Miami, Fla., I joined the law firm of Podhurst Orseck, P.A., (www.podhurst.com) at the end of July 2003. The firm is recognized as one of the premiere aviation law firms in the country. I am the 13th lawyer in the firm; I focus on trial support and appellate practice. It’s a huge but wonderful change from the quiet and steady inner world of an appellate court. “I’ve been married for 28 years come November to Mike Masinter, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Fla. His areas of expertise are employment discrimination, civil rights law, disability law, and federal jurisdiction. We have two sons: Joe, 25, lives at The Foundation for Independent Living in Coconut Creek, Florida—a private residential community for adults with cognitive impairments. Our younger son Sam, 21, is a senior at Amherst College, majoring in English. We also have two basset hounds and an indeterminate number of cats. “I can be reached at mkayanan@podhurst.com. Hearing from classmates would be lovely.” 1976 After graduation, BRIAN LYNCH (A) went to medical school and now lives in Chicago. He has written a self-help book based on a theory that is more and more being supported by the high-end neuroscience that is advancing rapidly. “I am always interested in advancing the theory through writing and speaking about it and now through the book,” Brian writes. “If there is any interest, please let me know.” Information about the book can be found at http://brianlynchmd.com/whatanother/whata notherdirect.html Black Wine and Outdoor Adventures eter Grubb (A80) writes that life in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, “continues well. We spent the fall of 2002 living in a small village in southwest France, eating well and drinking the black wine of Cahors, elixir of former popes. Our children, then 9 and 11, attended French school while my wife, Betsy, and I took a break from work and life. It was an enriching time. Our adventure travel business (www.rowinc.com) continues to go well with some 3,200 people joining our trips in the northern Rockies, Ecuador, and Europe each year. Guest historians join us on our five-day voyageur canoe trips in the Upper Missouri, along the Lewis and Clark trail. Families with kids as young as five enjoy our five-day trips on Idaho’s Salmon River. Our newest project is developing a five-acre outdoor adventure resort in central Idaho on the Clearwater River. Scheduled to open in May 2004, it will have log cabins and a variety of programs including spiritual retreats and family adventure camps. My passion in the arena of natural and cultural history interpretation continues as I pursue various levels of certification through the National Association of Interpretation. Life is good. Any Johnnies passing through are welcome to call and visit.” x P John’s College • Winter 2004 } �{Alumni Profile} 37 Restoring Self-Respect Eileen Renno (A82) helps unemployed Oregonians get back in the job market. by Sus3an Borden, A87 hen clients first meet Eileen Renno, they’re usually not very happy to see her. The people she counsels in her role as a job coach for Oregon’s Welfare-toWork Program are usually at a low point in their lives: They have been through some kind of crisis, they’re traumatized, and they lack confidence and hope. “Poverty is one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a person,” says Renno. “You forget who you are and what you can do. You focus on your weaknesses and assume an identity of helplessness and hopelessness.” Renno knows this phenomenon well, from both professional and personal experience. When she first moved to Southern Oregon in 1997 she, too, was jobless. She experienced the trauma of unemployment and took almost a year to re-enter the workplace. When she finally did, it was thanks to her sister Catherine’s persistence. Catherine had joined Renno in a number of earlier ventures—from restoring and running a restaurant in Shady Side, Md., to marketing handcrafts from native cooperatives worldwide. “My sister was carrying my memories for me because I had forgotten about my successes. She kept bugging me to write my résumé until I wanted to smack her. When I finally did start writing, I ended up with a six-page résumé—exactly what they say not to do—but it was a good process for me. I needed to remember what I had accomplished and when I remembered, I regained my old esteem and self-confidence.” Shortly thereafter Renno got a clerical job with the National Park Service and a month later applied and was hired for her current position by The Job Council, a primary contractor for Oregon’s Welfare-to-Work program. Renno’s job is to help clients become job-ready by coaching them as they identify and resolve their own barriers to employment. As part of that process, she works with them on the technical aspects of their portfolios. Nearly six years into it, she says there’s been an evolution in her under- W A brush with unemployment helped Renno find her vocation as a job coach. standing of what it takes to re-enter the job market. “When I was first hired, I was pretty much an enabler,” she says. “I wanted to do everything for my clients. I was making their phone calls, navigating through bureaucratic paths, generally helping them in their befuddlement. I learned pretty quickly that this was disempowering to people. The hidden message I was giving by doing so much for them was, ‘I’m capable and you’re not.’ “My whole philosophy has evolved to a more solution-oriented exploratory interviewing. Now I see the process as being a turning around, as helping to create a shift in energy so people can recognize their own competence.” When clients meet Renno, they are told only her name and that she’ll help them with their portfolio. She then sets out to help them develop a résumé — the method that worked so well when she was unemployed. “I use the résumé as a tool to help them remember and explore their successes,” she says. “We work through the technical { The College John’s College • Winter 2004 } aspects: ‘Where did you work last? What skills did you use in your job?’ In the process of remembering dates, they revisit the experience, and sometimes an amazing unfolding occurs. I have had people educate me on so many aspects of employment: packing pickles, laying sidewalks, carpentry, mechanics. They go into the details of their work and they get excited. That’s when I know the magic is happening. They want to explain it all to me and they start talking faster and faster. They remember what it took for them to be able to do the job: self-management, self-initiative, people skills.” When Renno began her job, the Welfareto-Work program was first being implemented. Many of the clients she worked with were people who had been on welfare for so many years that it was a way of life. “They were called ‘drawer people’ by social workers —their files had been stuck in the drawer for so long. They had severe barriers to employment, presenting issues that seemed unsolvable: drug addiction, mental illness, chronic generational welfare use, and lack of transportation.” Renno seems to gravitate toward the difficult cases, both for the challenge they present and the opportunity to watch people turn their lives around. “ Having gone through joblessness myself has given me the insight of how to help people find their own way to get back on their feet, and it seems to work. I’ve witnessed a lot of successes.” Since the Welfare-to-Work mandate came from the Clinton administration in 1996, Oregon’s welfare roles have been reduced by 50 percent. Renno gives special credit for this success to the active partnership among social service agencies in Oregon. “The people we work with are starving in many ways: for support, for encouragement, for recognition. We give them an abundant supply of that, along with whatever professional resources we have to help them, as well as our respect and belief that they are capable. The human spirit is amazing; when you give a starving person a bowl of rice, they feel so wealthy. It renews them much more than a healthy person eating a regular meal. It renews their spirit as well.” x �38 {Alumni Notes} Tricked by Joe Six-Pack Wine Expert Jake Kosseff (A95) Meets Reality T.V. hannel surfers hunting for the latest flavor of reality television might have tuned into Jake Kosseff’s 15 minutes of fame on The Learning Channel’s Faking It show. On the show, a rank beginner is paired with mentors who help him master a new skill in three weeks of intensive coaching. The beginner is then tested to see if he can convince a panel of expert judges that he’s a seasoned professional. Kosseff, a sommelier and the wine and spirits director at Seattle’s Cascadia restaurant, was an expert judge for the “Six-Pack to Chardonnay” episode, in which a beer drinker (the captain of the U.S. Beer Drinking Team) was groomed to impersonate a sommelier. Anyone who was on the Annapolis campus circa 1995 will remember Kosseff’s contribution to Annapolis wine and spirits life, both officially (Reality parties) and unofficially (off-campus, after-waltz-party soirées). Given his college experience, it’s C 1978 This update from ROBERT J. PERRY (A): “I’ve been demoted from professor of physics at Ohio State to associate executive dean of Arts and Sciences, and because I’m as obnoxious now as I was in seminars, I’m also interim senior associate vice president of research, which amazingly enough fits on a business card.” no wonder he loves his job. Koseff buys all the wine and liquor for the restaurant, writes the wine lists, and creates specialty cocktails. His expertise has been well received: Cascadia won Awards of Excellence from Wine Spectator in 2002 and 2003. “This is definitely what I want to do. It draws on all sorts of St. John’s skills: reading and research, communication, and understanding what people want even when they can’t tell you directly,” he says. “And I get to sit around and taste wine for the first twoand-a-half hours of work.” Kosseff says it was a fluke that he appeared on Jake Kosseff: TV star of Educational Technologies in the Masters of Education Program at National University. His wife, AIMEE ROBSON MORRIS (SF80), is an attorney in San Diego and is on the Board of Directors for the San Diego Foster Parent Association. Their daughter, Ilana, is a sophomore at UCSB. Their home, along with their son, Sam (a freshman in high school), and their four foster boys, was recently among the blessed surviving the San Diego fires. Faking It at all. Cascadia, one of Seattle’s highest-rated restaurants, was between public relations companies when the producers called asking for an expert judge. No one at his restaurant had time to vet the show, which had not yet aired, and no one knew what it was really about. The producers only said that they wanted an expert judge. “It sounded like a documentary about a sommelier contest,” says Kosseff. “They didn’t tell me the show’s premise. And they didn’t say that one of the ‘sommeliers’ was the beer-drinking champion of Chicago.” Kosseff flew to San Francisco for filming, which took place during a four-hour lunch. The three expert judges were seated at separate tables with “foodies”—wine writers, restaurateurs—as companions. At each course the table was served by a different sommelier—the faker and two professionals. When lunch ended, the judges were isolated and then interviewed. In the end, Kosseff voted for the fake sommelier. “When they interviewed us I still didn’t know what was going on,” he says. “I tried to say, in a politic way, that no one did a really good job, but that I liked the guy from Chicago. He was the nicest guy in the bunch.” x 1981 ANDY WHITE’S (A) address through 2004 is c/o United States Educational Foundation in Greece/6 Vassilissis Sofias Avenue/10674 Athens/GREECE. 1982 CHARLES REUBEN (SF) writes: “In 1979 JOE MORRIS (SF) is the director of Educational Technologies at the Gillispie School in La Jolla, Calif., one of the first one-to-one laptop elementary schools in Southern California. (Every teacher and third-through-sixth-grade student has a laptop computer). He also moonlights as an adjunct professor ARTHUR PAUL HARTEL III (A) has addition to having recently sold a cruise ship story to the L.A. Times about the adventures my 86-yearold mother and I recently shared on the seven seas, I also dedicated considerable energy advocating the continued survival of Amtrak and ‘long-haul’ passenger train travel, a cause that (like St. John’s) won’t get my tires slashed or my windshield smashed.” spent the years since graduation working as an actor, writer, and editor for film and television. He lives in Los Angeles. { The College WALTER H. KOKERNOT (SFGI82) has been appointed division chair of the English department at Ohio Dominican University, in Columbus. Walter joined ODU in 1998 as assistant professor of English. Prior to joining the faculty of the John’s College • Winter 2004 } Ohio liberal arts college, he was an instructor at Louisiana State University and a postdoctoral lecturer at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. An expert in Victorian literature, he lives in Westerville, Ohio. 1983 STEVEN REYNOLDS (A) is teaching algebra under an emergency credential in Tranquillity (sic), Calif. “Clientele are predominantly offspring of immigrant farmers,” writes Reynolds. “The language barrier is surmountable; I can’t speak to the ambition barrier. E-mail me at strdar@pacbell.net.” PETER ROSSONI (SF) writes: “Healthy and happy living in suburban Maryland; still missing mountains, piñon, and deep discussions! Drop by or drop a line when in the area! �39 {Alumni Notes} 1984 KATHERINE ROWE (SF) writes: “I continue teaching (speech and disabilities), preaching (Episcopal Church), momming (Sutton 10, Ailee 7, Kenny, from Thailand, 16), purring (Appalachia, Trinity, & Raven), wifing (Phil traveling to Brazil, Italy, and Linda, Mexico), and breathing (in Colorado).” 1984 LESLIE JUMP (A) writes: “Ned [Walker] and I were married on September 28. The wedding was beautiful, despite a variety of comic circumstances surrounding the event, and Hurricane Isabel’s best efforts to create havoc. The ceremony was held at a very old church on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Old Trinity. Ned is a career diplomat who served as ambassador to Egypt and Israel, and in various other posts in the Middle East. I’m settling into the role of being a ‘diplomatic spouse,’ learning a bit about the Arab world and Israel, and consulting. Within a week of becoming ‘Mrs. Walker’ I got another title: ‘stepgrandmother.’ Ned’s daughter Katie had a baby girl, Darby Fiona, on October 3. The father is also an alum, Logan Laubach (A02). So there are three generations of Johnnies in our extended family. We’re living in Washington, and would be happy to hear from you if you pass through town. We know all the best kabob joints.” 1985 GINA SORRENTINO (SF) and Bob Shimokaji are thrilled to announce the birth of Kira Michiko and Kenji Yoshiro on June 27, 2003. “Sleep deprivation, diapers for two, and college tuition—parenthood is the ulti- mate challenge. The fun has just started!” 1986 BARBARA ROBERTS (SFGI) writes: “I am a special education teacher for Denver Public Schools and living in Wheat Ridge, Colo. I was privileged to, once again, spend the summer attending talks given by Bhau Kalchuri, a disciple of Avatar Meher Baba.” “My daughter Chloe is now in third grade,” writes MICHAEL RYAN (SF). “I will be a registered architect by the end of this year and remarried to a lovely woman with two girls of her own by next summer.” Berkeley in December 2002. They can be reached at joshua@industriallogic.com or tracy@industriallogic.com KURT REDFIELD (A) recently com- pleted his MBA at Columbia Business School, and is the CFO of the French software company Neartek. Kurt, his wife, Christine, and 4-year-old son, Wilson, live in Cambridge, Mass. 1991 “Charlotte and I became parents on August 1 with the birth of Maximilian Blaise and Veronica Joyce,” writes ANDY SCHUCHART (AGI). “We are living in Iowa. I am a professor of social science and humanities at our community college, and Charlotte practices internal medicine.” 1988 “In April 2002, our third child, Diana Claire Plenefisch, was born,” writes IRENE LAPORTE PLENEFISCH (A). “She is a happy and healthy sister for Adrian, age 5, and Elena, age 7. Tom and I are very busy and enjoying every minute with our family. I am working full time for now but hoping to get back to my part-time schedule soon.” 1989 JOSHUA KERIEVSKY (SF) and TRACY REPPERT KERIEVSKY (SF91) had their second daughter, Sophia, in 1992 This from BOAZ ROTH (AGI): “We welcomed our second daughter, Sela Avital Roth, on July 11, 2003.” CONSUELO SAÑUDO (SF) is having a good life but considers this space too public for news. She would love to hear from long-lost classmates and friends at sanudoc@cybermesa.com. Relatively recent news about this and that at 222.obst-music.com. KATIE (BRUELL) WATSON (SF) writes: “Our second son, Andrew Christopher, was born 6/6/03. He Happy About the Dancing ENRY POVOLNY (A94) married Christine Fisher H at sunset on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at Honeymoon Beach, St. John’s, the U.S. Virgin Islands. On his announcement, Henry wrote: “Chris wants to thank [St. John’s College] for how I turned out.” Chris wrote: “He dances, he fences. It’s like he came pre-loaded with a preferred software package!” They live in Elmore, Ohio. x { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } joins Peter Avery, born 7/8/01. I am adjusting to (and enjoying) life as the mother of two boys!” HESSE (GILES) WATTS (SF) and SHAWN WATTS (SF00) welcomed their new daughter, Altheia, into the world on August 12, 2003. They are living in central New Jersey and can be reached at heatherawatts@hotmail.com 1993 BARBARA ARNOLD (SF) married Steven (Collier) in Las Vegas, Nev., in January 2002, and is currently living and writing in the San Francisco Bay area. She would love to hear from former classmates: Arnold@ferae-naturae.com. WES ALWAN (A) is in Savannah, Ga., after a 9-month program in Maine learning traditional wooden boatbuilding. “I suggest Johnnies look into the carpenters’ boatshop,” he writes. “I can be reached at wes@aowanconsulting.com.” 1994 ELI CASTRO (SF) has been firmly planted in Austin since 1998. “TRACY LOCKE (SF95) and I got married, bought a house in the country, had a baby (the fabulous Ella, born 2/22/01), and are generally having a great time. I’m still consulting, and will be finishing the evening MBA program at UT next year. Tracy teaches at the nursing school at UT. Anyone in �40 {Alumni Notes} A Letter from Shizuoka Katherine Greco (SF02) reports in from Japan K ATHERINE GRECO (SF02) has been enjoying her stay in Shizuoka, Japan. “I’ve been working really hard at learning Japanese and have been enjoying teaching in a high school. I’ve made a few good friends—both other teachers from around the world and Japanese people—that I see pretty regularly. In January I made a New Year’s resolution to travel somewhere in Japan each month, and so far I’ve been doing pretty well. I live near Tokyo, about an hour by bullet train, so I’ve been there several times. I’ve also been to the Hokkaido snow festival, some smaller towns (good Japanese practice!), Hiroshima, and Kyoto… Shizuoka is about the size of Albuquerque, maybe a little smaller. It is right on the largest train line in the country, and Shizuoka is big enough for the express train to stop twice an hour. The city is pretty clean, although riding a bike every day has made me a lot more aware of car fumes and factory smoke. I live about three or four miles and across a river from the center of town. My apartment is in the hills, and there are lots of friendly neighbors. Several people have vegetable gardens and one old couple always brings me a few vegetables to try. I’ve made them cookies, but they didn’t turn out so well because I had to cook them Austin or thereabouts, please feel free to drop us a line at eli@tracyandeli.com.” ANTHONY CHIFFOLO (AGI) is now working as managing editor for Praeger Publishers in Westport, Conn. “Great company, great group of folks to work with,” he writes. Chiffolo has two new books out this fall. “The first and most ambitious is called We Thank You, God, for These: Blessings and Prayers for Family Pets. As the publisher, Paulist Press, notes, this is a ‘one-of-a-kind book for pet lovers that is at once a scriptural guide, liturgical resource, and reflection on the joys of living with in a toaster oven (large ovens are not standard kitchen equipment in Japan). There are a lot of things that give me a good dose of culture shock every once in a while, but my neighborhood is not one of them. Compared to neighborhoods at home, mine is really different, but really great as well. Everything is jammed close together— there are no yards or anything like that. However, lots of people decorate the area around the parking space with really nice flowers and other potted plants. Another interesting thing is that there seems to be a much looser set of zoning standards here. Within a two-minute walk from my apartment are a temple, a handful of vending machines, several very nice houses, some really shabby houses, a junior high, a small family-run grocery store, a grove of fruit trees, several very large rusty warehouses, a mechanic’s shop, and a small park! My neighborhood is usually pretty quiet but there are a few interesting exceptions to this rule. First and foremost are the devil children who live across the street and who could probably be heard from Saturn. Also, every six months or so there are elections, and several vans drive very slowly down each street with megaphones shouting slogans... Sometimes there are two or three different campaign vans in the neighborhood at once, which makes for some very interesting noise pollution. Finally, about two or three times a week, someone goes animals as pets.’ My co-author, (The Rev.) Rayner W. Hesse Jr., and I were lucky enough to garner some wonderful endorsements from Bill Keane (creator of ‘The Family Circus’ cartoon), Dr. Marty Becker (co-author of Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul), and Marc Muench (nature photographer), among others. We have high hopes for the book.” Anthony’s second book is called Advent and Christmas with the Saints. This day-by-day book, in which readers encounter the words of the saints as they relate to the season, is available from Liguori Publications. “I have lots of ideas for more books to write,” missing, usually a child who comes home a little too late for comfort, or an elderly person who took a really, really long walk. When this happens, there is an announcement that describes the person and asks everyone to keep an eye out for him or her. This announcement is broadcast at any time from about 7 a.m. or so to 10 p.m. It seems that people often go missing on Saturday and Sunday mornings when I’m still asleep! There are also several more pleasant sounds that I hear every few days. Japan doesn’t have an ice cream man, but it has a tofu man, a soft rice cake man, a grilled sweet potato man, a ramen man, an oden man, a knife-sharpening man, and a few other men. They all drive around in their family trucks with the food in the back. They hang large red lanterns that have the name of the food written on them out the windows and on the sides of the trucks. Each truck also has a megaphone on top and there are all sorts of sounds that they play. One is this kind of eerie bbbrrRRRRAAAaaaaadddDDDAAAaaaa noise while others are homemade recordings of a man or woman singing the name of the food, the price, and some comment like ‘delicious and healthy.’ At first I didn’t like these food salesman noises—they were just as obnoxious as the other sounds, but more frequent. Now though, I’ve gotten used to them.” x he adds, “just not enough time to do it all!” JAMES COBERN (A) writes: “I guess it is about time to fess up to my where and whenabouts before our 10-year reunion. Directly after St. John’s, I spent two years in bucolic upstate New York at the Culinary Institute of America where I graduated with honors. Who would have thought that a classical education could be beneficial in cooking school? While there I met my future wife, Amanda. We married in 1998 and both are working chefs/restaurant managers in the Washington, D.C., area. At this writing, we { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } have almost finalized the adoption of our first child, Robert, who came to us at the tender age of four months from Korea. He is both smart and good looking—a dangerous combination for sure. I’d love to hear from any classmates in or passing through the area via e-mail: jamanda@ bellatlantic.net.” KELLY ROCK (A) is working as a litigation attorney in Washington, D.C. “This October I was married to Stephen Smith on a lovely autumn afternoon in Narragansett, R.I. LARISSA ENGLEMAN (A) and MERRILL POND (A) were among �41 {Alumni Notes} my bridesmaids. I am looking forward to the 2004 reunion.” MATTHEW TEBO (A) is happy to announce the arrival of twins, Nov. 21, 2003. After graduating from law school, AMY E. WUEBBELS (A) was selected to be a Presidential Management Fellow and has spent most of her two-year fellowship working for the Department of State: “So far I have been posted to Portugal, Afghanistan, and now Bulgaria, where I am currently working in the political section in the American Embassy. I have enjoyed all of my postings (scuba diving in Portugal, rug shopping in Afghanistan) but am still angling for a chance to live in Africa.” 1995 CARRIE (SAGER) ANDERSON (A) writes: “I just received the recent issue of The College magazine, which reminded me that I needed to write in to say that I have joined the ranks of motherhood. My son, Matthew Dean, was born on July 23, 2003. He’s wonderful. I can’t believe how much I love being a mother, and how much it has changed me already.” MARINE CORPS CAPT. MICHAEL GAFFNEY (A) departed late last summer on a six-month deployment to Iraq with USS Peleliu Amphibious Ready Group. The unit is an expeditionary intervention force with the ability to rapidly organize for combat operations in virtually any environment. Gaffney is based out of Camp Pendleton. ALICE BROWN and GREG HODGES (both A) have moved back to Canada to raise their daughter (Grace Isabel Hodges, born 10/10/02) right in a country where medical care is free and Schwarzenegger is just the Terminator. Greg is putting the final touches on his dissertation on Lucan’s account of the Roman Civil War and both Alice and Greg are teaching at For the fifth year, Philanthropia, the Alumni Development Council, presents the St. John’s Calendar, featuring historic and contemporary photos of the college. Have interesting photos from your student days that might make good calendar material? Send them to THE COLLEGE, St. John’s College Communications Office, 60 College Ave., Annapolis MD 21401. Photos will be scanned and returned, or if you wish, donated to the college archives. Trinity College School. Best wishes and fond memories. DAN NELSON (A) sends an update: “Howdy, College! Haven’t checked in with you folks for a few years, so here’s the latest: quit my job as newspaper photographer in Connecticut and moved to San Francisco last fall to play drums for GARTH KLIPPERT (SF94). Garth is married and has a 2-year-old daughter who is tha bomb. The band’s now called Top Brown. We’ve been playing shows steadily and we’re putting out an album pretty soon. Things I haven’t done: gotten married, had legitimate children, gone to grad school, become a lawyer, done the Peace Corps, or traveled to Turkey and Hungary. That last item I intend to do. Oh, but I do work for a nonprofit and, indeed, do not profit from it. “The doings of other shadowy alumni in my inner circle are as follows: ALKA KOTHARI (A95) works for the World Bank and travels a lot. She just bought a house in D.C. JON POMERANCE (A97) is in his last year of law school at Catholic U. of America and has diabolical schemes against the tax-evaders and tort-frauds of the world. RAY AMES (A94) e-mailed me a photo from Iraq last December of an Army truck covered with dust. E-mail me if you know anything later/further, people! FORREST NORMAN (A97) was doing journalist stuff in Florida and has moved on to something more interesting (I think). I saw some Santa Fe alums at a party out here and they looked gooooood, girl. One’s named LIZ and one’s DARYL. My e-mail’s zz9zz7zz5@hotmail.com.” 1996 1997 Karen and MICHAEL CHIANTELLA (A) were married on August 2, 2003. Michael graduated from SUNY Buffalo Law School last spring and is currently pursuing an LL.M. in Estate Planning Law at the University of Miami. JENN COONCE (A) writes: “Still liv- ing in NYC (Brooklyn) and working in the Internet biz. My sister RACHEL started St. John’s in the fall—to be joining my little brother, who’s a junior this year. That makes five of us—and that’s it, until we start having kids!” DOMINIC CRAPUCHETTES (A) expects LINDA MAY WACKER (SF) is living in New York City and working at the Museum of Modern Art as manager of the department of photography. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } his new board game company to launch in December. Learn about it at www.cluzzle.com. JEHANNE DUBROW (A) writes: “In May 2003, I completed my MFA in poetry at the University of Mary- �42 {Alumni Notes} land, College Park. Having become very interested in poetic translation, I spent the summer brushing up on my Polish in a language immersion program at the University of Pittsburgh. Now, I’ve moved halfway across the country to begin my Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I’m teaching first-year composition (quite an experience in itself), working as an editorial assistant at Prairie Schooner, and trying to finish up my first poetry manuscript.” JOHN SWANN and PAULA (RUBIN) SWANN (both AGI) were married in the Great Hall on June 7, 2003. “Many Johnnies were in attendance,” they write. “Special thanks to JOHN POTTER (AGI96) for performing an ‘emergency’ ceremony when the original celebrant was two hours late! He did a great job for someone who had just graduated from Princeton Seminary just three weeks prior! Thanks, Potter!” 1998 GLEN COPPER (AGI) received a Ful- perused the Alumni Register and sure enough—a Johnnie was responsible. So, I’m concurrently pursuing my M.Ed. and ‘teaching’ first grade in the South Bronx. Please interrupt my life of eating, sleeping, and planning! Majorie@thecatspants.com.” 1999 ELIZABETH A. BORSHARD (SF) just moved to New Orleans to start medical school at Tulane. “I would love to hear from any classmates in the area. eborshar@tulane.edu.” COLBY COWHERD (A) is working on a J.D. degree at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va. He can be reached at ccowherd@gmu.edu. JEAN DRAGANZA (SF) writes: “After two years living, working, studying in Paris, France, I’m heading for Bamako, Mali with my future husband, Issa Diallo, to continue living, working, studying…My love and best wishes to the entire St. John’s community! I can be reached at draganzajean @yahoo.fr.” bright to teach in Japan. MIKE and ABBY SOEJOTO (both A) are A report from ANDREW B. HILL (A): “I’m getting married sometime in 2004 to a tremendous woman who did not, sadly, attend St. John’s. I reside in Fort Worth, Texas. I recently completed an unsuccessful bid for the mayorship of my lovely city, for which I was rewarded with a whopping 206 votes, as well as about 60 hours of Digital Beta footage, which I intend to convert into something remotely saleable. Thus, no matter how vague my connection to the school may be, I am following in a tradition of Maverick Johnnie filmmakers, or at least I think I am.” MARJORIE TRUMAN (A) writes from N.Y.: “What joy I had recently when I was assigned a text for grad school and began reading all these references to Kierkegaard, NonEuclidean geometry, and Socrates and Plato as distinct entities. I Albuquerque, N.M., and I plan to marry on December 19, 2003. She, too, is a grad student at Duke Divinity. We plan to make our home in New Mexico upon graduation. I would love to hear from any of my former classmates or tutors including Michael Adams, Jonathon Pezold, and Nathan Zweig.” pleased to announce the birth of their first child, Lucila Adele. Lucy was born on September 30 in Los Angeles, where Mike is beginning his second year as an attorney in the tax department of O’Melveny & Myers. Abby recently finished the post-baccalaureate program in classics at UCLA. They’d love to hear from anyone, especially those in or passing through Southern California (asoejoto@cs.com or 323-572-0343). ERIN JAKOWSKI (A) is pleased to be working at the Maryland Film Festival, now entering her third year as director of operations. She recently became engaged to Tony Tsendeas over the Thanksgiving holiday. MARK H. JOHNSON (A) is pursuing a Master of Divinity at Duke University. “My fiancée, Allison Shirley of 2000 GIDEON BOGAGE (AGI) just completed his fourth year teaching middle school in Massachusetts. “This year I am teaching 8th grade math and English,” he writes. “Thank goodness for a liberal arts education!” BOB DICKSON (A) is in his first year of medical school at Duke University, having completed pre-requisites in the Goucher College Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program. “I’d be happy to talk with Johnnies about the medical school admissions process. Feel free to contact me at robertpickettdickson @yahoo.com.” PAIGE FORREST (A) is still living in Pittsburgh and loving it. She’d love to hear from any of her classmates at forrest.paige@medstudent. pitt.edu. “If any of you are in the area, let me know!” she writes. CHRISTOPHER “CASEY” VAUGHAN (A) is living in St. Augustine, Fla. “Anyone who wants to come surfing feel free to contact me at cvaughan@flagler.edu. 2001 MARSHALL HEVRON (A) writes: “After a six-month, all-expensespaid trip to Iraq (courtesy of USMC), I find myself back in Washington, D.C., working in the Senate. Drop me a line if you’re in town.” mahevron@hotmail.com. DANIEL WEILAND (A) is attending post-baccalaureate school at Ore- { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } gon State University—and thriving: “The rain is refreshing and the air is sweet. I live in a big house, so anyone who knows my name has a dry place to stay here on the West Coast. I’d love to hear from you!” 2002 JOSEPH CHERNILA (SF) and ALANA HOLLINGSWORTH CHERNILA (SF) write: “Joey and I had a daughter on April 10, 2003! Her name is Sadie Pearl Chernila.” AUSTIN HATCH (AGI) and his wife, Elizabeth, announce the birth of their second child, John Austin Hatch, on June 4, 2003. Austin has begun a Ph.D. program in English literature at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. RACHEL SEAY (A) is still enjoying teaching music and studying in San Juan, Puerto Rico. “Mighty fine beaches we’ve got here. Contactable at res_sjc@yahoo.com” x What’s Up? The College wants to hear from you. Call us, write us, e-mail us. Let your classmates know what you’re doing. The next issue will be published in April 2004; deadline for the alumni notes section is February 15. In Annapolis: The College Magazine St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, MD 21404; reharty@sjca.edu In Santa Fe: The College Magazine St. John’s College Public Relations Office 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599; alumni@sjcsf.edu Alumni notes on the Web: Read Alumni Notes and contact The College on the web at www.sjca.edu — click on Alumni. Let us know if you do not want a classnote posted to the Web. �43 {Obituaries} Henry Leong Soon By Perry Plummer, SF70 Henry Leong Soon, a member of the class of 1969 in Santa Fe, died on September 23, 2003, in Albuquerque, N.M., at the age of 56. Henry died from cardiac complications resulting from a four-year fight with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an autoimmune disease with no known cause. Henry’s illness forced him to resign from his work as a computer programmer and to chain himself to an oxygen cannula. Even so, he had to restrict his physical activity in order to merely keep his oxygen levels in the poor range. This was hard for Henry because he had been an avid outdoorsman who hunted birds and waterfowl and was a devoted martial artist, with a black belt in Kojasho karate and a brown belt in judo. It was doubly hard because he had to make a transition from being in control to being dependent. Denied any but the most modest activity, Henry took up gourmet cooking again, wrote a few short stories, and renewed his interest in fishing. He was easily stoic and generous, with courage and cheerfulness to the end. He collapsed on a fishing day-trip with his daughter, and died several hours later at the hospital. St. John’s was a significant experience for him and for me. We had continuing discussions about philosophy, virtue, education, politics, and the commonweal, the role of violence, humor, religion, and philosopher-kings. And of course there were the hilarious stories about the people and life at the college: the food service, ties at dinner, dorm life, tutors, smoke so thick at seminars that sometimes someone would crack a window open, March Madness, haircuts by David Moss, the erection of the fortress-like “girls’” dorms meant to lock up the women past curfew until the fire marshal forbade the locked bars, in loco parentis, the evening half the students were suspended for protesting (by breaking) the inane dorm rules, the dialectic comparisons of LSD and marijuana, etc. In one of his last e-mails to me, Henry wrote that he had grown more conservative as he grew older: “But I also got more optimistic and more trusting in the Will of the People, not the will of the philosopherking, even though he be me. The inefficiency of the American system is also one of its greatest strengths and protections, I believe. Lots of people talk about the ‘good old days.’ Me, I think we are living in the best of times right now and I believe that things will continue to get better, thanks to the Constitution, freedom, and capitalism… “I think America offers possibilities instead of promises, choices instead of certainties…I like that. It lets me be a little rebellious. I wouldn’t want any government official telling me what I should think and should do—there’s plenty enough people trying to do that sort of thing as it is.” Henry’s religious views changed as well, as he came to embrace concepts of Zen Buddhism and Taoism. “This is an oversimplification, but I like the way the Tao Te Ching promotes the virtues of the simple and the humble,” he wrote. “I like the way Zen advocates that true knowing is nonintellectual, and I like the way the existentialists emphasize that choices define your being. And I like the Golden Rule, too. “So, I think that what you do defines who you are—what you do is more important than what you believe…And so far, I’m glad that my beliefs have let me handle this illness pretty well, all things considered.” Henry’s wife, Denise, and his children, Maile and Garrett, survive him. x Henry Leong Soon, an avid sportsman, enjoyed an active life. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } William D. Grimes William D. Grimes, class of 1952, a research analyst who became an antiques dealer, died Oct. 23 at his home in Olney, Md. He was 74. A native of Pittsburgh, Grimes served in the Marine Corps before coming to St. John’s. After college, he began his career with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Silver Spring, and later in White Oak, Md. His work included operations research analysis and missile engagement studies. After his retirement in 1984, he continued working in the antiques business he had founded with his wife, Diane Grimes. An avid participant in local theater, Grimes performed lead roles in plays for children and performed onstage and contributed backstage in Olney Studio of Dance productions. He was a former president of the Friends of Olney Theater. Stan Davis Stan Davis, the founder of Santa Fe’s largest construction firm and an ardent supporter of the Santa Fe campus, died in July at age 80. A partner in Davis and Associates, Davis built the John Gaw Meem Library, dorms, and many other prominent buildings in Santa Fe and throughout the state. The Colorado Springs, Colo., native started working in the construction business in 1946 and came to Santa Fe in 1948. When Davis was the contractor for the Meem Library, he paid to have the beams carved at the library after the college ran out of money and couldn’t afford the work. ALSO NOTED: ROBERT C. BORNFIELD, class of 1951, July 3, 2002 REV. JOHN R. COOPER, class of 1937, Oct. 30, 2003 THE REV. CHRISTIAN A. HOVDE, class of 1945, May 22, 2003 VERNON TSOODLE JR., Santa Fe class of 1981, Nov.12, 2003 WILLIAM R. WHITE, class of 1939, Aug. 6, 2003 �44 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } Petra: The Lost City of Stone hen Vivian Ronay (class of 1965) first visited Petra in 1986 as a tourist, the city was deserted. She saw it almost as it must have looked to Swiss explorer J.L. Burckhardt, who rediscovered it for the Western world in 1812: an empty, ancient city cut into the high desert cliffs of southern Jordan. The Nabataeans, builders of Petra, were traders, a tribe of pre-Roman Arabs who dominated the region beginning around 300 B.C. Their group extended from northwestern Saudi Arabia to Damascus in Syria. Distinctive facades carved into sandstone cliffs and boulders marked Nabataean cities along the ancient spice route in this region. Petra was one of the major crossroads of the east-to-west route for silk and the primarily north-to-south frankincense route, and its inhabitants lived on tolls and taxes. According to the Old Testament, a battle took place from the heights of the tallest mountain in Petra. Another cliff top, said to be the burial site of Aaron (Haroun in Arabic), the brother of Moses, has been a holy place for Christians and now Moslems. In 1988, Ronay received an assignment from The World and I magazine and spent a month with the Bedul Bedouin of Petra. Bedouin culture is the root and origin of all the countries in the Arabian Peninsula W (with the exception of Israel) and pre-dates Islam. Ronay photographed and took notes regularly as she joined the Bedouin in their daily activities. She returned almost every year between 1988 and 1992; however, other assignments prevented her return until 2001. This past spring, during the Iraqi War, she made another trip to a rather deserted Petra for final images and research for her current show. During the 1988 visit, her friendship with a son of one of the five sheiks of Petra gave her the equivalent of an “all-access pass” to be honored by any Bedouin while hiking on her own. Granted access to every facet of life in Petra, Ronay has photographed Petra during the day and night, in tents, and in the Nabataean caves in which only a few families remain. She’s grown close to many people in the community and fended off many a marriage proposal, some made in jest, some serious. Her evocative photographs provide a sense of the individual lives of the Bedouin, their interesting culture, and a spectacular desert environment. In the mid-1980s, the Bedouins agreed to move out of the caves and into a small village set on the edge of Petra National Park where they live today. In her more Above: Bedouin women herd goats to graze in central Petra. At left: Bedouin travel the traditional way. Opposite top: This picture of Abu Gassim, a sheik of one of the five tribes of the Bedul Bedouin of Petra, is among Ronay’s favorites. Bottom: The Khazneh, or Treasury, the most famous of Petra’s monuments, is carved from red sandstone that shines brilliantly in the light of the sun. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �45 { A l u m n i Vo i c e s } recent trips, Ronay has been dismayed to see the traditional ways of life eroding now that these tribes are living in built structures with modern conveniences. Their old agrarian community has been replaced with a market-based economy thriving on tourism. (Petra is among the most popular tourist destinations in the Middle East.) “Because of tourism, some of the people of Petra have gotten very wealthy, and it’s created disparity and a lack of trust. When I visited in 2001, everyone came to me to talk about these new troubles. Western anxiety just hadn’t existed there before, and now it seems it has seeped into every nook and cranny,” she says. “I was stunned.” Ronay believes that such a resilient culture will adapt to change with the help of the Petra National Trust, created by the Jordanian government to preserve the heritage and way of life of Petra. “They will be able to find a solution,” she says. x Ronay’s exhibit, “The Bedouin Tribes of Petra,” will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York through July, in conjunction with the archeological show, “Petra, Lost City of Stone.” The exhibit then travels to five other venues in the United States and Canada. To see more photographs or get details on the exhibit, visit Ronay’s Web site at: www.petraphotos.com. { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �46 {Alumni Association News} From the Alumni Association President Dear Johnnies, Homecoming events on either campus are many and varied. One opportunity, often overlooked but always exciting, is the Gathering of All Alumni. After the picnic and before the games on Saturday, we meet to catch up on news from the college and from the Alumni Association. The program lasts about an hour and provides a year’s worth of news and notes. The President of the Association Board (that’s me) gives a short report on what’s happening in the Alumni Association, including status of old projects, new initiatives, and strategic opportunities. Treasurer of the Association Board (that’s Bill Fant) reports on our financial status as an Association. As they say, “follow the money,” and you’ll see how we meet our commitments to you and to the college. A highlight of the meeting is the campus update. The president and the dean both share information about what’s happening on the campus, with the Program, and with students and tutors. I never know what will be more surprising: the things that change or those that stay the same! Honorary Alumni awards come next. As you know, each year the Association selects members of the community who are not alumni of the college to join the association as Honorary Alumni. Those selected are familiar and beloved tutors, staff, or friends of the college. We invite special friends of the awardees to say a few words in presentation, and the recipients take a turn at the microphone. No one talks better than a Johnnie, and when the topic is a friend and colleague, the speeches are moving and impressive. These presentation and acceptance talks are priceless. They inform or remind us of personal and professional traits that bring people in and make them treasured members of the college community. Elections, by-laws revisions, announce- ments, and so on are the “business” of the meeting, and we move through them quite quickly. As the meeting closes, we honor those alumni who have passed away in the preceding year. We call it In Memoriam. For me, this is one of our most meaningful community rituals. Regardless of whether I know them, whether they are from Annapolis or Santa Fe, whether their time was before or after mine, I am always moved to hear their names and dates of attendance read in the midst of a weekend when we rekindle old friendships and build new ones around the Program and the community that supports it. So, the next time you’re at Homecoming, take a bit of time out of your Saturday afternoon to connect (or reconnect) with the larger community of the college. Attend the All Alumni Gathering to remember the past, and explore the present of the college as an institution and as a community. Sincerely, Glenda H. Eoyang, SF76 Six Honored at Annapolis Homecoming Three Annapolis alumni received Awards of Merit, and the Alumni Association welcomed three new members into the fold by selecting them as honorary alumni of the class of 2003 during homecoming festivities September 12-14 in Annapolis. Arts writer and consultant Adam Pinsker, class of 1952, has enjoyed a long and fruitful career in the arts. After St. John’s and a stint in the Army, he studied at the music conservancy of Stuttgart, Germany. He went on to manage symphony orchestras in New Jersey and Buffalo, managed the Pennsylvania Ballet, served as executive director of the Association of American Dance Companies, and spent more than a decade as executive director of Dance St. Louis. William Warfield Ross, class of 1947, helped to found the Washington law firm of Wald, Harkrader and Ross. He was a founding member and served on the executive committee of the Lawyer’s Alliance for World Security, which is focused on limiting the use of nuclear weapons and minimizing the risk of other weapons of mass { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } destruction. Among many other professional and civic activities, Ross has been involved in the American Bar Association and the ACLU. A member of the class of 1963, David Krimins earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and a medical degree from Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. After completing his internship at the Medical College of Virginia, his residency at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania and his pulmonary fellowship at the University of Rochester and Strong Memorial Hospital, Krimins served as a major in the U.S. Army Medical Command on active duty. He specializes in internal medicine and pulmonary medicine, and has been a member of the medical staff at AAMC since 1979. An Annapolis staff member, Fred H. Billups Jr., and two long-serving tutors, Malcolm Wyatt and George Doskow, became Honorary Alumni during the All Alumni Gathering as part of Homecoming weekend. In his 35 years as a tutor Doskow taught the entire undergraduate program and much of the graduate program. He provided leadership as dean in the early 1980s, and throughout his time as tutor helped the college continue to re-examine its principles, said tutor Geoffrey Comber. “The college has gained immeasurably from George’s 35 years of service,” Comber said. Malcolm Wyatt joined the college in 1958. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia, and held a Fulbright Fellowship for the study of mathematics at the University of Nancy in France. He served as assistant dean and as director of the Graduate Institute. Bud Billups has served as treasurer in Annapolis since 1991. Before then, Billups was executive director of the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia; he also served for many years as an executive with Exxon. At the time Billups joined the college, President Christopher Nelson said, the college was spending too much of its endowment principal annually, staff turnover and absenteeism were high, and facilities were suffering. But in Billups’ tenure, the college has balanced the budget or had solid surpluses for 12 years, cut endowment spending in half, and has seen its bond rating improve. Billups also supervised 150 construction and renovation projects in Annapolis. x �47 {Alumni Association News} Iron City Alumni Form Newest Chapter CHAPTER CONTACTS Call the alumni listed below for information about chapter, reading group, or other alumni activities in each area. ALBUQUERQUE Bob & Vicki Morgan 505-275-9012 BALTIMORE Deborah Cohen 410-472-9158 ANNAPOLIS Beth Martin 410-280-0958 BOSTON Ginger Kenney 617-964-4794 AUSTIN Bev Angel 512-926-7808 CHICAGO Lorna Johnson 773-338-8651 gary pierpoint A group of Pittsburgh-area alumni transformed an enthusiastic reading group into an official chapter this fall, receiving their charter at Homecoming festivities last October in Annapolis. Given their creativity in putting together seminars and sharing hosting duties, it’s no wonder the chapter has had little difficulty in attracting new members and getting alumni together. For example, member Carol Brinjak (SGI96), who works for the Pittsburgh Opera, arranged for the chapter to attend a dress rehearsal of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream; participants later gathered for a dinner seminar on the play. For another meeting, John Newell (A86), a classics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, led the group in a discussion of Parmenides’ On Nature. “He brought us his translation and notes, which were very helpful,” says Joanne Murray (A70), who has been leading the chapter until a president is elected. “The poem is pretty—opaque.” Murray had been active in the Washington, D.C., reading group (which also later became a chapter) and had good intentions to form a chapter when she moved to Pittsburgh, where she is a material scientist for Alcoa. She says the chapter owes a great debt to Robert Hazo, class of 1953, who planted the seeds by getting alumni together for seminars at Pitt. “He wanted to expose his honors students (at Pitt) to seminar-style discussions, and a whole bunch of us (alumni) showed up,” Murray says. “After we did the seminars on American founding documents we decided to keep going as a group.” So far, the group has met only for seminars and opera performances, but “we keep threatening to have a social function,” ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION Alumni Board member Carol Freeman presents a charter to Joanne Murray. Murray says. Other seminar readings have included Sartre’s “The Wall,” Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Dostoyevesky’s Notes from the Underground, and Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It takes patience and persistence to get a chapter off the ground, Murray says. Seminars have drawn groups as small as three people, but at the chapter’s most recent seminars, “we had to keep bringing in more chairs,” she says. “It’s always a little bit slow. You start with six people and get everybody’s schedule coordinated,” Murray says. “You have to be sensitive to every single person in the group in order to get a critical mass together.” While the group could have continued as an informal gathering of alumni getting together to read and talk about books, chapter status brings a valuable connection with the Alumni Association. “We benefit from the communications from other chapters. I go to (association) board meetings. Carol Freeman (AGI94) sends around a list of readings and chapter activities. It’s good to know what other chapters are doing and reading and what’s successful,” she says. As a big city with a small-town atmosphere, Pittsburgh has been a great place to start a chapter. “It’s easy to make connections in Pittsburgh,” she explains. “And of DALLAS/FORT WORTH Suzanne Gill Doremus 817-927-2390 DENVER/BOULDER Lee Goldstein 720-283-4659 MINNEAPOLIS/ ST. PAUL Carol Freeman 612-822-3216 NEW YORK Joe Boucher 718-222-1957 Whether from Annapolis or Santa Fe, undergraduate or Graduate Institute, Old Program or New, graduated or not, all alumni have automatic membership in the St. John’s College Alumni Association. The Alumni Association is an independent organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The Board meets four times a year, twice on each campus, to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the Association. This newsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni Association and communicates Alumni Association news and events of interest. President – Glenda Eoyang, SF76 Vice President – Jason Walsh, A85 Secretary –Barbara Lauer, SF76 Treasurer – Bill Fant, A79 Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair – Linda Stabler-Talty (SFGI76) Web site – www.sjca.edu/aassoc/main.phtml Mailing address – Alumni Association, St. John’s College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404 or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599. course, all St. Johnnies are bonded for life. You just have to put one St. Johnnie in a room with others, and it’s instant seminar.” The other founding members of the Pittsburgh chapter are: Bill and Natalie Blais (both SF94); Sylvia Denys, an invited member; Marcus Eubanks (A88); Herb Feinberg (A50); Ed Gelblum (A55); Henry Higman (A48); Ken Joseph (A70); Meghan Hughes (SF00); Judith Toliver Neely (A97); Ken Shen (A86); Christopher Kurfess (A95, EC96); Jeff Palmer (A96); and Clarence Watt (A96). The group’s Web site, which includes its reading list and planned seminars, is www.hellos.com/sjc/ x NORTHERN CALIF. Jonathon Hodapp 831-393-9496 SANTA FE Richard Cowles 505-986-1814 WASHINGTON DC Jean Dickason 301-699-6207 PHILADELPHIA Bart Kaplan 215-465-0244 SEATTLE Amina Stickford 206-269-0182 PORTLAND Dale Mortimer 360-882-9058 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Elizabeth Eastman 562-426-1934 ISRAEL Emi Geiger Leslau 15 Aminadav Street Jerusalem 93549 Israel 9-722-671-7608 boazl@cc.huji.ac.il SAN DIEGO Stephanie Rico 619-423-4972 { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } TRIANGLE CIRCLE (NC) Susan Eversole 919-968-4856 �{St. John’s Forever} robert S. Nugent 48 Santa Fe’s Movie Star mong the guests at the first commencement in Santa Fe was Englishborn actress Greer Garson, framed by these two graduates. Best known for her Academy Award-winning performance in Mrs. Miniver, Garson became a patron of the Western campus of St. John’s College during its early years. A Garson and her husband, Colonel E.E. “Buddy” Fogelson (an oil man, rancher, and lawyer), lived part of the year at their Forked Lightning Ranch, north of Santa Fe. Fogelson served on the Board of Visitors and Governors from 1963-69, and in 1963 hosted a board meeting at the couple’s ranch. Fogelson made a gift toward the preparation of architectural plans while the campus was on the drawing board. Garson took interest in the college’s library and served as a member of the volunteer Library Committee. She created the first library endowment—one that { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } At the first graduation of the Santa Fe campus are, left to right: H. Glenn Ballard (SF68), Greer Garson, and James Liljenwall (SF68). will purchase a book for the college each year, in perpetuity. The koi pond and garden between the student center and academic complex were also funded by Garson, as a memorial to her mother, Nina. Although Garson became involved in farming and breeding race horses, she continued to act on Broadway and in films. She died in 1996 at the age of 91 and is buried in Texas. x �{Alumni Events Calendar} teri thomson randall New Alumni: Michael Givens, Lynsey Rubin, and Tevis Thompson, at last summer’s Graduate Institute commencement in Santa Fe. Santa Fe Annapolis A Call for Entries Last year’s Alumni Art Show in Santa Fe drew entries from award-winning documentary filmmakers, accomplished clay artists, painters, and photographers, many of whom who had shown their work across the country. Participation in the annual show has grown each year, and the reception that takes place as part of Homecoming has become one of the highlights of the weekend in Santa Fe. Entries and inquiries for this year’s show are welcome from both Santa Fe and Annapolis alumni. For details call Maggie Magalnick in Santa Fe, 505984-6199, or e-mail maggie@sjcsf.edu. Annual Croquet Match St. John’s vs. the U.S. Naval Academy April 24, 2004 Homecoming: October 1-3, 2004 Reunion classes are 1934, 1939, 1944, 1949, 1954, 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999 Summer Alumni Program Week 1: June 27-July 2 Week 2: July 4-July 9 Homecoming : July 2-4, 2004 Reunion Classes: 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999 { T h e C o l l e g e St. John’s College • Winter 2004 } �P ERIODICALS P OSTAGE PAID P UBLISHED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE P.O. BOX 2800 A NNAPOLIS , M ARYLAND 21404 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED � 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, Winter 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 1 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in Winter 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_Winter_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/c5b8d9fe3ab5a36b1c057f8dbe269bda.pdf ad085bfc18a9a84295b445a80b01e452 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 56.1 (Fall 2014) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Allison Tretina The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401-1687. ©2014 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at http://www.sjc.edu/blog/st-johns-review ��Contents Essays & Lectures Momentary Morality and Extended Ethics ..................................1 Eva Brann Enriching Liberal Education’s Defense in Universities and Colleges: Liberal Arts, Innovation, and Technē ......................14 J. Scott Lee Definition and Diairesis in Plato and Aristotle .................................47 Jon Lenkowski The Stranger as a Socratic Philosopher: The Socratic Nature of the Stranger’s Investigation of the Sophist................................65 Corinne Painter The Concept of Measure and the Criterion of Sustainability ...........74 John D. Pappas Platonic Theōria................................................................................95 Mark Shiffman Poems Two Villanelles ...............................................................................124 Kemmer Anderson Two Poems......................................................................................126 Elliott Zuckerman ��Momentary Morality and Extended Ethics Eva Brann You have been reading and talking about virtue for quite a while now; therefore, that is what your teachers asked me to talk about to you. So I drew a hot bath (since the mind is freest when the body is floating) and thought what might be most to the point, most helpful to you. Should I review some theories about virtue, perhaps give you my interpretation of Socrates’s or Aristotle's notions of virtue, perhaps dwell on whether from reading Platonic dialogues we can tell if Socrates and Plato thought the same and if Aristotle responds to either of them? Or should I introduce you to Kantian morality, a world apart from the ancients? Should I distinguish for you a vision of virtue that looks to an ideal heaven beyond and longs for perfection from one that pays regard to the world right here and goes for moderation? Should I explain to you that the Greek philosophers tends toward ethics, toward developing personal qualities of excellence, while the Judeo-Christian tradition tends toward morality, willingness to obey the laws of God and nature? Should I list for you different doctrines of doing right, such as eudaemonism, the teaching that happiness is the aim of virtue, or deontology, the account of virtue as duty and the obligation to obey commands, of which Kant is the most extreme representative? For while Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, whatever their differences, think that ethics involves some sort of rightness in our feelings, emotions, and passions, Kant is clear that morality at its purest is a matter of reason alone. Reason is in its essence universal: to think rationally is to think unexceptionably, comprehensively. So to obey the commands of reason is to suppress all merely natural inclinations, all purely Eva Brann is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This lecture was delivered at the “Windows on the Good Life” Course at Carlton College on 16 April 2014. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW idiosyncratic desires, and to intend only such actions as we would want to be intended by everyone—or even to be seen as commanded by a law of nature. This is the notorious “categorical imperative”: “imperative” means “command” and “categorical” means “without ifs and buts” (as when someone says to you “that's a categorical no!”). You'll see in a moment why I've brought Kantian morality into this talk. One last thing I might be speaking about, and which in fact I will talk of in a moment, is the word “virtue.” I'll argue that this translation of the word the Greeks use, aretē, has its virtues, but we should probably give it up, or at least use it with raised eyebrows. I now want to say why none of the above, except the last, appealed to me. I will tell you what seems to me the biggest trouble with academic study, and so with most of our eduction. I call it the problem of lost immediacy. This is what I mean: There are books—and if your teachers chose well, they will be great ones— that are full of substance. Then there are books and articles and lectures about books. The great books (or texts of any sort) contain opinions. The next level of books and articles also contain opinions, but they are opinions about the original opinions, because whoever interprets a primary text adds a perspective to it. Then here we are, your teachers, and we’ve absorbed some of these original opinions, as well as some of the opinions about them— and we’ve acquired some opinions of our own on top of that. All those levels of learning on our part can smother, drown out, your immediate relation to the book. But even a powerful, first-rate book—perhaps especially such a book—can also stand between you and yourself. It intervenes in your thinking and can capture it, so that you are content to think its thoughts and co-feel its feelings, rather than being immediately present to yourself. Or worse, it can put you off its possibly life-changing content because you see no direct entrance to it. Now I hasten to say that I pity people who have never been taken over by a book or even by a teacher in that way—if, that is, the being-taken-over is the beginning of an effort, a struggle, that issues in a gradual emergence or a tumultuous bursting out of a �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 3 discovery that is truly your own. And I pity even more students who have been turned off by a life-enhancing text because no one helped them to make a direct connection with it. A witty outside observer of my college used to tell the world that our students arrive knowing nothing and leave knowing that they know nothing. I hope it’s true, provided you keep in mind that to know that you know nothing is knowing a lot. What he meant, though, was that they had absorbed so many contradictory opinions from reading so many deep books that they were in a state of ultimate and utterconfusion. But in that he was surely mistaken. Such riches may be oppressive and discombobulating for a while, but that’s a state you work yourself out of into some clarity—clarity about “who you are,” which is a formulaic way of saying “what your thinking can accept and your feelings can embrace.” Therefore I think that the second-best thing we teachers can do for our students is to show how books can be, in a fancy term, “appropriated,” made one’s own—and not just a few books of the same sort, but many books of different sorts, different in genre, different in opinion. The very best thing we can do, of course, is to get students to read them well and talk about them to each other. Doesn’t that broad appropriation, you might ask, imply eclecticism, which is a sort of intellectual cherry-picking that disregards the generality of a well thought-out theory, and—especially if it’s an ethical or moral theory—its integration into a comprehensive view of the ways things are? Well, yes, if ecleticism means indiscriminately collecting low-hanging fruit from here and there, it will be cherry-picking, extracting now contextless bits and pieces. But no, if eclecticism has a basis in the very nature of things. In a moment I’ll explain this oracular pronouncement. But first, there’s the word “virtue,” the supposed subject of my talk. Let everyone talk as they wish, as long as they know what they’re saying; but I wish we wouldn't use “virtue” as a translation of that Greek word aretē—or at least that we would use it mostly with raised eyebrows. To be sure, it has a nice argument in its favor: “virtue” is related both to the Latin vis, force, and vir, man. Virtue is the energy of a being that holds it together, and gives it power, as when they say in stories: “All the virtue went out of �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW him.” Now as it happens, aretē is related to a Greek prefix ari-, meaning “very much, forcefully so”; thus aretē is the potency in a person or thing to be what it is supposed to be. (Some Greeks seem to have seen a relation between aretē and Ares, the powerful warrior-god.) Moreover, the moral virtue most highly regarded by Aristotle, courage, is literally called “manliness” (andreia) in Greek. So it all fits together. On the other hand, “virtue,” in a use that goes back to Shakespearean times and into the nineteenth century, was a woman’s particular kind of manliness, namely, well-girded chastity, her bodily and psychic inviolability. We have nothing left but a smile for such passionless purity. More recently, the adjective “virtual,” in its meaning of “inactual,” has come front-and-center as an attribute of cyberspace: “virtual reality,” that is to say, “unreal reality.” We ought to have a background awareness of the sphere of connotations of our words, including their history. But, as far as the contemporary connotations of the adjectival form of “virtue” is concerned, I don’t think we want to go there. This means, however, that for the moment I’m left without a word for my subject. And this lack raises two really interesting questions: Can we have a thought without a name? and Can we think without words? Powerful contemporary writers claim that it is impossible for two reasons: There can be no external proof that thinking is going on without someone saying something thoughtful: a furrowed brow is no evidence. In fact even our claim to be thinking doesn’t prove that we are thinking. And more important, to think is really to marshall meanings, and meanings are drifting vapours unless they are attached to a word or given structure in a sentence. Here I beg to differ with these contemporary writers. I think we all experience that sense of a disembodied meaning, of pre-verbal thinking, that moves in our mind, sometimes like a gentle aromatic breeze over the mental plain, sometimes like a powerful push of air pressure against a mental wall, rousing us to seek the right term to catch it, the accurate language to describe it, the suitable words to embody it. So then, what is this mental presence that is called virtue, effectiveness, excellence, dutifulness, goodness? I am supposing �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 5 here that to have too many words is equivalent to having no cogent idea. But that may be a mistake. The reason why there are numerous translations for the Greek word you’ve thought about under the term “virtue” may be that in fact it encompasses a number of ways of being what is called broadly, and so a little bluntly, “good”; there are many terms because there really are different ways of being humanly good. This possibility of earthly variety kicks the meaning they share, “goodness,” way upstairs, so to speak—up into the highest reaches of thought. In the Republic, Socrates says to the two very intelligent young men he is speaking with that he can’t explain this Good to them in the brief space of one evening. So I feel excused from even trying in this short hour. On the other hand, I do want to make use of the notion that there might be more than one way of being good—an idea that will probably underwhelm you. It would not even have shocked people who lived before the First World War, like your great-great-grand parents—though for different reasons. Nowadays many people, certainly among them the most articulate ones, believe that as long as we are socially right-minded and we don’t discriminate among our fellow humans for being what nature made them, we can be fairly forgiving of a loose personal morality. So there is public and private morality, one rigorous, the other relaxed. (Of course, these are generalizations, which are never true of those in whose hearing they are made.) Your ancestors, on the other hand, would have tended to believe what Socrates sets out in the Republic, namely, that members of different castes or classes belonging to one political community have different characteristic excellences. Moreover, they knew quite well that, even within their class, people—especially well-off men—lived quite comfortably within a double moral framework. For example, men could maintain a respectable but loveless marriage to one woman whom they publicly honored, while at the same time engaging in a passionate but disreputable attachment to a mistress who had only private privileges. My own uncle lived that way. When he and his wife fled Germany from the Nazis in 1939, his mistress was on the same train in a separate compartment. Here is what I want to do now, killing two birds with one stone �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW (though I’m not so much for killing birds, especially not en masse). My first aim is to take off on my own, so that my primary point will not be so much to explain a theory found in a book—though, as you’ll see, I’ll have to do that too in order to achieve my second purpose. And that second purpose is to show how one might be eclectic without being incoherent, how we might engage in picking-out parts of theories of goodness without producing a mere self-pleasing miscellany, a tasty thought-goulash. This second purpose might be of real use to you if you’re feeling a little snowed by all the deep and sometimes difficult theories you’ve studied this year. I mean to show that you can fashion an opinion to live by through combining the most disparate conceptions. My first aim, however, is to think out something for myself and articulate it before a sympathetic audience. So now to it. One human being may indeed live with two moralities, one public, one private, and this duplicity is not always hypocritical; it may simply make life livable and prevent it from becoming worse. Or, looking at it another way, there is a saying that hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue: I think it’s better all around that there should be such respect, once humanly understandable and inevitable wrong-doing is on the scene. Again, coming to our day, some people quite comfortably cheat on their taxes and tell you that it’s a form of civic virtue to short-change a wasteful government, but they observe strict correctness when it comes to matters of social justice. They too live in a dual moral frame. But I want to introduce another, I think more fundamental, duality: the pacing of time, or, more accurately, of psychic motion. If you watch the stream of cars coming toward you on the opposite side of a highway, and there is a good deal of traffic, you’ll notice that the cars bunch up; they practically tailgate each other until the density dissolves into long stretches of lighter flow. The world is like that, and so are our lives; it and we are in sync. There’s an earthquake, a tsunami, a storm, an eruption all at once after years of nothing. A dreary winter has lasted for ever, suddenly it’s spring, the forsythia is in bloom, the trees are bursting into leaf, and it’s time for outdoor-idling, but there are summer jobs to be lined up, final exams, parties, last-moment bonding, packing, all at once. That’s outside, but it’s similar inside: There are undistinguished �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 7 times marked, very unremarkably, by routine and repetition; life flows away and is canceled, collapses into one-and-any-day’s schedule. Then suddenly time develops densities; all the momentous moments happen together, for better or for worse. When it rains, it pours, as the saying goes. I should remind you here that the exhilarating heights and tearful depths of time, or rather of eventfulness, separated by expanses of flat dailiness—these closings-up and drawings-apart of happenings—are a Western way of seeing the world and living in it. There are teachings of the East that make a virtue of unbunching time, of letting life flow evenly—every moment as charged with presence as any other. Thus when I called this talk “Momentary Morality and Extended Ethics,” I was thinking only of our half of the world. So now I’ll explain what I mean by momentary morality. I’ve been describing an experience of time and events that includes moments of crisis, either imposed on us by nature or manufactured by us from sheer cussed, willful Westernness. Although krisis is a Greek word meaning “separation” or “decision,” and so might just betoken any branching in the flow of events, we generally don’t mean something good by it. A crisis, as we use the word, is not so much a branching as a stanching of the flow of events that makes its elements pile up and then burst out, often in a kind of relieving demolition of the status quo. Certainly the living pace we share, consisting of stretches of eventless, quiet desperation or contentment, as the case may be, which are interspersed with somewhat frantic eventfulness, practically guarantees that every high will be at the expense of a low, as a hill is paid for by a hollow. I think that I’ve told things the way they really are, but that I’ve left two questions (at least) quite unanswered: Are the highs higher than the lows are low, that is, are there more great moments than sorry ones? and What is the logic, or better, the ontology of these eventpairings of high and low? Why is natural and human life subject to these oppositions? By “ontology,” which signifies an “account of being,” I mean the most fundamental explanation we can find for the way things are, including psychology in the non-medical sense: an account of the human soul. But I want to use this notion of bunched time, of high moments we may hope for and low ones we can expect, of events shaped in �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW time like wave packets connected by a flat line—unexamined though the image be—to speak about the type of morality which I call “momentary morality.” I mean those critical moments when you’re up against the wall, when it’s too late to think things out, when you need to be ready with an inner command to tell you what to do—what you must do—at that very moment. The human condition being what it is, what you must do will tend to be something you don’t want to do, or rather, something you will want with every fiber of your feelings not to do. If at that moment you waffle about what you ought to do, or if you fail to do as you ought, you’ll never forget that you were unprepared in a moral emergency or unsteadfast in doing your duty. You will be diminished in your self-respect. I’ve seen it written and heard it said that such moments of extremity reveal who a person really is. I don’t believe it. I think what you do day-by-blessedly-ordinary-day is more apt to reveal, even while it is shaping, who you are. But I do know that moral failure in a crisis sticks with you: I know it from myself, I know it from a tale one day told me, almost in passing, by a man I admired, and I know it from fiction, especially Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim and Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” There is a theory of morality that seems to me tailored for moments of crisis and, consequently, inept in daily use. It is the Kantian theory of the categorical imperative I mentioned earlier on. It is, in the compass of my reading, the most powerful, coherent, ingenious and, not incidentally, the most earnestly extremist theory of human goodness ever devised. Like all great specific theory it is embedded in a grand grounding of human consciousness. Kant would turn, nay, whirl in his grave to hear me assign it to so particular a use, so momentary an occasion. But since I am convinced that it is not possible to live well through the flats of life on Kantian morality (though I lack time in this talk to explain why) and find that even his own applications sometimes have repellent results, I feel less abashed at saving the pieces, so to speak. Let me explain as simply and briefly as I can how this morality might work in an emergency, and that explanation itself will go a little ways toward showing why one can’t live that way through extended time. We have, Kant says, a faculty for freedom, namely, our will, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 9 our free will. To be free means to take orders from no one but oneself. Thus the free will commands itself. It gives itself its own law. There must be law, Kant thinks, because if the will were lawless it would be the opposite of free—call it capricious, wanton. Now the will, Kant also thinks, is an aspect of reason, which has two sides. One side is theoretical reason. This reason gives nature its laws and then recognizes them as necessary. I will set this activity of reason aside here—it’s what I mean by ripping his moral theory out of the grand whole. The other side is practical reason; it gives itself its laws and so knows itself as free. You can see that it is identical with the free will. The will—really myself as a free person— should, of course, obey the command of its self-given law, its imperative. As I said earlier, this imperative permits no ifs and buts, admits no special cases, allows no individual exceptions, because it is addressed to reason, and reason does not contradict its own universal judgment, for then it would be self-contradictory. Above all, it avoids the necessities, the unfree determinism, of lawful nature. We human beings are in part natural, namely, in our inclinations and desires. Our free will, our practical reason, has no truck with the emotions and feelings that drive us. It chooses a course entirely because it is right and not in the least because we feel good about it; in fact, the more it hurts the better we know we are doing our duty, doing purely as we ought. And we have a test to tell us whether our decision is right, a test that expresses the essence of reason: If I can universalize my particular motive for choosing an action so as to turn it into a general law of human action or a conceivable law of nature, then I am choosing as I ought. I am preserving the purity of reason, namely its universality and its avoidance of self-contradiction by exception-making. Let me give a famous example by Kant himself. Suppose a persecutor comes to my door and asks if his intended victim is within. All my inclination is to deny it, to protect the fugitive. But if I generalize my motive it assumes this form: Under humanitarian pressure anyone may tell a lie. And then all trust in anyone’s declarations collapses, for anyone can construe an exception. So you must tell the truth, and you will have done your duty, come hell or highwater or the murder of a fugitive. I’ve told this example be- �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cause it seems to me to show how Kantian purity can turn into moral catastrophe when life is fraught with daily danger. Just imagine that you’re harboring a fugitive dissident in some totalitarian state, and, as you well know they might, the secret police come knocking at your door. Will you tell them the truth for the sake of the self-consistency of reason? No, you will have recourse—if you think you need it—to the very paralogical, paradoxical principle of the white lie. And, in general, I think that this absolutist morality is not only too inhumane, but also too joyless to be livable day by day. But let there be that one life-changing moment when, torn from the usually peaceful flux of ordinary life, you suddenly must decide. The occasion might be a temptation to commit a minor transgression in the world’s eyes, but one weighing heavily on your conscience. Or it could be an unexpected call on your courage, unwelcome but unavoidable, perhaps never patent to the world but well enough known to yourself. These are, I think, Kantian moments, spots of time when a morality is wanted that disparages our inclinations and prompts us to duty, that provides an effective on-the-spot test of what ought to be done, to wit: What if everyone did what it has just crossed my mind to do? That decisive moment’s morality is the kind which commands without hedging. But for most of us in this country these excruciating moments that, when they do come, tend, to be sure, to come in multiples, are blessedly sparse. The rational points on a mathematical line are said to be dense, meaning that they leave no empty interval and yet do not form a continuum (since the irrational points are missing). Such is the incident-line, the event-time of our ordinary daily life, in which every little station has its happening; but though they are all discrete, they are so closely packed together that they are scarcely discernible. Our day has 86,400 seconds and our week 604,800 seconds, and we can calculate the number of seconds in our month, our year, our decade, our lifetime. This flattish life-line of instants, with the peaks and troughs it occasionally develops, surely requires a different notion of goodness from the one that is marked by excruciating, disruptive moments. As I called the latter “momentary morality,” so I will call the former “extended ethics.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 11 Morality, remember, requires command-issuing universal law; ethics, on the other hand, demands natural and acquired personal qualities. Of the possible English alternatives to the term “virtue,” I think that “excellence” best expresses the connotations the ancient users of the word aretē seem to have had in mind, even before the philosophers got to discerning a comprehensive meaning. Let me list those connotations of aretē, understood as excellence, that I can think of: 1. effectiveness; 2. competition; 3. happiness; 4. enumerability; 5. habituation. They all have to do with the long runs of life, the flat stretches that may buckle into peaks and valleys of glory and misery; they have little or nothing to do with the up-against-the-wall decisions of a life fractured by a moral emergency. I’ve spoken of the notion of aretē as an effective, potent way of being that betokens a soul honed to a fine edge, just as a wellsharpened pruning knife is an efficient and perhaps somewhat dangerous object. There is a competitive tone to aretē, just as to be excellent means literally “to rise above,” as we say, “to be outstanding.” The possessor of aretē glories in it, vaunts and flaunts it, as do the Homeric heroes. A hero is high in self-esteem, in current language. Furthermore, the aretai, the excellences that everyone recognizes, can be counted off. Socrates regularly refers to four cardinal ones: wisdom, justice, courage, and sound-mindedness. These excellences require the right sort of body and soul— physical and psychic talent as we would say—but also practice, habituation. It is in this last element that the difference between Kantian morality and ethics, as I have delineated it, shows up most. Personal qualities are confirmed in habituation, in being habitually practiced, but the free will, the self-legislation of morality is essentially at odds with habituation. For habit puts the natural laws of psychology to work, and these are deterministic mechanisms. In fact, habit as a mechanism is an inhibition on spontaneousness, on freedom. What’s more, for Kant the will’s intention trumps practical execution. Indeed, all the points of the ethics of individual qualities are contrasted with law-morality. The categorical imperative has, to be sure, several forms, but it is basically one, a super-command- �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ment that the free will issues and obeys, while the human excellences are enumerably multiple. For although excellence as excellence may be one super-quality, it needs to assume various specifications, and these may even be at odds with each other. For instance, courage and sound-mindedness (whose Greek term, sophrosyne, is often translated as “moderation”) may pull in opposite directions. Certainly the competitive glorying of excellence is unthinkable in a dutiful moralist, and the sharp-set potency and effectiveness which goes with any excellence is absolutely out of play for the moral mode. Once more, in Kant’s great works of moral philosophy, the issue of execution, of how the passage from decision to effective action is accomplished, which is so crucial a juncture in ethics, is almost completely suppressed. Ethics is a way of being objectively good in the world; the doing is almost everything. Kantian morality is primarily concerned with being right with oneself, subjectively good; the intention is everything, though hard actions may, indeed should, follow. As Kant famously says: There is nothing unqualifiedly good except a good will. Note that he does not say “a good deed.” It is with respect to my middle point, happiness, that the difference is greatest and that ethics seems to me a far more livable, day-by-day useful theory. It is essential to moral intention that no hint of nature-bound desire should taint the purity of duty done for its own sake, meaning for the sake of self-rule; no psychic pleasure-seeking mechanism should confuse the clarity of a command obeyed for the sake of one's rational integrity, one’s rational consistency. Ethics, on the other hand, cooperates with nature; although it distinguishes between sound and corrupt pleasure, between excess and moderation, it nevertheless regards pleasure, in Aristotle’s words, as the bloom on our activity, and considers happiness, whatever its definition, as the proper, indeed self-evident, human aim. Recall that I have spoken about “extended ethics” as opposed to “momentary morality” and distinguished the two theories of human goodness by their relation to time, or rather, to eventuation. Morality was for intense, abrupt, exigent, emergent moments of up-against-the-wall decision making; ethics was for a looser, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 13 smoother, less urgent, more subdued tenor of life. And indeed, everything I’ve observed about ethics seems to me to fit this latter temporal mode better: our natural longing for accessible daily pleasure and sustainable long-term happiness in the world; our innocent, or not-so-innocent, human-all-too-human eagerness for admiration; our comfort in a being buoyed up by a tradition of recognizably articulated excellencies; our time-consuming growth into profitable habits and productive routines. Above I calculated our line of life in myriads of instants almost too brief for detection (as distinct from discernible moments). Yet each had to be occupied and vacated, lived in and through, for better or for worse. It seemed to me that this analogy of life to a line, at once dense and pointillistic, recommended to us a theory of goodness which allowed us to be all there as natural beings, driven at every point of temporal existence by desire, fastening on some moments for fulfillment, developing excellence and glorying in it, engaging with the world in action and with ourselves in thinking. But it also seemed that there were moments of heightened urgency when we must oppose our pleasure-seeking and happiness-enjoying nature and forget all the flourishing excellence promotes in order to obey the harsh self-command of “you ought”—no ifs and buts. My overarching purpose, however, was to persuade you that your studies of ways to be humanly good can be appropriated by you to fashion a way of your own, that they need not add up to mutual canceling-out of theories and all-round confusion of soul. In fact, I’m paying you a major compliment: I’m supposing that you’re taking your learning seriously, not just, as the phrase goes, “academically”—that you take your studies to heart as lifeshaping. �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Enriching Liberal Education’s Defense in Universities and Colleges: Liberal Arts, Innovation, and Technē J. Scott Lee For a number of years, it has struck me that people who write about a “liberal-arts education” rarely write directly about the arts. They write about political, religious, and moral dispositions; they write about the rise of the sciences; they write about cultures; and recently, they write about the conditions of education. Sometimes, they write about books and core texts within the tradition of the liberal arts, but these books and their associated arts are written about as exemplars of politics, morals, science, and culture—rarely as exemplars of arts. A recent spate of writings defending the humanities and humanism, the college and the purpose of education—by Martha Nussbaum, Tony Kronman, Andrew Delbanco, and Patrick Deneen—all mention liberal-arts education. They defend the fine or liberal arts, but none of these authors ground their defenses of liberal-arts education in art per se.1 All these writers sense an J. Scott Lee is the Executive Director of the Association for Core Texts and Courses. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Research University and Liberal Arts College Conference, held at Notre Dame University in Notre Dame, Indiana, 9-11 June 2013. 1. Andrew Delbanco hardily approves of Anthony Kronman’s greatbooks curriculum for the ideas it raises, and he cites the artes liberales ideal of education that Bruce Kimball has extensively documented as a tradition of aristocratic European liberal learning that opens the mind. But it is America’s “attempt to democratize” this tradition through its collegiate educations that really interests him (College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012], 33.) “Working to keep the ideal of democratic education alive,” Delbanco, in an extensive analysis of the past and present social conditions of col- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 15 ebbing of liberal education correlated with the economic, scientific, and technological conditions under which we live. Nearly leges as institutions, ultimately locates the “universal value of a liberal education” in the belief, derived from the nineteenth-century religious college, that “no outward mark—wealth or poverty, high or low social position, credentials or lack thereof—tells anything about the inward condition of the soul” (171). He transmutes this belief, today, into a liberal education whose “saving power” (171) that allows students to “ignite in one another a sense of the possibilities of democratic community” through “the intellectual and imaginative enlargement [college] makes possible” (172). He concludes, “we owe it to posterity to preserve and protect this institution. Democracy depends on it.” (177). Martha Nussbaum begins her “manifesto” in defense of the humanities and arts with a crisis in which “the humanities and the arts are being cut away in both primary/secondary and college/university education, in virtually every nation in the world.” This entails “discarding of skills that are needed to keep democracies alive.” In the survival of the humanities and arts within educational institutions “the future of the world’s democracies” is said to “hang in the balance” (Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010], 1-2). Notwithstanding a very serious concern with “ideals of freedom,” Anthony Kronman is less focused on the links between democracy and liberal education than on the links between the humanities and our culture (Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). He stresses particularly the humanities’ abandonment, within colleges and universities, of the search for meaning in our individual lives, and he warns against our scientific culture’s way of aggrandizing our technical powers without setting them within the limitations of human finitude. The combination, he believes, yields a kind of spiritual desiccation. Oddly similar to Kronman notwithstanding their published differences, Patrick Deneen argues that since the Enlightenment, greatness seems to rest in transformation, whereas before the rise of the New Sciences, whose authors often belittled ancient books, greatness rested in a “predominant understanding” of cultivated endurance, and an acceptance of the limits of human power, knowledge, and ambition. The modern great books program contains many scientific, political and economic works which support the idea of transformation. So Deneen asks, might �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW all find that the present responses of our institutions to these conditions impede rather than aid the robust maintenance or development of something like a liberal education. Most of their arguments rely on research, though their positions on whether research—scientific, bibliographic or otherwise—within a university favors or harms undergraduate liberal education tends to range Nussbaum on one side and Delbanco, Kronman, and Deneen on the other. In contrast, each author attempts to revive traditions of the liberal arts by linking them to current conditions of democracy, spiritual needs of cultures, or ethical understandings of faith. All believe that the souls of our students and our citizens are at stake, though of course they disagree about the constitution of the soul and the education designed to nurture it. A common concern among these authors is whether our cultural assumption that we can transform almost anything, particularly through the technology of science, is good for our souls and good for liberal education. For Nussbaum, technology appears as the attractive image of students in a lab—instead of pictures of students “thinking”—that administrators use to lure students to universities.2 Delbanco notes the advantage that the sciences have over the humanities in public evaluations: technological landmarks of progress, accompanied by an occasional historical or philosophic “breakthrough.”3 For Kronman and Deneen, technology is the differential gear which imparts varying force to science, culture, and education. Further, Kronman and Deneen come very close to each other in noting the meretricious effects upon our character and our sense of limits that technological achievement unleashes in the form of pleonexia. The humanities currently fail to oppose it (Kronman), or worse, education encourages it through there be an alternative way to think about the core texts of the ancient to medieval Western tradition, ultimately as a way of restraining our scientifically released pleonexia for mastering and transforming our world? He suggests great books might be justified by recovering this earlier understanding’s humility (“Against Great Books,” in First Things [January 2013], 35.) 2. Nussbaum, Not for Profit, 133. 3. Delbanco, College, 95. Apparently, literature does not rise to “breakthroughs.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 17 a philosophy of transformation, of creating original knowledge and innovations through research (Deneen).4 4. At one point, Kronman and Deneen come very close to saying—and meaning—the same thing. Kronman’s case for the humanities in large part rests on controlling technology through a recognition of human limits: “We have a desire for control that can never be satisfied by any degree of control we actually achieve. We always want more. . . . This is the human condition, which is characterized by our subjection to fateful limits that we can neither tolerate nor do without. . . . The most important thing about technology is not what it does but what it aspires to do. . . . Technology encourages us to believe that the abolition of fate should be our goal. . . . Technology discourages the thought that our finitude is a condition of the meaningfulness of our lives. . . . It makes the effort to recall our limits and to reflect upon them seem less valuable and important” (Kronman, Education’s End, 230-233). For Kronman, the research ideal is, of course, partly justified in the sciences by the “fruit”—both in discovery and in technology—that it produces: “The research ideal is today the organizing principle of work in every academic discipline. . . . In the natural sciences, the research ideal has proved remarkably fruitful. The new discoveries that pour from our college and university laboratories every year and the clear sense of progressive movement toward an objective understanding of the structure and mechanisms of the natural world testify to the productive fit between the natural sciences and the modern research ideal.” Whereas in the humanities “understanding,” but not a productive technology characterizes research results: “In the humanities . . . the benefits of research are less uniform or certain” (ibid., 130-133). Nevertheless “research in the humanities has produced results of lasting value. It has added importantly to our understanding of the historical, literary, artistic, and philosophical subjects with which the humanities deal.” The demands for specialization and for teaching to that specialization ought to be less insistently felt in the humanities: “What must be resisted is the imperial sprawl of the research ideal, its expansive tendency to fill every corner of each discipline in which it takes hold and to color the expectations and judgments of teachers in these disciplines regarding what they do. Admittedly this is asking a lot. . . . But . . . it is merely asking for a somewhat greater degree of humility on the part of those in the humanities who first allegiance is to this ideal” (ibid., 248-249). For Deneen, the (current) point of a philosophy of education is not to admire the world, or suffer its limits, but to change it, to transform it. �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Finally, while all these authors seem to be convinced that the products of arts are essential to any revival, and while they are skilled fashioners of argument in areas where no single discipline can claim precedence, the discussion of fine or liberal arts and their products is not in terms of art, but in the terms of the political, cultural, or religious end sought. For example, Nussbaum devotes large portions of her book exploring arts and a whole chapter to “Cultivating the Imagination: Literature and the Arts.” To Deneen, it seems that since the Enlightenment, greatness seems to rest in transformation. So he asks, might there be an alternative way to think about and assign terms to the core texts of the Western tradition, ultimately as a way of restraining our excesses in transforming our world? He begins by accepting a stasis in the political, moral, religious, and poetic inheritance of books that extends from the ancients through the first stirrings of modernity: “Great books such as Paradise Lost sought to inculcate a sense of limits, . . . we could look at a dominant understanding of a long succession of great books from antiquity to the Middle Ages . . . to conform human behavior and aspirations to the natural or created order” (“Against Great Books,” 35). By way of Baconian, Cartesian, and Hobbesian repudiation of books, Deneen elaborates the argument the he feels undermines the “human limits” understanding by trying to discriminate two kinds of liberty. The first, associated with great books, is a “liberty . . . of hard-won self-control through the discipline of virtue,” which often animates defenses of great books as materials in preparing for citizenship. The second is a liberty with “the stress . . . upon the research, creative activity, scholarly inquiry and the development of new knowledge” (ibid., 37). The former constrains our desires, the latter endlessly satisfies them through “the human project of mastery.” The latter pursuits were justified by the arguments of Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes, reinforced by Dewey, which depended on the idea “that a larger number of natural forces and objects [could be or] have been transformed into instrumentalities of action” in the West than in cultures which did not exploit the natural resources available through scientific technology (ibid., 36). Deneen concludes that we do need to teach these two competing notions of liberty through the great books, but defenders should exchange the notion of “greatness” for a notion of “humility” derived from the earlier works of the intellectual tradition represented in the West (ibid., 38). Humility might, then, restrain our excesses in regard to transformation. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 19 In the latter, we learn that “in order to be stably linked to democratic values, [both the artistic cultivation of capacities for play and empathy in a general way, and the treatment of particular cultural blind spots] require a normative view of how human beings ought to relate to one another . . . and, both therefore require selectivity regarding the artworks used.”5 A catalog follows of the failures of artworks, of “defective forms of ‘literature,” to cultivate the sympathy that Nussbaum desires. Undoubtedly, Kronman’s understanding of the search for meaning and his discussion of civilizational “conversation” depends on art; Delbanco’s distinction between research and reading instances canonical works from ancient to modern times; and Deneen’s argument is concerned with a residuum of teachings that earlier great books leave us. Yet, in these social-moral defenses, an entire line of argument concerning the arts is, for the most part, relegated to an instrumental, supporting, or ancillary role in a discussion that might be titled: “Social Conditions, Educational Institutions, and Individual Capacities: Wither Liberal Education?” I wish to suggest now that the ecology of liberal education defense could be enriched by also focusing on the arts of liberalarts education. Then we will see what liberal education’s relation to research, democracy, or culture might be when looked at through the lens of the arts. Please note that my preceding remarks are not meant to imply the absence of artistic works in liberal-arts programs, nor that some parts of those programs are not structured by the arts. For example Yale’s Directed Studies program has courses explicitly divided into three groups: Literature, Philosophy, and Historical and Political Thought. Clearly literature is art. Columbia’s Core’s program has the Literature/Humanities and the Contemporary Civilization sequences, not to mention the Music offerings. Again, no one doubts that this program involves art. What I am interested in are the rationales and justifications for programs using core texts that can be grounded in the liberal arts. Why is it important to develop a line of argument about arts 5. Nussbaum, Not for Profit, 108. �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to the point where we might see them in the guise of an end, not just a means, to liberal-arts education? Do you remember, about forty or fifty years ago, if you aspired to a bachelor degree, you chose either a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts? No one today questions whether a student possesses a science if she or he earns a B.S. What art or arts, however, do our students possess if they have earned a B.A.? So, if we claim to offer a liberal-arts education in undergraduate bachelor programs, it might not be amiss to ask what arts are our students learning and we are teaching. And asking such a question can enrich our view of liberal-arts education using core texts—whether of the Western tradition or not. When educators of any stripe are seeking renewal, they often resort to an examination of the past, so I thought the best place to begin a search for a renewal of liberal-arts education might be in a book by Bruce Kimball first published in 1986: Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education.6 The book’s scholarship and judicious consideration of a vast number of core texts, curricular materials, and the scholarly production surrounding liberal education make this work a seminal contribution to the history of liberal education. Kimball has paid much more explicit attention to the artes liberales educational ideal, especially in relation to the research ideal—or, as he styles it, the liberal-free ideal—than any current author we have examined. For our purposes he also reaches more thoroughly into the past. With the important exception of an unstable accommodation in a very few universities and colleges between these two ideals— Chicago, Columbia, St. John’s College being the primary examples—his extended history gives little comfort to the conviction that liberal-arts education, particularly in relation to democracy, has much of a chance of revival in most of today’s universities or colleges, precisely because of the success of the ideal of research throughout academe, and its allied notion of freedom. Kimball’s history, which extends from ancient Greece to late 6. Bruce Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education (New York: Teachers College, 1986; rev. ed., New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 21 twentieth-century America, reflects a two-fold tradition in education. A rhetorical liberal tradition complains about disarray and divisions of undergraduate education, while an epistemic, research quarrel among the fields of science, social science, and the humanities over “definitions of knowledge and culture” influences undergraduate education.7 These two educational traditions—the artes liberales ideal for citizenship and the liberal-free ideal for specialization—compete in public, graduate, and undergraduate contexts. To bring this competition down to earth at the undergraduate level: Kimball finds “it is supremely difficult for an undergraduate major . . . to coexist with a thorough [curricular] commitment to citizenship, virtues, the republic, and the appropriation of the textual tradition of a community.”8 The reason is that these two polarities, or ideals, are systematic: they entail different ends, characteristic qualities, and, ultimately, curricular expressions. Syntheses, accommodations, or blends of the two have limited appeal and, typically, short lives. The artes liberales accommodation is unstable partly because it cannot readily convince academics that classics are necessary to a critical intellect, and partly because its insistence upon exploring ancient texts “conflicts with the liberal-free mind” in its desire to range where it will.9 To varying degrees, then, Kimball anticipates the ambivalence that Kronman and Delbanco feel about reading great texts at the undergraduate level with modern research in mind. Kimball also anticipates Kronman and Deneen’s concern with the way in which the rise of science has shaped our educational institutions toward a research ideal and away from a reflective, characterbuilding liberal-arts education. And, in a strange twist of fate, Kimball also recognizes the role of the liberal-free ideal in harnessing science and research to the democratic and market-based national project of the United States. And in this he anticipates Nussbaum’s and Delbanco’s attempts to have our educational institutions, committed as they are to the research ideal, serve the 7. Ibid., 286. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 223, 225, 226. �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW national or international life of democracies—a role formerly reserved for the artes liberales ideal. In sum, historically and philosophically, with research and disciplines firmly entrenched by the rise of science in the modern university, all of these authors find themselves in a very difficult position. They sense a pervasive cultural and ethical emptiness related to the very institution of education to which their lives are committed. They resist this emptiness by offering an alternative end to liberal education—call it democracy, humanity, or faith—something other than research. Yet all supporters of liberal education are faced with an institutional history that is well documented and that holds out little hope (but let us not say no hope) of successfully wooing the disciplines and departments that mark universities and colleges to the ends of liberal education. Since all of these authors are interested in liberal education and in renewing its institutional life, it is not a fault that they should closely examine institutional histories of liberal education. But the origins of liberal-arts education were not entirely institutional. As I will argue shortly, before and even after the innovative congregating of lecturers into medieval universities, education in the liberal arts was often done outside an institutional context. This “outside” development matters because in one way or another almost all of our authors acknowledge institutional atrophy at various points in the history of liberal education. And if, today, liberal-arts education is institutionally “strangled” rather than atrophied, that is all the more reason to examine sources outside academe, or sources within academe that are not currently predominant in models of education, for inspiration in renewing liberal-arts education. In particular, the transition from Aquinas to Bacon has as its backdrop the rise of universities—but the actual stage was filled with liberal artists outside of academia who were actively developing new educations, arts, and sciences. The work of these liberal artists may provide us with generative—perhaps even transformative—models, grounded in the classics, that can contribute appreciably to institutional revival of the liberal arts. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 23 Through tracing the specific use of the words “liberal education” and “liberal arts,” Kimball concludes that, as a historical fact, liberal education based in a normative curriculum of the seven liberal arts simply didn’t exist until the late Roman Empire.10 Thus, the seven liberal arts, which eventually became the trivium and quadrivium, circumscribe what Kimball takes historically to be the instantiation of a liberal-arts curriculum. Under Roman development, the general artes liberales educational ideal becomes firmly tied to “the goal of training the good citizen to lead society,” as well as to the “prescription of values and standards for character and conduct,” through this normative curriculum.11 To cut a very complicated story short: this ideal and its primus-inter-pares art was rhetorical, and the situation remained so until the rise of the medieval university.12 That rise is accompanied by the rise of philosophy as the organizing discipline of university education. Kimball finds that when medieval universities began to concentrate on theoretical matters or systematic matters of philosophy, a “philosophic” curriculum replaced an oratorical one. This “revolution” and “transformation” is traced to “the rediscovery and translation of the lost philosophical learning of Greek antiquity, especially the corpus of Aristotle . . . [as well as] Arabic, Jewish and other Greek writings on mathematics and natural science.”13 But in Kimball’s analysis, the philosophic takeover of the liberal-arts curriculum does not give rise to a philosophic ideal associated with it that can be described as a systematic ideal for liberal education. One might have expected the liberal arts to have been strengthened by four developments that occurred during this time: the new relative importance of logic; the rise of “technical and schematized artes”; the formation of “a curriculum of liberal education dedicated to scientiae speculativae” within medieval universities; and the innovation of grammatica specu10. Ibid., 3, 25, 29. 11. Ibid., 37. 12. Ibid., 31-33. 13. Ibid., 58, and 61. �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW lativa as an investigation of the universal grammar that “underlies the different grammars of all languages.” On the contrary, the septem artes diminished in importance, largely owing to Aquinas’s dictum that “the seven liberal arts do not sufficiently divide theoretical philosophy” and the emergence of new studies in graduate programs. All of this led to a distinct separation of the seven arts from philosophy within the curriculum of new medieval universities.14 All of this leads Kimball’s argument to an unstated conclusion: the liberal arts were not being led by philosophy; they were slowly being trivialized or supplanted by it. To push the unstated conclusion a step further: despite many innovations in logic and grammar, as well as in mathematics, the scientiae speculativae that supplanted the liberal arts were not really sciences in our modern sense. So, to read backwards from Kimball’s Enlightenment identification of the liberal-free ideal’s characteristics, the medieval rediscovery of the ancients seems not to have been an exercise in “freedom from a-priori strictures and standards” nor “a critical skepticism” linked to “scientific method.”15 On the other hand, the humanists’ interest in oratorical skills allowed the liberal arts to flourish successfully outside the universities during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Kimball finds, that beginning with Petrarch’s interest in Cicero and Quintilian, the artes liberales ideal leads to a revival and spread of enthusiasm for literature among the general public, but a widespread revival of studying literary classics in the curricula of universities did not take hold until the middle of the fifteenth century.16 A similar historical development occurred in the emergence of modern science, notwithstanding Newton’s appointment at Cambridge, the pursuit of philosophy in the name of the New Science of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza led to a blockade of natural philosophy from the curricula of 14. Ibid., 66 and 71. 15. Ibid., 120-121. 16. Ibid., 80. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 25 universities. The philosophically based liberal-free ideal emerges outside of the universities, relying for its support on widespread Enlightenment attachment to freedom and rationality. The ideal does not shape curricula until it combines with the re-organization of German universities under the research program in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. That re-organization, in turn, leads to the destruction, in the U.S., of the more or less uniform liberal-arts curricula by the nineteenth century’s end.17 These historical threads, Kimball shows, are the roots of the two ideals that lay claim to the title of liberal education. Infrequent and mostly unstable accommodations between these two ideals, Kimball says, with a few precedents in the nineteenth century, only happened in the twentieth.18 Since the rhetorical ideal and its foundational art, rhetoric, was excluded from universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while the philosophical, liberal-free ideal and its new sciences were excluded from the sixteenth to nearly the end of the eighteenth centuries, the faculties shaping university curricula for long periods in the West have excluded one or another version—or, at least, significant portion—of what could be termed “liberal education.” So then, we might ask, in these periods where did liberal arts and liberal education go? Kimball recognizes that humanists outside the universities were concerned, beyond politics, with the “development of personality.” 19 In Bruni’s fourteenth-century letter to Lady Battista Malatesta of Montefeltro on “the Study of Literature,” this shift has importance to the ideal, the curriculum, and the goal of education. Bruni is addressing a woman who must, of course, “leave the rough-and-tumble of the forum entirely to men.” What, then, is she studying for? This turns out to be “human excellence,” which transcends the historical circumstances of political life: “There is, indeed, no lack of examples of women renowned for literary study and eloquence that I 17. Ibid., 146. 18. Ibid., 151, 153, 186, 221. 19. Ibid., 78. �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW could mention to exhort you to excellence.” Here Bruni cites Cornelia, Sappho, and Aspasia.20 The point of Bruni’s urging is to form a liberal education outside the university and the common expectations of men.21 In consequence, Bruni does not recommend a technical study of rhetoric, but rather a grammatical and broad “knowledge of sacred letters” (54), philosophy, and poetry. What Bruni is doing is explicitly substituting for the Ciceronian, highly developed, technical elaboration of rhetorical distinctions and artifices (no “practice of the commonplaces” nor study of “knotty quaestiones to be untied”) the broader literatures of history, philosophy, and poetry, which are exercised in writing.22 While his treatise’s intellectual roots lie in grammatical considerations of such authors as Augustine and Isadore, Bruni is accomplishing a re-ordering of liberal education that is new and innovative. It is neither directed toward philosophy in the medieval sense, nor directed toward salvation in the Christian sense, nor directed toward statecraft and citizenship in the Roman sense. The character one achieves is that of a fine artist. Invention is the principal organizing part of Ciceronian, and indeed Roman, rhetoric. Invention is the discovery or devising of things, arguments or signs, to render a case probable or true (De Inventione, I, vi, 9). As such, invention is embedded in the artes liberales ideal. Commonplaces or topoi are central to invention and (De Topica, I, ii 7; De Partitione Oratoria I, ii, 9; xx, 68) one of principal technical features which dialectic shares with rhetoric is the use of commonplaces or topoi. These features of invention, discovery, and commonplaces, ultimately, suggest ground of accommodation between Kimball’s two ideals. Three works beyond Bruni may serve as examples. Machiavelli’s Prince, in its operational concerns, its 20. Leonardo Bruni. “The Student of Literature To Lady Battista Malatesta of Montefeltro,” in Humanist Educational Treatises, trans. Craig W. Kallendorf (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 47-63. 21. Ibid., 47-48. 22. Ibid., 53, 55. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 27 focus on the problem of new states, and its topical organization of how to analyze a state or ruler’s situation falls well within the traditions of expedience and invention characteristic of the rhetorical tradition. Galileo’s Starry Messenger is the application of dialectical commonplaces derived from observation of nature. The moon is examined first as whole, which is light, and then as a whole which is dark; its parts are, then, divided into light and dark, and its boundaries into continuous and discrete.23 The entire treatise continues in similar fashion as it produces its four major discoveries. Finally, Bacon, readily acknowledging in the New Organon that current philosophy and arts are “use[ful] for supplying matters for disputations or ornaments for discourse,” distinguishes between “methods [of] cultivation” of those matters and “invention of knowledge” which he is engaged in developing.24 The sciences should be “methods for invention or directions for new works.”25 Yet, much of his analysis is directed less toward the experimental manipulation of phenomena, than the re-ordering of the mind, or “intellectual operations” by frameworks properly adapted to nature.26 The analysis of the blocks to scientific progress, occupying the first book of the New Organon, is presented as a series of “aphorisms,” a dialectical term indicating definitions or important distinctions. These aphorisms either move toward properly orienting the mind or showing that current systems of disputation, philosophy, and experience distract the mind. Indeed, Bacon sounds something like Bruni, for he says that, “my purpose [is not to ‘found a new sect of philosophy’ but] to try whether I cannot . . . extend more widely the limits, of the power and greatness of man.”27 By converting the principal part of rhetoric, invention, into its 23. Galileo Galilei. “The Starry Messenger,” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. and ed. by Stillman Drake (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 21-58, esp. 31. 24. Francis Bacon, “New Organon,” in Selected Philosophical Works, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), 63-206; 88, aphorism 8; 90.) 25. Ibid., 90, aphorism 8. 26. Ibid., 92, aphorism 18. 27. Ibid., 138, aphorism 118. �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW end, the aphorisms take on the character, not of persuasion or eloquence, but discovery. The “Interpretation of Nature” in Book II, which is either to increase man’s powers over natures or to discover the form of a nature, is carried on in aphorisms. And, in illustrating discovery which is subsumed under the invention of knowledge, Bacon outlines a procedure of collecting physical instances, instead of opinions, forming tables of instances (of the presence or absence of the nature in question), and, then, applying “induction”—that is, separation, inclusions, and exclusions of the sought for nature from other natures—based on the table of instances.28 Bacon criticized the arts and philosophies of his day as useless in the production of knowledge. Galileo tired of “long and windy debates.” Machiavelli pitted imaginary constructions of polities and ideal descriptions of human behavior against the usefulness of his treatise based in “realities.” Bruni not only found scholastic subjects to be useless, but also clearly tried to provide a liberal education for a woman while wondering whether the standard rhetorical arts educated men at all. I want to stress here that in the hands of these authors the liberal arts were essential in challenging and criticizing the learning that came before. Yet, however much all these authors argued their separation from the past or their differences with current versions of education, none of their protests can obscure the continuity of art that tied the past to the present. So the transition from Aquinas to Bacon was actually a roadway paved by innovation as individuals attempted to extend the liberal arts into many different areas—including, apparently, areas universities simply wouldn’t touch. Now, Kimball acknowledges that the artes liberales ideal incorporates a critical skepticism, yet, in the end, he concludes that this skepticism “misses the point of the scientific method: any conclusions inferred become new hypotheses and are always subject to challenge and criticism.”29 So, let us ask: While the hypothesis 28. Ibid., 178, aphorism 21. 29. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, 121, 172; see also 225-26. This same objection is reformulated in Kimball’s characterization of the mutual misunderstanding of each other’s position over the phrase “criticism of life” that Huxley and Arnold both employed. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 29 may well be essential to the science of a liberal-free ideal, is it the hypothesis or, on the contrary, the continuous growth of knowledge that is essential to the liberal-free ideal as a whole? Kimball was not the first to conclude that the German research university changed American institutions toward something like the liberalfree ideal. And research—not hypotheses or laboratories per se— is what changed higher education from within: Visiting American graduate students and professors returned from German universities enamored of the specialized scholarship, the commitment to speculative research, and, above all, the atmosphere of freedom they had seen in their host institutions. Particularly this latter aspect—Lehrfreiheit (freedom to teach what one wishes) and Lernfreiheit (freedom to study what one wishes)—impressed the Americans. [The atmosphere of freedom] was seen “to follow from the searching function, the presumption that knowledge was not fixed or final,” a presumption underlying all aspects of the idealized German university that the Americans took to be “dedicated to a search to widen the bounds of knowledge rather than merely to preserve the store of knowledge undiminished.”30 Thus, the question of whether hypotheses or the growth of knowledge is essential to the liberal-free ideal is not without significance. The former, representing science, tends to draw a firm distinction between the humanities and the sciences; the latter, representing the humanities, tends to admit that instances of significant mutual influence shape education. The former tends to restrict criticism to specialists. The latter tends to make criticism and critical thought dependent on broad views of knowledge. If in their artistic inventions Bruni, Machiavelli, Galileo, and Bacon were using the liberal arts, then, they were “proving opposites.” But they were not simply constructing arguments opposed to works of the past. They were constructing extensions of 30. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, 161, quoting Carl Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship: 1770-1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the arts they knew, the liberal arts. They thought that they were breaking with a past of instruction and knowledge in the liberal arts; yet, because arts proceed by invention, not hypothesis, these artists refashioned liberal-arts ends, principal parts, techniques, and devices, and made them suitable for new discoveries of knowledge, new feats of action, new methods of production, new formations of character, and new explorations for expanding the bounds of human inquiry. In other words, invention is the characteristic response of the liberal arts to the project of continuing the quest for knowledge. In our context, invention provided the bridge between old and new knowledge, while it simultaneously constructed both the distinction between past and future, and also the distinction between the sciences and the humanities. Thus, in the transition between Aquinas and Bacon, liberal-arts invention provided as much continuity as discontinuity. The foundation for an accommodation between the liberal-free ideal and the artes liberales ideal appears, therefore, to be inherent in the development of the New Philosophy or New Science, and, more deeply, inherent in the liberal arts themselves.31 The complex interrelations among the liberal-arts projects of Bruni, Machiavelli, Galileo, and Bacon suggest that the places to look for liberal education not only include institutional curricula, but individual instances that evidence liberal learning or 31. In 2003, the Association of Core Texts and Courses began a threeyear NEH grant, “Bridging the Gap Between the Humanities and Sciences.” The grant had three summer syllabi on “Motion and Natural Law in the Physical and Political World,” “Life, Origins, Purposivenesss, and Transformations,” and “Technology, Art, Values, and the Problems of Technoscience.” All three syllabi began with ancient Greek texts; the first ended with texts of the seventeenth century; the others ended with later texts. Teams from ten institutions—each composed of one humanist, one scientist, and one administrator drawn from any discipline—attended the sessions and to their home institutions to devise curricula and even teaching teams that “bridged the gap.” The whole effort was inconceivable without a liberal-arts orientation. See http://www.coretexts.org/projects-and-grants/neh-grant-bridging-thegap-between-the-humanities-and-sciences. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 31 education. All of these authors were learning via the liberal arts; only one of them was doing it in a university, and he found few who embraced his extension of dialectical methods. No curriculum for women existed until Bruni devised one for Lady Battista. No widespread method of science existed until Bacon articulated one. These examples of individuals practicing and acquiring liberal education outside of an academic institution show that an “artes liberales accommodation”—a synthesis of the artes liberales and liberal-free ideals of education— not only might have occurred earlier than we usually think, but also might have been more persistent and coherent in educational history than seems apparent. All of our authors demonstrate an acute awareness of the work of predecessors. Galileo is, of course, the patron saint of scientists; and though Bacon may or may not capture the essence of science, no one doubts he was advocating for what is recognized as modern science by first reviewing works and knowledge from the past. Thus, it was the liberal arts that first brought us research in its nascent form, before it reached the universities. Is there, then, an illustration of humanities research requiring liberal education by an individual after research reaches the universities? An example is depicted by Henry Adams in his book, The Education of Henry Adams.32 Adams was a man groomed by lineage and by a stale antebellum, Harvard liberal-arts education to become, later, one of America’s foremost specialized historians of the nineteenth century at his alma mater, during the very time that Harvard made the transition from a college to a research university.33 Yet, the book’s first person narrative shows that in the opening of his specialized historical study to any source of knowledge or human achievement, an opening which begins in the 1890’s well after his undergraduate education and his life as a professor had ended, Adams exhibits some of the finer uses of liberal-arts, core-text study. His service in 32. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams in Adams: Democracy, Esther, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, The Education of Henry Adams (New York: The Library of America, 1983), 715-1181. 33. Ibid., 777 and 993-997. �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Great Britain during the American Civil War, followed by comic revelations, some thirty years after the fact, by principals of the British government about their real motives in considering entering the war on behalf of the South in 1862, convinced Adams that private experience, or even, a research career devoted to historical analysis of American Presidencies, was too small a scale for adequate judgment of the motives of men—or, what was the same, “a chart of history.”34 This conviction was augmented, in part, by his friendship with John Hay, the Secretary of State, who quickened Adams’s interest in the international scale of human relations—the true locus, Adams ultimately decides, that determines the motives of human beings. Only as Adams moved from the local to the remote, only as he took an interest in symbols, only as he began to study seriously not only politics, but science, art, religious thought, and their core monuments—at Chartres, in the theology of Aquinas, in the dynamo, in the discoveries of Curie, in the art of LaFarge—and added these to his store of diplomatic and governmental knowledge—only then did he discover the Education of Henry Adams.35 The education Adams garnered at the end of his life was a preparation for a new theory, a new art, a new science—in this case a theory of history. But let us make a quick induction using all of the authors we have discussed. The proper use of education, and particularly the liberal arts, is to render students capable of making available to themselves the world’s cultural resources in order to construct a future. Adams’s employment of cultural history as the means for his re-education suggests, as do the works of our other authors, that no one should presuppose education begins with firm, well-grounded disciplinary assumptions and then proceeds to the mastery of the discipline’s tools. Actually, it seems to be quite the opposite: if we are to offer students real education, then we are obliged to abandon the presumption of given disciplines and construct a curriculum in 34. Ibid., 1105. 35. Ibid., 1066ff and 1109ff. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 33 which students may explore and conceive the foundations of disciplines for themselves.36 In constructing such curricula, there is an obvious need for liberal-arts education to select core texts. This brings us back to several arguments mentioned earlier: namely, that ancient, medieval, and early modern moral teachings can be reduced to restraint; or that a proper selection of texts can promote the correct democratic values and skills; or that the limitlessness of technology is destroying our culture and character. Each of these serious arguments may be true, but they simply don’t come close to expressing the fullness that a liberal-arts education can offer. The liberal arts have never been merely moral, ethical, political, and cultural. They are fundamentally inventive and transformative. We remember that Aeschylus disapproved so much of the blood-bath at the end of the Odyssey that he devised a tragic trilogy, the Oresteia, to celebrate the creation of the jury trial, in which justice, and not merely revenge, could be felt by all. I recall the attempt in Plato’s Republic to replace Homer with philosophy, and rhetoric with dialectic as the basis of education—and, perhaps, of society. We remember Aristotle writing—in a society that seemed unaware of human rights in general, and of the right of expression in particular—a treatise on art which defended its own governing principles. We recall that the Aeneid not only artfully incorporates the two Homeric epics, but also incorporates art into Aeneas’s education. In having Aeneas gaze upon the artfully wrought wall of Carthage, and upon Vulcan’s artfully wrought shield, and upon the artfully wrought belt of Turnus, Virgil incorporates art into the education of his hero— 36. I mean to suggest that by continuously returning to the principal parts of liberal arts—poetic and rhetorical invention, as well as dialectical discovery—the liberal arts and their associated core texts played a significant artistic role in developing the new philosophy or new science. In the same way, they may continue to develop human innovation today. This argument can be extended across civilizations backward in time, and forward toward the present-day sciences, particularly in their use of the humanities and liberal arts to explain themselves. Examples are: Darwin’s Origin of Species; portions of Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity; Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity; Feynman’s QED; Wilson’s Consilience. �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW an education into a vast enterprise beyond his ken—in a way that neither Homer nor most of the Biblical writers employ. We recall the importance of books—scriptures—to ancient Jews and Christians, not only in the canon that became the Bible, but in the remarkable synthesis of writers and texts that Ezra seems to have read to the people of Jerusalem as he united them after their second exile. We remember from the opening “archaeology” of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War the kind of works one reads matters. And we recall the sharp contrast between the Athenian virtues of Pericles’s “Funeral Oration” and the Judeo-Christian virtues of Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount”—the importance of the soul in each, together with the enormous differences of those souls and their purposes. And we remember Augustine’s struggle with the uses of the liberal arts and the wealth of pagan works his society possessed as he came to be not only one of the greatest expositors of the Bible, but also one of the chief agents who synthesized Athens and Jerusalem into a single educated culture. And so I think we arrive at a justification for great books or core texts which is, perhaps, essential if our moral, cultural, political, or religious perceptions of the past’s resources are to be made available to us in a way that is promising and fruitful. Often we read core texts from many disciplines to explore ideas as a way to enlarge student experience. This is laudable, but in exploring great ideas, it seems to me that we don’t want to lose the thread of our own story—I mean the story of making books. This is the story about writing books, about reading and contemplating them, and about building educations around them. As I have suggested above, the production of books is part of the larger story of made things, the story of art, technē. Technē has been a chief source of change in civilization almost since its inception, and if you want to learn how and why culture, religion, literature, philosophy, morals, and science change, you must read books of great depth and invention across genres, disciplines, cultures, and eras.37 When we do present 37. By a book I mean any written work that comes down to us, and which, of course, may be found in many different media—scrolls, velum, hypertext, and someday, I suspect, something like holographic-imaging ipods. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 35 the story of making books—and, more broadly, the story of developing arts—and when we build an education around them, it is not only our students who gain a powerful resource for building the future. We, the educators, do so as well. Specific liberal arts are instantiations of technē, that intellectual virtue concerned with making something out of the world of the variable, bringing something into existence that otherwise might not be. And the essence of a liberal-arts education is the development of artistry in relation to making—technē in relation to poiēsis. Here we approach, at first, what are collectively known as the fine arts. In a discussion of liberal education, literature has something of a pride of place in any list of fine arts because of the early development of the education fashioned by Isocrates and Cicero. Yet neither Isocrates nor Cicero best capture what freedom of artistry is about, as Aristotle did in the final chapters of the Poetics. Throughout the Poetics an argument builds that poetry is something more philosophic—more general—than history, and that, indeed, its function is not to narrate or dramatize “the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e., what is possible” [italics mine] (1451a 36). The argument continues to the end with a defense of poets and poetry against the challenges of philosophers, politicians, and technical disciplinarians who in their systems and educational plans always tie art to the truth. Aristotle reminds us that the standard of correctness “is not the same . . . in poetry (poiētikēs) as in politics or, indeed, in any other art (technē).” Indeed, if, an “error” in any art object was useful, if the poet meant to “describe [a thing] in some incorrect way . . . [so that] it serves the end of poetry itself,” then objections by other disciplines about the product or the artistry are really to no avail. This is even the case in moral questions, for in the Poetics Aristotle’s interest in poetry is not whether an action or character conforms to a specific ethical or political system, or models or cultivates a specific character in the audience; his interest is in what to consider when answering whether “something said or done in a poem is morally right or not.” That is, he is concerned with “intrinsic qualities of the actual word or deed,” as well as the agent, the purpose, the patient, the means, the time, and the relations of the actions to greater or lesser goods or evils. �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW More generally, then, Aristotle’s Poetics is far less concerned with constructions that use rhythm, language, and harmony as matters of truth, than as matters of what might be: “If the poet’s description be criticized as not true to fact, one may urge perhaps that the object ought to be as described—an answer like that of Sophocles, who said that he drew men as they ought to be” (1460b33-35). In the Poetics, Aristotle takes poetry’s side by constructing a dialectical defense. The defense depends on a criticism which investigates poetry in its own terms, that is, in the internal functioning of its products. In this sense, when we come to consider the construction of curricula of books, the Poetics, notwithstanding Aristotle’s statements about liberal education in his Politics, structures a liberal-arts education and promotes the free character that it produces, for such an education is less a study of the truth, than of the possibilities humans have invented and made for themselves. The point is extendable to all books, as well as to literature and artistry from any discipline. Thus, a similar point about the object of a liberal education is suggested by Aristotle for “literary” constructions such as Bruni’s, Machiavelli’s, Galileo’s, and Bacon’s. Aristotle makes a distinction in his Parts of Animals between “two distinct kinds of proficiency”: “scientific knowledge” and “educational acquaintance” with any subject. Indeed, the mark of a “universal [i.e, general] education” is for the holder of such an education to “to be able to form a fair offhand judgment as to the goodness or badness of the method used by a professor in his exposition.” And this acquired ability applies to “all or nearly all branches of knowledge” (639a1-10). Subsequently, Aristotle constructs a dialectical set of questions pertaining to characteristics of animals and the processes which lead to the formation of those characteristics, as well as a review of how earlier authors had treated both characteristics and processes. And, indeed, he analogizes this treatment arising out of general education to analyses of art (640a25-33). In sum, tracing the invention of fine arts or sciences or the characteristics and foundations of such arts and sciences relies on a process of “criticism” (kritikon) “quite independent of the question whether the statements [in a work] be true or false” (639a14-15). What is at stake educationally is knowledge of the available and variable �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 37 means of construction for any given art or science. This is what freedom in artistry is. Education needs institutions and curricula in which students can acquire the arts that make such constructions available. I have used Bruce Kimball’s distinctions between the artes liberales and liberal-free ideals and traditions of education to suggest that the accommodations in higher education during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries may have stronger, longer, more continuous historical foundations than seem apparent from educational documents and curricula created during the same period. So far we have seen that the principal parts of the liberal arts— rhetorical invention and dialectical discovery—played a significant artistic role in developing the new philosophy or new science ideal. Furthermore, we have seen that the long tradition of the liberal arts is concerned with transformative arts, ideas, and culture. And, finally, we have seen that the free character of a liberal artist is not only a propaedeutic for research, but also a source of invention and imagination for the future. Each of these considerations seems to have implications for the future of the liberal arts in research universities and colleges. If it is plausible that the liberal-arts accommodation—that is, recognizable liberal-arts curricula, innovation, and a productive, but not stifling, link to research—has stronger, systematic ties to education than might be suspected, then we should see these ties in histories of institutions, as well as in analyses of the place of liberal-arts education up to the current time.38 Kimball focuses on the liberal-arts influ38. Certainly, Kimball’s analysis that a artes liberales accommodation had real intellectual impetus and some institutional steam by the end of the nineteenth century is right. Indeed, I think Adams is an individual instance. But because faculties in the early modern era used to exclude either the artes liberales ideal or the research ideal, educational historians should not expect to find many instantiations of institutional artes liberales accommodations until sufficient “steam” develops. Nonetheless, there was some inherent intellectual “inertia” for an accommodation much further back in history than the nineteenth century, and that inertia, while not a driving force, is still significant for institutions even at the beginning of the twenty-first century. �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ences of a complex of three related universities and colleges—Columbia, Chicago, and St. John’s. Although he analyzes them quite sympathetically and sensitively, he nevertheless regards them as unsuccessful accommodations—not because their programs foundered, but because their models failed to spread widely, and when they did spread, they tended not to persist. Let me take Chicago as my example in this regard, and discuss the opinions of two key figures in its relation to core texts and liberal arts: Richard McKeon and Leo Strauss. Strauss first. To cut very short his very complex analysis of liberal education: the history of Western culture is the history of solving the problems of governance in a democracy, ultimately by creating a democratic aristocracy of citizens educated in their country’s and culture’s intellectual traditions of political science and freedom. The current problems of governance involve providing wisdom to guide the technological and dehumanizing influences of modern science and systematic tyranny. The great books stand as a bulwark in this fight: through them, citizens can discuss what they should value. For researchers like Strauss, the historical investigation he outlines is education: “education is in a sense the subject matter of my teaching and research.” Political science is the science of liberal education.39 For McKeon, the Chicago approach to general eduction— which is to say, the university approach—is grounded in disciplines and relates them through broadening and widening arts, methods, ideas, and even sciences. The innovation at Chicago was not that professors were to survey ever wider swaths of subjects. Nor was it that a professor was to give courses in highly developed specialized methods that were then to be applied to previously unsuspected areas of study. Rather, the innovation was that, to broaden the context in faculty discussions of the so-called humanities, “the methods employed and developed were the lib39. This admittedly truncated summary is derived from “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 9-25, and “What Is Liberal Education?”, ibid., 1-8. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 39 eral arts.” Those discussions, using different liberal arts, were necessarily interdisciplinary. In other words, they related one liberal art to another, or one formulation of a discipline to another, via the liberal arts. For McKeon, general education implied purposeful interdisciplinary attempt to unify the fractured humanistic subjects and departments through methodical (which is to say, artful) inquiry—even when disciplines disagreed on what was said about their subjects.40 The point of McKeon’s discussion of the Chicago new college was that the design of the college, implied by Hutchins’s stated design of the general education he outlined in the Higher Education in America, was to transform graduate schools and the organization of their disciplines, even their research, through general education.41 In these ways, McKeon’s education orders a free character, but the ordering is to knowledge, not to wisdom, or prudence, or even citizenship. In both cases, the liberal-free ideal was accommodated to the artes liberales ideal in that the liberal arts were being used to invigorate research and curricula, not the other way around. The varieties of Chicago curricula and programs, the conceptions of liberal education that arose out of the different divisions, and the faculty who met there and migrated elsewhere created a pluralism of ideas about liberal-arts education through great books or core texts. These different visions have generated a plethora of liberal-arts developments in institutions around the world. To point to just a few: Shimer College, Saint Mary’s College of California, the University of Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal Studies, Thomas Aquinas College, the University of Dallas, the Erasmus Institute, the Liberal Arts College of Concordia University in Montreal, the Chinese University of Hong 40. Richard McKeon, “Criticism and the Liberal Arts: The Chicago School of Criticism” in Profession 1982, ed. Phyllis P. Franklin and Richard I. Brod, (New York: Modern Language Association, 1982), 2-4. 41. I have argued this more thoroughly, both in a speech given at Marroquín University (see note 44 below), and in a speech delivered in the Public Lecture Series at Shimer College: “Re-thinking Universities and Hutchins: Faculty and Student Resistance to Core Text Curricula,” which can be found on the web at http://j.mp/j-scott-lee-at-schimer-college. �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Kong, and Boya College of Sun-Yatsen University are all of them in some way closely or distantly intellectually, educationally, and personally related to the three institutions mentioned above. All of these institutions have had self-reflective faculty who have published materials on some aspect of liberal-arts education. One of them, The University of Dallas, developed a great books program in literature unrelated to Chicago/Columbia/St. John’s, and then welcomed Straussians to teach in their core. All of them have different configurations of curricula, different internal organizations, different purposes for a baccalaureate, and different relations between general education and research.42 The accommodationist ideal has, in fact, stimulated 42. Prior to arriving at Chicago, McKeon and Mortimer Adler were involved together at Columbia with the professors who developed the Contemporary Civilization core sequence and, later, the Literature-Humanities core sequence. Ultimately, each of these sequences replaced the departmental offerings of general education courses that, in the early twentieth century, had preceded the requirements for graduation from Columbia. To this day, Columbia offers a bachelor’s degree without a major. Scott Buchanan was involved in adult education spin-offs of Columbia in New York City before he and Hutchins came to Chicago to develop liberal education programs. Saint John’s College developed, partly, out of this complex of institutions and personalities. St. John’s curriculum entirely eschewed the departmental-disciplinary basis of the Chicago program, while it retained the liberal arts, and it explicitly identified its program with the great books and authors of the Western world. In 1953, Notre Dame, in large part through the work of Otto Byrd, whose teachers included Adler, McKeon, and Etienne Gilson (Otto Byrd, My Life as A Great Bookie, [San Francisco : Ignatius Press, 1991], 46 ff. and 66ff.) organized a three-year major called the Program of Liberal Studies on the basis of disciplinary courses that stretch across all the fields found at Chicago; but Notre Dame retained the idea of interdisciplinary reading seminars that characterized St. John’s program. A 1941 article by Adler, delivered to the American Catholic Philosophical Association’s Western Division, on “The Order of Learning” (in The Moraga Quarterly [Autumn 1941]: 3-25) sparked at first a short-lived attempt (1943-44) and then the enduring establishment of classics-based liberal-arts education programs at Saint Mary’s College of California; this ultimately resulted �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 41 the invention of institutions and innovative programs that are enormously different. Rhodes College’s “Search” courses (formerly “Man” courses) and Yale University’s Directed Studies Program illustrate innovations not depending on personal conin a St. John’s-like program for a major, alongside a four-semester great books program taken by those who majored in a discipline. (See What Is It To Educate Liberally? Essays by Faculty and Friends of St. Mary’s College [St. Mary’s College: Office of the President, 1996], 1-28). Though modified, both programs are still running. Shimer College adopted one version of the Chicago-Hutchins, or “new college,” curriculum, but it has no departments and, for the baccalaureate, only four general concentrations, including one in science; it has carefully staged integrative courses and requirements in every year of its curriculum. Straussians graduated from Chicago and went, in particular, to the University of Dallas. There, in conjunction with literary specialists who formed a core sequence of genre studies unrelated to political science that was conceived by Louise and Donald Cowan (who were in turn influenced by southern critics at Vanderbilt), the university faculty formed a disciplinary core leading to majors that had no interdisciplinary courses but was founded on great books. This new curriculum transformed the education at that institution. The University of Dallas founded the only graduate program explicitly using the Western Great Books, which offers three PhDs in political science, philosophy, and literature. Its graduates not only have staffed institutions across America, but also have helped to re-organize the New England Political Association so that there is a “core text/political philosophy” section of the Association’s annual meeting that contributes more than a third of the papers at the meeting. Meanwhile, at Columbia, William Theodore deBary rejected Adler’s and Hutchin’s contention that great books education had to consist only of books from the Western tradition. For over fifty years, and continuing to this day, deBary has translated or collaborated in the translation of Chinese texts, and has argued for the inclusion of these texts in some courses of the Columbia core. Although his work took place during the period when China has risen to threaten the U.S. while at the same time destroying its own cultural traditions in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, deBary’s work has no tinge of cultural superiority about it, for it is not rooted in Greek education or Enlightenment political philosophy as is Strauss’s. In so far as he is concerned with the core program at Columbia, deBary wishes to “liberate the powers of the indi- �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tact with the complex of institutions above, but emerging rather from an awareness of problems and solutions in general education.43 vidual by disciplining them” (Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, 4). His work is part of a larger effort by the University Committee on Asia and the Middle East to incorporate Chinese, Indian, and Islamic texts into the core, as well as to develop sophisticated research programs. St. John’s, motivated by its own experience in teaching great works, has also developed at its Santa Fe campus a masters degree in Eastern Classics, reading and discussing Indian and Chinese texts. In 1978, Frederick Kranz, a graduate of Columbia, along with Harvey Shulman and Geoff Fidler, establish a three-year liberal-arts baccalaureate college founded on the Western great books tradition at Concordia University in Montreal. In the Far East, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, under the direction of Cheung Chan Fai and Mei Yee Leung, recently developed a two-course sequence in the humanities and sciences based on great texts of the West and East, which owes part of its development both to Chicago and to Columbia. This program provides a selection of general education courses to fulfill the Chinese government’s mandate that higher education institutions convert from the European, specialist, three-year baccalaureate to the American, mixed, four-year baccalaureate. This list of institutions shows almost all the related forms and affiliations of the accommodated liberal-arts ideal as it is beginning to spread from North America into the wider world. And yet this list hardly enumerates the whole network of core text programs found worldwide, nor does it describe the role of the liberal arts in actually shaping that network. 43.Michael Nelson, ed., Celebrating the Humanities: A Half-Century of the Search Course at Rhodes College (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), 3-31, begins with a post-World War I narrative of Charles Diehl’s attempts to bring liberal education to Southwestern (now Rhodes) College between the 1920s and 1950s. This program was based in Christian traditions, but with an awareness of the educational innovations at Columbia, Chicago, and Vanderbilt. Justin Zaremby’s Directed Studies and the Evolution of American General Education (New Haven: The Whitney Humanities Center of Yale University, 2006), 32ff., says that Maynard Mack, educated entirely at Yale, helped to devise and found the program with Dean William Clyde DeVane. Mack was seeking to solve the problems of “choice” that had arisen in general education, which were the cause of the differences between Hutchins and Dewey. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 43 To a large extent, the Association of Core Texts and Courses (ACTC) is a result of these accommodations and innovations.44 There have been two chief vehicles for ACTC’s growth, both related to the liberal arts. The annual Conference is the first vehicle, the Liberal Arts Institute, the second. As a pluralist, my goal as director of ACTC has been to maintain cross-disciplinary, general-education discussions notwithstanding higher education’s habits of narrow disciplinarity. Part of what is at stake in having such discussions is fairly obvious: faculty members get exposed to ways of thought about their own disciplines that they will 44. A precursor to this paper was delivered as a speech entitled “Accommodating the Core Texts Tradition of Liberal Arts in Today’s Universities: History, ACTC, and Marroquín—An International Phenomenon,” to the faculty of Marroquín University in Guatemala, in September of 2012. At this point in the text, the speech noted that “the Association for Core Texts and Courses was co-founded by Stephen Zelnick and myself in 1995 in order to bring together programs that used common readings, taught in common courses, by shared faculty. The idea was originally Zelnick’s, who was Director of Temple University’s Intellectual Heritage Program—a two course sequence of texts from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities stretching from ancient to modern times required of every Temple undergraduate. He had discovered that the wide variety of professional associations at the time did not really address educational issues of these kinds of programs. As the organization grew, it encouraged faculty and institutions to develop and use their own core text programs in their own fashion for their own institutional missions. . . . After the first organizing conference, under my direction, ACTC conferences took on the following structure: originally, paper proposals were organized into panels over two days with each session exclusively devoted to one of four categories: Interdisciplinary Questions, Science, Social Science, or the Arts & Humanities, accordingly characterized by texts, problems, or disciplines discussed—but not by faculty presenters. That is, if you were a humanist and wished to address Newton’s Principia, that was fine. After about seven years, the membership voiced a desire to have panels of the four categories appear in each session. Generally, this movement by the membership was an effort to allow conferees to attend the fields, perhaps the disciplines, which they were most comfortable with.” �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW rarely encounter at disciplinary conferences. Another part of what is at stake is a little more subtle, though it can be found in almost all the works I have discussed. Many core texts serve a dual role in intellectual history: on the one hand, they help to found or articulate a discipline; on the other hand, their ideas, deep-seated attitudes, or basic techniques migrate across disciplines. This is true in regard both to Eastern and Western texts. So, for both of these reasons, the determination to keep discussing great texts at ACTC conferences plays an essential role in maintaining the liberal-arts orientation of the organization. ACTC does not have a list of canonical texts that must be addressed in papers read at its conferences, though the “usual suspects” among ancient and modern authors frequently appear on its panel sessions. There is an insistence that every paper address a core text for at least three quarters of a page in a five-page paper.45 The treatment of the text is up to the conferee. But what is most important is whether a given text within a proposal, or a set of texts within a collection of proposals, will spark an exchange of ideas about the ideas themselves, and about the programs, the texts, the teaching, or other matters of liberal-arts concern. This is a matter of perception, not a matter of doctrine, established argument, or disciplinary governance. It is frankly remarkable how many panels actually cohere quite well using texts as the starting point for potential inquiry and discussion— whether the panels are disciplinary or interdisciplinary in focus. ACTC is filled with accomplished scholars and teachers, but it exists to promote conversations about texts among faculty members across institutions, programs, and disciplines. Here we enter a fertile field deeply furrowed by a distinction Bruce Kimball discusses at the beginning of Orators and Philosophers: the distinction between ratio and oratio. Disciplinary conferences 45. ACTC has published to date ten selected, peer-reviewed proceedings. Seven more are in various states of pre-publication. It also helped to support the publication of Bruce Kimball’s The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2010), which made selections of core texts in the tradition available to a wider public. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEE 45 exist to offer extended versions of the ratio of a discipline—long papers and complex panel sessions marked by highly specialized arguments, and offering little actual time for serious questioning and discussion. ACTC’s conferences exist for a quite different reason. The first sentence of Aristotle’s Rhetoric is, “Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic.” The Greek word translated here as “counterpart” is antistrophē—as in the return dance of the chorus that leads to their exit from the stage. This, of course, makes dialectic into the strophe, and this has important implications for the relation of these two verbal arts. First, one needs to know which direction one is headed in. This is not always easy to figure out, given the nature of language and the closeness of the two arts. Because the intention of the conferences is to produce serious discussion around the seminar table, the brevity of the papers leaves the direction of the conversation open. Second, even if a presenter’s argument is either mainly rhetorical or mainly dialectical, the ensuing conversation will likely lead, at least, to reflections on what the argument would look like from the viewpoint of the other art. Since there is no list of canonical works and no standard set of disciplinary preconceptions that contain conversations within pre-set boundaries, ACTC presenters are asked at least to consider a rationale for why their text should be considered a world classic or a text of major cultural significance. If this defense were being made to a disciplinary audience, it might well be entirely dialectical, since the audience already agrees on the basic outlines of what belongs within the discipline’s boundaries. But because the audience at ACTC’s conferences are interdisciplinary, such defenses must be at least partly rhetorical, insofar as it is aimed at persuading listeners from many disciplines to consider a text for inclusion in a liberal-arts program. Even here, however, such a defense would become dialectical if it focuses on what the liberal arts, a discipline, a text, or an idea contributes to our understanding of education. At the close of Orators and Philosophers, Kimball makes a well pointed observation: In the academy “there is rarely a recognition that the means to accomplish the resuscitation of the community of learning lie in elevating and emphasizing the study of �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW expression, rhetoric, and the textual tradition of the community. Yet the means are self-evident. A community is, after all, a group of people who talk to each other and do it well. This view of community was dear to Socrates, no less than to Cicero.”46 This is what ACTC promotes: the opportunity for faculty members, through the liberal arts and its traditions across all disciplines, to co-operate in discussing, planning, and implementing general-education curricula. It is very much interested in oratio, in the expression of thought, communicated to others, that concerns itself with the available resources of intellectual traditions across disciplines and cultures, and with the invention of educational programs that transmit the arts of absorbing and using those resources. Its continuing mission is to join with all those who share these aims to promote the invention, enrichment, and development of more core text, liberal-arts programs in universities and colleges of the future. 46. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, 240. �47 Definition and Diairesis in Plato and Aristotle Jon Lenkowski The understanding of the essential definition that has come down to us in modern times is traceable to Aristotle’s account of horismos in Book II of the Posterior Analytics. That is, we understand, as Aristotle did, that by defining something, we “capture” it in such a way that the definition completely “encloses” what is defined and delimits it from other things. But common opinion—everyday understanding—makes a much bolder claim, namely, that we only know something when we have defined it and that, correspondingly, to define something is to specify its nature, its essence, its whatness—to say, in other words, what it is. Is this claim legitimate? We know this question, “What is something?” to be peculiar to Socrates; in fact we call it the Socratic question. To ask my question about the legitimacy of common opinion’s claim, then, in a somewhat different way: Was Socrates, in asking just this very specific question, looking for a definition? Does the question “What is something?” seek a definition? And, conversely, does definition give us the “what is” of something, the “what is” of the thing defined? In Book II of the Posterior Analytics Aristotle says, “definition is thought to be [italics mine] of the ‘what is’.” (“Horismos tou ti estin einai dokei.” [90b4]). And again: “Since definition is said to be an account of the ‘what is’. . . .” (“Horismos d’epeidē Jon Lenkowski is a tutor emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This essay was presented as a lecture at St. John’s College and elsewhere. The author is especially indebted to Seth Benardete, Stewart Umphrey, Peter Widulski, and Robert Williamson who were kind enough to read one or another version of the essay over the years and offer helpful advice. �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW legetai einai logos tou ti esti. . . ” [93b29]. Italics in translation from the Greek are the author’s.) But if definition is not only thought to give the “what is” of something, but also really does give it, then there ought to be no difficulty at all in answering the “what is” question. Yet finding an adequate answer to this question particularly is just what the dialogues present as the most difficult of tasks. And this may indicate that a “definition” is not, after all, what the question is asking for. What exactly is it that definition attempts and what does it actually accomplish? What exactly is it that definition gains for us? What exactly is it that we do when we “define” something? Precisely what is it that we know (or think we know) when we possess the definition of something? An examination of this cluster of questions ought to show that “definition” must fail to meet whatever demand the “what is” question is making upon us. A horismos is the result of a horizein, a “bounding” or limiting. A horismos is thus that within which the defined is contained; it is the outline of the thing. But in so limiting, the horismos “delimits,” or sets off, the defined from other things. Thus it is that horismos is translated by “definition” (Latin definitio): a “de-fining” is literally a de-limiting. Does delimiting give us the “what is”? To answer this question we must first turn from Aristotle to Plato; for horismos understood as a delimiting derives directly from the Platonic “division” (diairesis). Diairesis is a dividing with begins with some rather comprehensive class (genos) and ends in a horismos, which is also a class, though a very limited one. Sophist 219a-221c provides an example of such a division: Here Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger are preparing to hunt down the sophist, to discover what the sophist is. The Stranger has a “method” for the hunt (namely, division), but he thinks that, before hunting something as difficult as the sophist (they have him only in name at the outset [218c]), they ought to practice this method by first hunting something “easier”; and he proposes “the angler” as their practice quarry. Fig. 1 is a schematic presentation of the steps that hunt and capture the angler by division. As the scheme shows, it takes nine divisions to capture the quarry. It should also be noticed that in the fourth division there is �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LENKOWSKI 49 Art (Techne) 1 Productive Acquisitive 2 By Exchange By Capture or Coercion 3 (Openly) Disputation/Fighting (In secret) Hunting 4 Of Lifeless Things Of Living Things (specifically animals) 5 Of Land Animals Of Fluid Animals 6 Of Winged Animals (Fowling) Of Water-bound Animals (Fishing) 7 By Enclosures By Striking 8 At Night (Fire-hunting) Daytime (Barbhunting) 9 With Spears: Proceeding Downward from Above (Tridentry) Fig. 1: Division of the Angler With Hooks: Proceeding Upward from Below (Angling) �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW an abrupt shift from procedure to object sought, and that in the seventh division there is an abrupt shift back to procedure. Should we be troubled by the fact that no justification at all is given for these two shifts? There may indeed be other peculiarities about this and the other examples of presented by the dialogues. We will return to some of these peculiarities in a short while. It is the diairesis that progressively tightens the enclosure; the horismos is the final enclosure, the enclosure brought to its tightest possible state—this being determined both by the starting point and by the manner in which the division was executed. Four dialogues give accounts of diairesis: 1. Phaedrus 264e266b; 2. Sophist 219a-221c (id. 221d, ff. and 264c ff.); 3. Statesman 258b, ff.; 4. Philebus 16c-17a. Sophist and Statesman provide by far the lengthiest illustrations, but Phaedrus and Philebus give the most succinct generalized accounts.1 There are, in the dialogues, two prescriptions for division: 1. to divide according to eide, according to the “natural joints” (kat’arthra), try1. There are numerous studies of diaresis. The following have been consulted in writing this essay: A.C.Lloyd, “Plato’s Description of Division” in Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics, ed. R.E.Allen (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), 219-230. Seth Benardete, “Plato Sophist 223bl-7” in Phronesis 5 (1960): 129-139. Seth Benardete, “Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato’s Statesman” in Philologus 107: 3/4 (1963) 193-226. Jakob Klein, “On Precision” in Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 289-308. Jakob Klein, Plato’s Trilogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), Parts 2 and 4. Julius Stenzel, Studien zur Entwicklung der platonischen Dialektik (Leipzig: Teubner, 1931), especially ch. 4-8. Julius Stenzel, Zahl und Gestalt bei Platon und Aristoteles (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1959), especially ch. 2-4, 6. J. B. Skemp, Plato’s Statesman (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), 66-82. G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 148-161. Francis M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), 184-187. Reginald Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedrus (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, n.d.), 131-137. Reginald Hackforth, Plato’s Examination of Pleasure (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, repr.) 20-24. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LENKOWSKI 51 ing not to break any part (Phaedrus 265e1-3); 2. to cut “through the middle” (dia meson), which is the safest way, and the way more likely to find ideai (Statesman 262b6-7, e3; 265a4-5). In the Prior Analytics (46a-b) and in the Posterior Analytics (91b ff.), Aristotle presents an objection to the use of diairesis in demonstration, on the grounds that diairesis does not give the ti ēn einai of something, but really gives two exclusive alternatives (that is, an exclusive disjunction); those who use it as a method of proof, however, do not treat this as a disjunction but, discarding one side of the division, they really assume already what they think they are in the process of proving. But, though he criticizes diairesis as a method of proof or demonstration, he nevertheless allows that it can be useful in reaching a horismos—as long as the division is made, at each stage, into opposites which have no intermediates (an ēi antikeimena hōn mē esti metaxu [Posterior Analytics 97a21-22]), for this would be the only way to assure the exhaustion of the genus. The divisions as actually carried out by example in the dialogues, however, do not remain true to these prescriptions. This not only suggests a disparity between the prescriptions as “ideals” and the concrete application of this “method,” but, even more important, it calls into question the prescriptions themselves.2 As for Phaedrus’s prescriptions, where are the “natural joints”? Would it be possible to determine these with any certainty? Or would such a determination of these “natural joints” be itself already a dividing? Would it be itself already having performed the division? And then what would be the prescription for this division? To begin with some genus and divide it into its “natural joints” would, moreover, seem to presuppose a prior knowledge of the genus and of its internal differentiation. But then what would the division itself accomplish? 2. See Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy, 149-150. On the impreciseness of the divisions in the Statesman, see Skemp, Plato’s Statesman, 71-72 and Benardete, “Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato’s Statesman,” 196 ff. On the impreciseness of the division in the Sophist, see Benardete, “Plato Sophist 223bl-7.” On the impreciseness of diairesis in general, see Klein, “On precision,” 295-302. �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW As for Statesman’s prescription, how could you ever be certain that you had “cut through the middle”? At Sophist 220a6-8, for example, is the division of animal into land-animal and fluidanimal (neustikon) made “through the middle” of animal? How indeed could we be sure that we had cut through the middle? Can we be certain that such a cut would not be into a “greater” and a “lesser”? How could we know where the “middle” is? There are innumerable ways of dividing the class animal into two. What bearings do we have for determining which—if any—of these cuts through the middle? Of all the possible ways of dividing animal into two, what tells us to divide according to the particular division between land-animal and fluid-animal? Would this division even be possible, unless we were directed to do so by the very object of our search—that is, unless our procedure were guided already from the outset by the object we are seeking? But if we already know this, then what does the division accomplish? Furthermore—supposing one could do it—why should division cut through the middle in the first place? Is it so certain that this is the most advisable and the safest procedure? As for Aristotle’s prescription, how could we be certain that we had made an exhaustive and exclusive dichotomy at each step in the division? In order to do this, wouldn’t we have to know already the genus and its inner differentiation? And then what would the division accomplish? In the Sophist something curious happens. In hunting down the sophist, the initial division had been made in terms of hunting—and yet this category comes to be abandoned completely, for the sophist comes to be understood ultimately in terms of image-making (eikastikē), and not at all in terms of hunting. In the Statesman too, one of the divisions is made in terms of nurturing herds—yet this is abandoned, and the statesman comes to be understood in terms of weaving. But why doesn’t where we end up reflect where we began? What has happened to the rigor of method here? Why are we being led so unambiguously to see 3. Skemp, Plato’s Statesman, 67 ff., claims (correctly, I believe) that Statesman’s account of diairesis is really the Platonic criticism of it as a “method.” Klein, “On Precision,” 301-302, suggests that the excesses �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LENKOWSKI 53 the defects in this “method” called diairesis?3 All of these questions remain unanswered, both in the prescriptive and in the illustrative accounts of diairesis. This makes the procedure questionable, even suspect. And it makes us ask exactly what it is that diairesis does do. And if this “ procedure” starts to look like a spurious one, then we have to ask why it is put forth in the dialogues at all. In an attempt to answer this question, let me rehearse what happens in the early divisions made by the Stranger and Theaetetus in the Sophist. In tracking the sophist-as-salesman (223b9-224e5), the sophist suddenly shows up as a “maker of soul-goods” (224d7), thereby collapsing the original distinction (219a8-c9) between acquisition and making—between those arts which gather and those which make.4 Earlier, in tracking the sophist-as-hunter (221c5-223b7), the sophist suddenly shows up as a “hunter-forpay” (222d7), whereby he has slid over into the class of salesman, from which hunting had been originally distinguished. Thus the sophist constantly switches classes, indicating that the divisions made by this so-called “method” were not precisely made. In thus sliding over into the class of salesman, moreover, he is not forced completely out of the class of hunting; he is now in two classes previously distinguished as exclusive of one another, but is not completely either of them. The Stranger says that the sophist’s art is a “many-sided” one (223cl-2). And within the selling art itself, he turns up in three distinct classes: 1. as a merchandiser of soul-goods; 2. as a retailer of soul-goods made by others; and 3. as a retailer of soul-goods made by himself (224d11-e3). The sophist subsequently shows up in three more divisions, in terms of 1. the art of contesting or disputing (agōnistikē [225a-226a]), 2. the art of discriminating or distinguishing (diakritikē [226c-231b]), and 3. the art of image-making (eikastikē and deficiencies of diairesis in Statesman are possibly correctible by appeal to and reliance on paradeigmata, “examples.” Cf. Benardete, “Eidos and Diaeresis,” 194 ff. 4. Cf. the schematic presentation in Fig. 1 above. �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW [235b ff.]), and he is accordingly given three more definitions, none of which encloses him fully. From the outset, the Stranger and Theaetetus are in search of the sophist, though they don’t even know what kind of being he is. It turns out, of course, that he is many kinds—but this they only come to learn during their search. At the very beginning (218b8 ff.) they had the sophist in name only—that is, he was contentless. This would suggest that the “what” of the sophist is the product of the method used in pursuing him. Is it possible that what he is is generated by the Stranger’s procedure?5 Thus at 221c4-5 the Stranger is fully confident that the very same procedure used in defining the angler is applicable to the pursuit of the sophist as well.6 But how can he be so sure of this in advance—unless he holds the grand belief that his method is an absolutely comprehensive and universal one, applicable to, and yet completely independent of, every possible subject matter? Such a claim is a rather extraordinary one. It is also a claim to which we are all too easily drawn. The immediate attraction it holds for us is natural enough, for it is a claim that appears to us to rescue us from our own finitude—a claim that holds out to us the promise of omniscience. Everything is knowable; we have only to take whatever happens to come along and plug it into our “method,” our “operation,” our “machine.” To possess this method is to possess a magical shortcut that relieves us of the tiresome task of having to make judgments, in each instance, about what mode of investigation is most suitable to the object in question. It is the denial that differences among objects matter at all; and it is, correlatively, the claim that knowledge is utterly uniform, that all things whatsoever are knowable in exactly the same way. It is a magical shortcut that allows us to forget such troublesome questions and 5. See Philebus 16d1 ff. Socrates begins his account of diairesis by saying: “aei mian idean peri pantos hekastotē themenous zētein—heurēsein gar enousan” (“we must always suppose that there is for everything one idea and must look for it—for we will find it”). What guarantees its being there? Does the procedure itself guarantee this? 6. See Benardete’s account of this in “Plato Sophist 223bl-7,” passim. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LENKOWSKI 55 gives us a certain command over anything and everything—a sort of technologization of knowledge. It appeals to a certain hubris within us. In a rather different context of speaking, it might be said that it is the temptation to sin—that it appeals to a lust of the spirit, a lust for knowledge which is at once a lust for power. To the extent, then, that diairesis is being put forward as such a claim to universal method, its presentation in the dialogues could be viewed as an attempt to exhibit the defects of any such pretension to a “method” that is independent of, and yet applicable to, every possible subject matter. This would go some distance toward explaining why our attention is being continually drawn to ways in which the diairesis fails. But this is only one side of the story. It has to be true to say that it is the Stranger’s procedure that generates the “what” of the sophist, for the particular classes he shows up in—the particular designations he takes on—are the results of the ways in which the Stranger carries out the divisions. But this can’t be the whole truth, because the sophist is continually collapsing the class-distinctions they make, and he is constantly defying their attempt to enclose him in a single horismos. So, in some important sense, what the sophist is, is independent of their activity upon him. From this point of view it could still be said that the procedure produces the “what,” but only in the sense that, as a result of it, the sophist now for the first time explicitly acquires determinations he has always had implicitly. Correlatively, it would mean that we are now for the first time making explicit, as a series of articulate determinations of the object, our own pre-thematic familiarity with that object. And this pre-thematic familiarity is something we must have—else we could never have made this an object of our interest and investigation in the first place. If we continue to think in this direction, we might be inclined to revise somewhat our view of what diairesis is supposed to accomplish: Perhaps it’s not (or not completely) the grand pretension to a universal method that generates its own objects, but rather a procedure of explication that articulates explicitly what we already—however dimly—“know.” It might be called a procedure of “unfolding”—an explicit unfolding of what we already “know” about the object in a quite pre-thematic way. �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW This view of diairesis is supported by a further consideration: The first division in the Sophist begins with the entire class of art (technē [219a]). The first division in the Statesman starts one step higher than that, namely, with the entire class of knowledge (epistemē [258e]). Why, in each case, does the dividing begin just here? That is, what determines the initial comprehensive class from which the dividing will take its start—unless it is that we already know in some sense the object of our search, and unless this object itself guides the division which is supposed to discover it? Why, in the pursuit of the sophist, is the sophist placed at the outset into the limited—albeit large—class of technē—unless this were so? If diairesis were to be genuinely a process of discovery, wouldn’t it be necessary for it to begin, not with technē, but with the most comprehensive class—“the All” (to pan) or “Being” (to on)? But, after all, no diairesis begins in that way; it is in fact doubtful that from such a beginning any dividing could ever begin.7 How could one begin to divide to on or to pan? But even if it could be done, the very first step one would take from that beginning would surely betray the guidance given already beforehand by the object sought. Does diairesis, understood in this way, give us the “what is” of the sophist? Certainly not in the sense of acquiring for us something we didn’t have before. Here the procedure called “division” does not produce the “what is”; rather it is thoroughly guided and directed, both at the very outset and at every single step of the way, by a knowledge of the “what is” that we already do—and must—possess. But then the activity of dividing until one reaches a “definition” can no longer have any significance as a more or less technical “method” of inquiry designed to give us new information, to make us knowers where we were not knowers before. But isn’t this why we always held definition in such high regard? 7. On the impossibility of doing this, see Klein, “On Precision,” 297298. Aristotle gives the reason in Posterior Analytics II, 92b14: “ou gar genos to on” (“for being is not a genus.”) Helpful on this point is Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1963), 3. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LENKOWSKI 57 There is something more. At 241b9-c4 the Stranger and Theaetetus are wondering why they’re having such difficulty capturing their quarry and are now facing up to the possibility that the “what” of the sophist might be infinite (aperantōn [241c1]). If the sophist is infinite, then he is indifferently anything. But this is at odds with how the activity of dividing operates upon him: the diairesis cannot help but articulate him into specific, de-limited classes; the determinations he takes on are de-limitations, de-finitions. In other words, the division is imposing limits on a being whose own nature is to be unlimited. This explains why the Stranger and Theaetetus are baffled at 241b9-c4: whatever they say about the sophist can never be wholly false, and yet it must always fail to enclose him completely. So the “what is” of something and the procedure that is supposed to reveal it look incommensurate. And wouldn’t this be the case with any object one sets out to define? That is, any such object first comes to sight as some unity—though with certain determinations, a certain number of them. But to speak of the object in terms of just one or another of these determinations—as diairesis does—limits the object to just that—delimiting it from those other determinations. It also fails to tell us precisely how the various determinations are related to one another in the object—and really related in the very being of the object itself, rather than related by our logical scheme. Even an exhaustive list of these determinations, by the way, does the very same thing: it must remain forever merely a list, merely a piecemeal representation of what first came to sight as a unitary “what.” So here we seem to be left with the possibility that even if diairesis were a means of articulation, guided beforehand by the object sought, even then it would always be essentially defective; for its piecemeal, limited result would always be disproportionate with its object. Can we not, then, rehabilitate diairesis? We can, but only by moving away from the view that it is intended to be a formal technique which must be learned and practiced according to a set of rules, a formal technique (not unlike a logical organon) that we ought to employ in order to actually acquire knowledge. Indeed �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW such “rules”—the “prescriptions” given in the dialogues and by Aristotle—look inexact, spurious, unlearnable, impossible to follow with any sort of precision. Could this be why our attention is being constantly drawn to arbitrary moves, to gaps, breakdowns and failures in the actual practice of diairesis? That the dialogues lead us in this way, then, could very well mean that they are actually attempting to warn us, to show us that if diairesis is understood to be such a formal technique that is both learnable and teachable, that in and of itself transforms us into knowers, then it is fools’ gold. What, then, is diairesis? Here it seems to me that, of the four accounts provided by the dialogues, that given at Phaedrus 265d266 b is the most helpful.8 Socrates speaks there of a pair of activities, “bringing together” and “dividing” (sunagōgē and diairesis [266b5]), characterized in the following way: 1. “Bringing a scattered many into a single idea, seeing it all together [italics mine], that, defining, one might make clear each thing he wishes to teach about” (eis mian te idean sunorōnta agein ta pollachē diesparmena, hin hekaston horizomenos dēlon poiēi, peri hou anaei didaskein ethelēi); 2. “Dividing [these ‘ones’] once again, according to eidē, according to natural joints” (to palin kat’ eidē dunasthai temnein, kat’ arthra [265el-2]). What, then, are these two related procedures? There is a passage in Book VII of the Republic which, I believe, suggests an answer to this question: In the context of a discussion of that higher education which would produce philosopher-kings, calculation (logistikē, logis8. To center on the Phaedrus as the key account depends, of course, on the interpretation that follows. It is not a position taken by all commentators. I have no quarrel with those whose particular interests lead them to emphasize one of the other accounts. A.C. Lloyd, for instance, in “Plato’s Description of Division”, centers on the Philebus because he thinks he can explain, by appealing to the geometrical practice of dividing a continuous line, why the account in the Philebus is given in terms of the opposition between the One and the Infinite. I would only quarrel with those who view diairesis as a bona fide logical-zetetic organon along the lines indicated above. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LENKOWSKI 59 mos)—that art which ostensibly operates on number—is introduced as something that leads directly to intellection and—since it would be the art of “turning the soul around” (psuchēs periagōgē [521c6])—as something that prepares one for philosophy. But calculation is said not to appear at first as an “art” at all, but rather as a “trivial” or “lowly” thing (phaulon [522c4]) that simply distinguishes the “one” and the “two” (522c5 and 524b5). More particularly it is said that calculation is originally “summoned” (parakalein), called into operation, along with noēsis and dianoia, by the presence of contradictory sensations (524ab). This explains why calculation is called something “trivial” or “lowly”: it is the original, most rudimentary, appearance of human thinking. In other words, what shows up at a higher level as an “art” is really present already as a most rudimentary feature of human thought, viz., the activity of bringing together, comparing and distinguishing. Calculation brings together and distinguishes, brings together and separates; the logistical “arts” of addition and subtraction are higher-level expressions of these utterly natural activities of thought and have their origins in them.9 I would I suggest, then, that the two related “procedures” of sunagōgē and diairesis are originarily “summoned” in just the same way, and that the presentation of them in the Phaedrus is essentially and primarily an account of this originary summoning. Sunagōgē and diairesis are, I suggest, the account of what we in fact do—what thinking does—in thematizing something, in isolating it and making it thematic. That is, these “procedures” are simply ways of talking about what we’ve already done—what our understanding does—automatically, simply by nature, to get its bearings, namely, 1. recognize the “sameness” of a many, and 2. recognize the differences inherent in that sameness. The first moment is a “seeing all together”(the word is sunorōnta)—that 9. This relationship between theoretical acts and conceptual objects, on the one hand, and certain features of pre-theoretical, pre-conceptual experience, on the other hand, has been studied and worked out extensively by Edmund Husserl. See especially his Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1972) and Formale und Transzendentale Logik (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1929). �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW is, the recognizing of a single “looks” (idea); the second moment is a “dividing according to eidē, according to the ‘natural joints’”—that is, the recognizing of essential differences within that single “looks.” The first moment is said to “bring a many into a one”, to “see it all together”, to “make it clear”, to “define” it. Here the “defining” has to mean “de-fining” it from other such single “looks.” It de-fines it, isolates it, constitutes it as a single determinate “whole.” The second moment differentiates this single whole internally. The sunagōge is probably not simply reversed in the diairesis. The differences ignored or sublated in bringing together the many into a one are probably not those “natural joints” at which the diairetic divisions are subsequently made—which would mean that the two activities do not correspond exactly. That is, the sunagōge might very well be understood to bring the infinitely many particulars into a unitary whole; but the diairesis must be understood as the differentiation of this unitary whole into finite eidetic parts. At Phaedrus 238a3 ff., for instance, it is said of hubris that it is “many-membered and manysorted” (polumeles kai polueides), and that the name of any particular hubris is taken from whatever (sub-)idea predominates. And wouldn’t this also be true, for example, of virtue as a whole? The horismos, then, must be understood as a “de-fining,” a “de-limiting,” an isolating. In the mere recognition of what is to be defined, moreover, the thing is already isolated. Thus the explicit activity of defining simply duplicates our initial recognition; it doesn’t essentially add anything, but only shows us what we’ve already done in recognizing the thing. The explicit activity of defining does not, in any essential way, give us a “what is” as an answer that we didn’t have before; it only makes our pre-thematic familiarity with the thing for the first time explicit for us. Furthermore, insofar as a definition only de-limits, it only isolates something from other things. And that means: it does not tell us what the thing is “by itself” (kath’auto), in its own innerness— but isn’t that precisely what the “what is” question asks for?10 10. As Sophist 248-255 shows, the “what is” of any being is, of course, both kath’ auto and pros heteron at the same time, and is perhaps both �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LENKOWSKI 61 In still another way “definition” shows itself to fall short of giving us the “what is” of what is being defined. At Statesman 267c the Stranger states the result of the first division: Statesmanship is said to be the “art of herding human beings” (anthrōponomikē [cf. 266e]). This definition might be said to be a fine example of further dividing a genus by the addition of a specific difference: here the genus would be nomeutikē—the art of herding; and the specific difference would be anthrōpōn—of humans specifically. But—apart from the word—is there really such an art? This “art” has come about (or has been conjured up) simply by combining the two words anthrōpos and nomeutikē—an easy enough task. But we shouldn’t be fooled by the word. To make verbal “wholes” by just putting words together does not affect by one jot whether or not there are such wholes really. Actual wholes cannot be generated by simply combining words to form verbal “wholes.” The flip-side of this problem would be the problem of whether, and to what extent, it is possible to reflect accurately in an account of a whole, the “wholeness” of that whole. This problem is mentioned very briefly by Aristotle in Metaphysics Z (1037b12-14; 25-28). Some being (a “this,” a tode ti ) first appears to us as a unity, a whole, and yet its formulation in speech has parts. The difficulty then is to determine whether the formulational parts correspond to the real parts in the being itself. While Aristotle seems to treat this matter merely aporetically, and thus to leave it an open question, the rhetoric of the passage suggests otherwise. The “what is” question, as it comes up in the dialogues, always asks about wholes such as virtue, knowledge, and so forth. And at first glance it may look as though definition in terms of genus and specific difference solves the problem of grasping a whole. But it does not reflect the “wholeness” of a whole, for it only adds the specific difference to the genus. That is, it might look like an attempt to integrate the comprehensive character of inseparably, even in thought; it does seem a formidable difficulty to isolate the kath’auto aspect in speech. �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the genus with its precise manifestation (namely, the specific difference). But the relation of Part to Whole is not one of addition. Aristotle’s understanding of definition in terms of genus-plusspecific difference (Posterior Analytics B 96b27-97b13) exhibits unambiguously its roots in diairesis. And even if we were to construe this in a somewhat softer way as an articulation or explication rather than an addition in the literal sense, there would still remain the problem of exactly how this articulation is related to the unity, the wholeness, of what is being defined. Definition in terms of genus plus specific difference does not adequately address this problem of how to reflect the wholeness of a whole in speech (and perhaps in thought as well); it does, however, reveal this problem to us in a quite vivid way. Throughout the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle’s treatment of horismos is always addressed to particulars: 1. to events and attributes (92a33-96a19); and 2. to beings (96a24 ff.). And to focus on these as the primary objects of definition accords with common sense: we encounter something for the first time and, because we don’t have a precise understanding of it, we ask what it is. But to define such a particular would be simply to specify the class to which it belongs—and this must already presuppose our understanding of those class-concepts. This would not, in any case, give us the “what is” of that particular, not in the sense of giving us that precise understanding that we didn’t previously have. If we begin by asking it what it is, and then go on to define it in the way I’ve just described, we have not answered the “what is” question, but have simply pushed the question back a step; for, in referring it to a certain class, we’d then have to pose the very same question to that class-concept. But what about these class-concepts themselves, as eidetic wholes? Couldn’t we just as easily give definitions of these? These are, after all, the “whatnesses” of things—and so the thought of defining them might seem to hold out the promise of finally being able to unify definition and the “what is” question. But what would such a definition look like? Wouldn’t it too have to refer this eidetic whole to yet others? The definition of eidē �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LENKOWSKI 63 then, would seem to presuppose yet other eidē as “tools” or “principles” in the procedure of defining. And this means that, through definition alone, we’d never get the “what is”—not even of these eidetic wholes. At the end of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle addresses himself to the question of how we know first principles (archai or prōtai archai), and he shows that knowledge of these comes, not through definition or demonstration, but only—and in an originary way—through intellection (nous). The reason, of course, is that both demonstration and definition have to start somewhere, need starting points (archai). Or, stated otherwise, all discursive, dianoetic activity of thought presupposes and rests on nous, on an original noēsis, since thinking discourses from something and about something. At 93b23 he had established that the “ what is”—the ti esti—is itself an archē; and at 92b37-40 he had established that knowledge of the “what is” cannot be acquired through definition. In other words, to define something is not to answer the “what is” question; rather, the “what is” must itself be presupposed as an archē by any act of defining. The ability to define as such presupposes these whatnesses, these eidetic wholes, as its archai—its starting points or first principles. There is something further. To have defined is to have de-limited and enclosed something in such a way that it is now presented to us in marked relief. What we are presented with as the result of definition is what, from the point of view of a “properly” executed process of division, came to be called the infima species, or, to use a more Greek expression, the atomic eidos, the “indivisible looks.” This would be the horismos, the definition, the enclosure brought to its tightest possible state. Would this be the ti esti, the “what is”? No. But it would be that of which we could now for the first time ask this question: What is its “what is”? This requires some elaboration: Definition does indeed give us the “what is,” but not in the sense we had anticipated: to arrive, through definition, at to ti esti—the “what is”—is to arrive, not at an answer, but at a question. The substantivized form of that question—to ti esti—should not for an instant lead us to think �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that it has ceased to be a question: to treat the “what is” as a substantive—to ti esti11—means that the question as a question is being substantivized. The implication of this is far-reaching, for it means that the “what is” of something is a question, is a problem; and therefore to know the “what is” of something—to know an eidetic whole—is to know aporetically, to be in possession, not of an answer, but of a problem. The result of definition is the ti esti—not as an answer, but as a question. More forcefully stated: The “what is” question, as a question, is what stands at the end of the entire activity of defining. It is the proper telos of definition. The ti esti is the archē of definition in the most profound sense: it is the archē-archōn; it stands at the beginning of definition as its necessary startingpoint; it shows up as the end-result of definition; and it rules over and guides the activity of defining throughout, from beginning to end. This means that to have defined something is not itself an end, is not to have reached one’s natural goal. To have defined is to be brought face to face with the “what is” question and, as such, has been barely a start. Rather than being an end, definition is merely the condition for a new and quite different beginning: To define is to provide oneself with the possibility of philosophy. 11. Cf. inter alia Posterior Analytics II, 92a35, 92b39. �65 The Stranger as a Socratic Philosopher: The Socratic Nature of the Stranger’s Investigation of the Sophist1 Corinne Painter Much of the secondary literature on Plato’s Sophist considers the Stranger to be a non-Socratic philosopher, and regards his appearance in the dialogues as a sign that Plato had moved on from his fascination with Socrates to develop a more “mature” way of philosophizing.2 This essay will argue, on the contrary, that the investigation led by the Stranger in the Sophist demonstrates an essentially Socratic philosophical stance. In order to do this, I will consider carefully some dramatic evidence in the Sophist that allows us to notice a philosophical “transformation” in the Stranger. My consideration focuses upon the Stranger’s rejection of the Parmenidean way of philosophizing followed by his acceptance of the Socratic way of practicing philosophy. This is revealed most decisively by the Stranger’s willingness to pursue truth and justice at the expense of overturning the practices of his philosophical training, and, secondarily, by his genuine concern with showing that Socrates is not guilty of sophistry. Corinne Painter is a Professor in the Humanities Department at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1. I would like to thank Joe Sachs for his generous communications with me about Plato’s Sophist and other Platonic works. His insights have added greatly to my interpretation and understanding of Plato’s thought. 2. There are far too many accounts to list here; but see, for example, Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of the Original and Image (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). Just as Rosen argues in his text, most of the accounts in the literature that treat this issue view the Stranger as non-Socratic and advance the position that he represents at least a change, or perhaps even a progression, in Plato’s thinking away from, for instance, emphasis on the Socratic elenchus, to a more developed, mature philosophical practice that emphasizes dialectic. �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Surprisingly, although there has been almost no discussion in the literature about the Stranger’s philosophical development in the course of his examination of the Sophist, it is neither difficult to notice nor unimportant to acknowledge the Stranger’s philosophical “movement” away from Parmenides’s way of philosophy towards a different way. Indeed, on several occasions, the Stranger doffs his Parmenidean cloak and dons Socratic clothing, a transformation that converts him into a “true” philosopher, understood as one who attempts to make images in speech of that which is authentically compelling—that is, the good—which is therefore of ethical significance. It is not incidental to the dialogue that Socrates instigates the discussion by asking the Stranger to “do the favor” (217c) of accounting for the sophist, nor that the Stranger agrees only at Socrates’s request, after having previously turned down a similar request made by Theodorus. This shows that the Stranger is more concerned with satisfying Socrates’s desire to account for the sophist than Theodorus’s. And this suggests, in turn, that something about Socrates’s request is more compelling than Theodorus’s. What is urgent about Socrates’s request would seem to be his present circumstance, namely, his having been accused of crimes against the polis that include practicing sophistry. Socrates’s own life situation gives rise to his concern to account properly for sophistry and distinguish it from philosophy; it is almost certain that this personal involvement confers on his request an urgency that simply is not present in Theodorus’s merely theoretical interest. Importantly, the urgency is an ethical one, inasmuch as it is one that is “related to what truly and ultimately matters,”3 which in this case arises from Socrates’s “specific human predicament.”4 Since Parmenides’s “style” of philosophizing “requires a stud3. Adriaan Peperzak, System and History in Philosophy: On the Unity of Thought and Time, Text and Explanation, Solitude and Dialogue, Rhetoric and Truth in the Practice of Philosophy and its History, (New York: State University of New York Press, 1986), 13. 4. Drew Hyland, Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), 176. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAINTER 67 ied indifference to its topics,”5 there are hints to be found as early as the dialogue’s beginning that the Stranger might be willing to reject his Parmenidean training in order to do the favor of accounting properly for the sophist. Indeed, if we believe that “indifference seems to be the only reaction one cannot have to a philosophic question, if one is aware of it at all,”6 then the Stranger’s willingness to undergo the difficult and complicated investigation of the sophist only at Socrates’s request indicates that he takes Socrates’s question to be one that is asked philosophically. For, because Socrates’s question originates in a desire to know about something that is at stake in his life, it therefore deserves serious and sustained philosophical attention and energy. Nevertheless, the Stranger does not begin his investigation as Socrates usually does, namely, with an elenchus. This is probably why very few scholars see a close connection between the Stranger’s way of philosophizing and Socrates’s way. Except for the emphasis that the Stranger places on agreement among the interlocutors— which mirrors Socrates’s insistence on mutual agreement in the course of dialectical investigations—he initially conducts his investigation after the fashion of his philosophical father, Parmenides, who claims, in marked contrast to Socrates, that the “philosophic discipline requires purging ourselves of any motive to care about any one thing more than another.”7 Before he gets to his sixth attempt to account for the sophist, the Stranger tries to track the sophist by employing the method of division by kinds, according to which a given hunting ground must be cut always into two and only two opposing divisions, until, at last, a long and logically descriptive title of the intended prey results. Prior to his sixth division, then, the Stranger proceeds as Parmenides taught him: by proposing further and further opposing, and thus exhaustive, divisions that allow him eventually to uncover the sophist in as many different guises as there are different starting points. As the 5. Joe Sachs, “What is a What-is Question?” The St. John’s Review 44.1 (1993): 46. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 43. �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Stranger explicitly states, in practicing this logical method there is no room for caring any more or less for the divisions that are made, since the method “honors all equally” (227b2), nor is there room for evaluating the divisions in any “extra-logical sense”—for instance, by an appeal to one’s sense of justice or honor. For, as long as the divisions are made properly—exhaustively and beginning from appropriate starting points—the accounts ultimately obtained will be logically infallible. With his sixth attempt at finding the sophist, however, the Stranger employs the method of division in a significantly modified manner, namely, by no longer insisting on pure logic that does not “care” for its results and does not “trust” the desire to do justice to the matter under examination. The point of departure for the sixth division is peculiar in that it begins with what might be called an “unauthorized division” of expertise into a third subclass, which goes beyond the authorized two divisions of division by kinds. Since the sixth account of the sophist is spurred by the Stranger’s assessment that the first five accounts failed to capture adequately the sophist’s essence, and since it is impossible to judge the differing accounts critically on the basis of logic alone, the Stranger’s unauthorized beginning seems to be grounded in his extra-logical sense that, even though the various accounts hold up to logical scrutiny, they fail to do true justice to the sophist’s complex nature. This indicates that the Stranger genuinely cares about keeping the philosopher and the sophist distinct; for “someone who does not care about the thing in question cannot see the point of suspending his prejudices.”8 In this case, the prejudices that need to be suspended are the Stranger’s initial commitment to proceed purely logically, without any special concern for his divisions, and his Parmenidean philosophical training. The Stranger’s decision to go against the rule of his own method arises from two causes. First, his efforts so far have made him think that the sophist is so complex and slippery a character that he evaded the first five attempts to capture him—a judgment, as we can see, that can be attained only after appealing to an extralogical standard. Second, he genuinely desires to understand how 8. Sachs, 46. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAINTER 69 the philosopher can be misperceived as a sophist, and thus, more specifically, how it is possible for Socrates to be falsely accused of being a sophist. Once the Stranger sees that the first five guises of the sophist do not present engaging images of the philosopher, and consequently, that they do not address the possibility of confusing the sophist and the philosopher, he is compelled to divide expertise into an unorthodox third part, so that he can construct an account that may be sufficient to deal with the apparent proximity between philosopher and sophist. Put very simply, insofar as the division of expertise introduced in the sixth account of sophistry, namely, soul-cleansing refutation (230d-e),9 turns out to be an account of what Socrates does, it provides the necessary link between Socrates and sophistry that accounts for his being falsely accused of sophistry. In this way, it provides the Stranger with the opportunity to scrutinize the proposed association between Socrates and sophistry that seems to be responsible for driving the discussion. It is at this point in the dialogue that the Stranger gives a critical evaluation of the sixth account that goes beyond revealing his motivations and intentions, and tells us about the role he plays in the dialogue. As the three translators of a fine edition of the Sophist say in the introduction to their translation, the sixth account “curiously reveals the sophist as a cross-examiner of empty sham wisdom and therefore as entangled with the philosophic nature. Sophist and philosopher appear to be interwoven.”10 This, I think, compels us to think of Socrates rather than of a sophist, especially since the Stranger says “he’s afraid to say” that the men he’s described in this way are “sophists” since he does not want “to confer on them too great an honor” (231a1-3). So I believe, unlike many, perhaps even most, scholarly commentators, including Rosen, that the Stranger’s critical assessment of the sixth account points ultimately to his likely desire to want to defend Socrates from the 9. The sixth account of the sophist, like all the others, contains much more detail than needs to be addressed here. For a helpful discussion see: Corinne Painter, “In Defense of Socrates,” Epoche 9.2 (2005): 317-333. 10. Plato’s Sophist: The Professor of Wisdom, translated, with introduction and glossary, by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 1996), 10. �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW charges of sophistry that have been brought against him. I admit that this remark only explicitly states that the sixth account does not accurately describe sophists because the activity it elucidates is too honorable to be one in which sophists engage. But at the same time, it at least implicitly points us in the direction of Socrates, since the activity it describes is characteristic of him. Hence, the Stranger’s implicit association of Socrates with an honorable activity, together with his willingness to investigate the sophist only at Socrates’s request appear to point in the direction of a desire to defend Socrates against the charges leveled at him. If we add to this the Stranger’s agreement with Socrates that the philosopher often appears to be something he is not, including a sophist (216c4-d5), the inference is even stronger. Moreover, if the contrary motive were to be put forth—that the Stranger really wants to prosecute Socrates on behalf of the youth of Athens, whom he supposedly corrupted—this motive too would reflect a concern with a matter of great political and ethical import. Thus, even in this case, the Stranger turns out to be a philosopher in the following Socratic sense: he understands his philosophical inquiry into the nature of the sophist to be intimately bound up with a matter of practical, ethical significance. This conviction can be reinforced in several ways. First, the Stranger eventually rejects his earlier claim that the interlocutors are not allowed to pass judgment on their accounts by assessing any of the arts they describe as more honorable or worthy than any others (227a10-b8). The evidence for this is his willingness to go against this “rule” of his own method and his related willingness to discard the wholly “neutral,” Parmenidean attitude. For when he admits his distaste for describing the sophist as one who engages in soul-cleansing refutation (231a1-3), the Stranger gives up his commitment to honor the generals’ art of hunting and the art of louse-catching equally (227b8-11). In this way, he abandons his Parmenidean neutrality and recognizes that he will have to take a new path: if he is to keep sophistry and philosophy distinct, he must let his genuine, ethical concern over the sixth account of the sophist guide the rest of his investigation. Indeed, at this point in the discussion the Stranger realizes that his “technical” procedure �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAINTER 71 for hunting down the sophist will not allow him to fulfill his promise of accounting for the sophist in such a way that the philosopher can no longer be mistaken for him, and the Stranger’s expression of dismay at having discovered five different accounts of the sophist shows this: [I]sn’t it clear that when a person experiences this with respect to some expertise, he’s not able to see what all these studies have in view—and that’s why he calls their possessor by many names instead of one? . . . So let us avoid experiencing this in our own search because of laziness (232a1-b2). Accordingly, we have reason to believe that the Stranger no longer trusts his initially preferred method of division by kinds to complete the investigation. Moreover, this strengthens the impression that he is prepared to proceed differently, which, again, suggests that he genuinely cares about the matter at issue—namely, keeping the philosopher and the sophist distinct. In fact, the Stranger seems to care so much about distinguishing the philosopher and the sophist that he is willing to suspend all of his “safe opinions,” all of his “previous prejudices,”11 in order to do the favor that he promised. Indeed, the Stranger’s worry, particularly over the sixth definition, indicates his recognition that division by kinds, although it may be well suited to mapping out relationships of subordination between genera and species, is not well suited for the task of distinguishing the sophist from the philosopher. In acknowledging that this task cannot be completed on the basis of division by kinds alone, the Stranger lets his “outrage . . . as a human being”12 compel him to conduct the remainder of his search for the sophist in another way. This new way, while still rigorous and careful, seems to the Stranger to be more compatible with the important political and ethical nature of the task, and at the same time, it allows him to “trust his own desire to do justice.”13 In allowing the investigation to follow another path, as 11. Sachs, 46. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Joe Sachs claims, the Stranger abandons the safe and familiar Parmenidean philosophizing, with its indifferent, dispassionate, and entirely logical modus operandi,14 and “crosses over from the safe domain of logic to something called philosophy.”15 Later in the dialogue, the Stranger even makes an explicitly critical remark about the technique of division by kinds that is quite scornful: “to attempt to separate off everything from everything is in other respects discordant, and what’s more, it belongs to a man who is altogether unmusical and unphilosophical” (259d8-e1, emphasis mine). If we add to this his claim that the one who knows how to practice the art of division and collection properly is the one “who philosophizes purely and justly” (253e4-5, emphases mine), as well as his rather Socratic words of encouragement to Theaetetus, asking him, for example, to be brave and not to lose heart (261b5-6), it is quite clear that the Stranger now comports himself Socratically. All in all, this not only strengthens the notion that the Stranger’s motivation in the Sophist is more likely connected to a desire to defend Socrates than to a desire to prosecute him, but it also suggests that he has become “like”—perhaps even a good image of—a Socratic philosopher. Finally, there is yet another way in which the Stranger shows the mark of a Socratic—which is to say, genuine—philosopher, namely, his eagerness not to assume that he knows what he does not know. Indeed, the Stranger seems to appreciate very well that while all of his accounts of the sophist, including the seventh and final one, capture some significant aspects of the sophist’s deceptive nature, none of them can say the final word about this slippery creature (268d5). Like Socrates, the Stranger is very careful not to conflate the images he makes in speech with the originals to which they point. In other words, the Stranger’s humble acknowledgment that his logos about the sophist necessarily points beyond itself towards an eidos that it cannot articulate adequately seems to mirror Socrates’s repeated admonitions that all our words are at once both themselves and not themselves, insofar as they always point be14. Sachs, 41. 15. Sachs, 43. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAINTER 73 yond themselves to the eide, that is, to the invisible looks that make them intelligible. In sum, the investigation led by the Stranger in the Sophist demonstrates a specifically Socratic philosophical character, and in the course of attempting to define the sophist, the Stranger shows that Socrates is not guilty of sophistry. The philosophical conversion undergone by the Stranger—from Parmenides’s way of philosophizing to Socrates’s way—indicates that he recognizes the superiority of “extra-logical” philosophizing that is rooted in a sense of ethics. This is revealed by the Stranger’s admission that the sixth definition of sophistry as “soul cleansing refutation” is disturbing because it describes an activity that is too honorable to be connected with sophistry. Since this definition was arrived at by a non-Parmenidean, Socratic way of philosophizing, it identifies the Socratic way with virtue, and defends Socrates against the dishonorable charges associated with sophistry. In this way, the Stranger vindicates Socrates while at the same time he becomes very much “like” him. �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The Concept of Measure and the Criterion of Sustainability John D. Pappas The classical concept of measure, which is akin to moderation and balance, has been specified arithmetically in architecture and the arts. But in law, politics, the social sciences, and the behavioral sciences, measure is a fuzzy concept. A rational definition of measure in human behavior would curb the impulsive human tendency to excess, and might thus hedge humanity against the effects of hubris, which has historically led societies, states, and even empires to disaster. When people lose a sense of measure, they also lose touch with reality. And because there is no settled definition of measure in practical matters, it is difficult for leaders and policymakers to see limits begin transgressed in time to avert danger. The purpose of this essay is to suggest that, in the absence of a definition of measure, we may instead apply the criterion of sustainability to detect hubristic aberrations from measure early enough to curb their ill effects. 1. The universal concept of measure The concept of measure or mean was the cornerstone of classical civilization. Measure (metron in Greek1) is akin to the Confucian Middle Way (zhōng yōng) and the Buddhist Middle Path (majjhimā paṭipadā). It pertains to aesthetic symmetry and functional harmony in human interaction with the social and natural environment. John D. Pappas is legal and economic adviser at AGM Law Firm. He studied law at Athens University and economics at Columbia University. 1. The English word measure derives from the Latin mensura, which in turn derives from verb metiri, which is related to the Greek word metron. This is the etymological root of meter, metro–, –metric, etc., and a component of symmetry and its derivatives (symmetric, asymmetry, and so on.) �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 75 In the arts and particularly in architecture, measure has been expressed in particular mathematical forms. For example, the golden ratio, φ (=1.6180339…),2 which Euclid called extreme and mean ratio, is a well-known mathematical definition of geometric measure: A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less. (Akron kai meson logon eutheia tetmēsthai legetai, hotan ēi hōs hē holē pros to meizon tmēma, houtōs to meizon pros to helatton.) (Euclid, Elements, Book 6, Definition 3.) Even before Euclid showed how to calculate the φ-ratio, Phidias (c. 480–430 BC) had created a diachronic manifestation of aesthetic measure in geometry and architecture by “curving” Fig.1: The Golden Section in the Facade of the Parthenon 2. φ, the asymptotic limit of the Fibonacci sequence Fn+1 / Fn , “has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics.” Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 6. �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that ratio into marble (Fig. 1).3 The Parthenon seems to be circumscribed conceptually by a Fibonacci-type sequence of golden rectangles: each rectangle has a length that is the product of its width and φ, while its width is the length of its predecessor rectangle. The aesthetic effect of the golden rectangle is summarized by Joe Sachs in this way: What are the right proportions for the entrance to a temple? . . . The rectangle formed by the columns is wider than it is high. How much wider? Enough so that it will not look squashed together, but not so much that it would become stringy looking. Let your imagination squeeze and stretch it to see what goes wrong, and then notice that to get it right again you have to bring it back to a certain very definite shape. This is the golden rectangle. It has been produced spontaneously by artists, architects, and carpenters of any and every time and place.4 But long before Phidias and Euclid, the concept of measure had been a focal theme in ancient Greek civilization, as is shown by the frequent recurrence of that concept in Homer’s Odyssey (for instance, in Bk. 2, l. 230, Bk. 5, l. 9, Bk. 7, l. 310, Bk. 14, l. 434, Bk. 15, l. 68, Bk. 17, l. 321, Bk. 21, l. 294, and Bk. 22, l. 46)—although Homer uses the word aisima rather than metron. For example, in Bk. 7, l. 310, Alcinous addresses Odysseus with the same phrase that Menelaus uses in Bk. 15, l. 71 when speaking to Telemachus: “measure is always optimal” (ameinō d’ aisima panta). In Homeric vocabulary, aisima is related to Aisa, the Greek 3. In 1909, the American mathematician Mark Barr gave the golden ratio the lower-case Greek letter phi (φ), the first letter in Phidias’s name, to honor the classical sculptor and architect. (Theodore Andrea Cook, The Curves of Life [London: Constable, 1914; reprinted inNew York: Dover Publications, 1979], 420). The capital letter Φ is often used to symbolize the inverse of φ, i.e. Φ = 1 / φ = Ο.6180339. . . . 4. Joe Sachs, “Measure, Moderation, and the Mean,” The St. John’s Review 46.2 (2002): 7. This article is available on the web here: http://www.sjc.edu/files/1713/9657/8097/sjc_review_vol46_no2.pdf �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 77 goddess who personifies human destiny. So Homer’s idea of measure implicitly includes the notions of allotted share, portion, lot, or term of life, in accordance with the subject’s destiny—that is, in line with his idiosyncrasies, social constraints, and natural limits. Moreover, Homer was probably the first to try to describe measure in human social interaction. In 15.68-74, he suggested a subjectivist view of social measure by metaphorically depicting social relations among people as interactions between hosts and their guests: Telemachus, I will not keep you here for long when you are eager to depart:I would even blame another man who, as host, is either too fond of his guest or too rude to him: measure is always optimal. Being too quick to send a guest on his way when he doesn’t want to leave is just as bad as holding him back when he wants to depart. One must treat a guest well as long as he is in the house and let him go promptly when he wants to leave. (Tēlemach’, ou ti s’ egō ge polun chronon enthad’ eruxō iemenon nostoio: nemessōmai de kai allōi andri xeinodokōi, hos k’ exocha men phileēisin, exocha d’ echthairēisin· ameinō d’ aisima panta. Ison toi kakon esth’, hos t’ ouk ehtelonta neesthai xeinon epotrunei kai hos essumenon katerukei. chrē xeinon paeonta philein, ethelonta de pempein.) To a considerable degree, Homer’s masterpiece is a poetic account of four intertwined concepts: 1. human measure; 2. hubris, that is, extreme aberration away from measure, like the Massacre at Troy, or like Odysseus’s defiance of nature in the form of his defiance of the gods, or like the abusive behavior of Penelope’s suitors during Odysseus’s absence; 3. atē, the goddess that personifies mischief, delusion and folly, which are states of mind that accelerate the decline of a hubristic subject; and 4. nemesis, the goddess that personifies justice and reinstitutes the balance of social order. Long before Homer, these concepts were symbolized in the myth of Icarus. Icarus attempted to escape Minoan Crete by flying in the air on waxed and feathered wings, but he overrated his capabilities and underrated the forces of nature. He ignored the �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW advice of his father Daedalus to “fly the middle course” between the foam of the sea and the heat of the sun, so that his wings would neither be soaked nor burned. Icarus soared hubristically upward toward the sun, which soon melted the wax off his wings, so that he fell into the sea to his death. But Homer was the true philosophical pioneer in regard to the notion of measure. Through his poetic imagery, he laid out a solid philosophical base concerning the delicate relations between measure, hubris, folly, and justice. This became the foundation for the elaborate work of the philosophers and the tragedians of the pre-classical and classical periods. For instance, Homer’s concept of measure was later picked up by Cleobulus of Rhodes (died ca. 560 BC), one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, in his most celebrated maxim “measure is best” (metron ariston). And a later philosopher, Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490-420 BC), understood measure in Homer’s subjectivist terms, as is shown by a quotation that appears in Plato’s Theaetetus (170d–e): Man [is] the measure of all useful things. (Pantōn chrēmatōn metron anthrōpos.) This statement was later quoted, almost ipsissima verba, by Sextus Empiricus in his Adversus Mathematicos (7.60)]: [Protagoras said that] man is the measure of all useful things, that is, in regard to things that exist, how they are, and in regard to things that do not exist, how they are not. ([Protagoras eipe] pantōn chrēmatōn metron anthrōpon einai, tōn men ontōn hōs estin, tōn de ouk ontōn hōs ouk estin.) Protagoras’s statement is gender-neutral because he refers to human beings in general rather than men in particular (anthrōpos means “human being” in Greek). Moreover the exact meaning of the statement (which is as much utilitarian as it is subjectivist) has been lost in both English and Modern Greek translations. In all translations I am aware of, chrēmatōn has been erroneously translated as things (in English) or pragmatōn (in Modern Greek). As result, an overly anthropocentric sense has been imputed to Protagoras’s statement, as though it �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 79 meant “man is the measure of everything in the universe.” But in ancient Greek, chrēmata did not signify everything in the universe, but only things needed or used by humans on earth: the noun is related to the verb chrēsthai, meaning “to need” or “to use.” As an example of the sense, Aristotle gives the following definition in his Nichomachean Ethics (1119b26): “By chrēmata we mean all things whose value is measured by money.” (Chrēmata legomen panta hosōn hē axia nomismati metreitai.) So in the Protagorean subjectivist context, measure is understood as a concept related to human attributes. But somewhat earlier, Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC) had proceeded a step further. He understood measure as a natural phenomenon, or even as the foundational principle of the universe. Heraclitus theorized that hubris5 entails inexorable divine retribution, which is personified by the remorseless goddess Nemesis. The name of that goddess is related to the Greek verb nemein, meaning “to distribute appropriately,” which also gives us the Greek word nomos, meaning “custom” or “law” (as in the words economy and astronomy). Infractions by mortals against other mortals (that is, hubris) disturb the “naturally right” proportion that is due to them according to each one’s destiny or moira. In this context, hubris is either a human activity or a natural phenomenon that takes place beyond or without measure (as 5. The concept of hubris or hybris was introduced into academic literature by Friedrich Nietzsche in his incomplete treatise Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873). He explicitly connects it with Heraclitus. “That dangerous word hybris is indeed the touchstone for every Heraclitan. Here he must show whether he has understood or failed to recognize his master.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Mariann Cowan (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1962), 61. In English, the term hubris means excessive pride, or insolent self-confidence, or haughtiness. However few modern English speakers are aware that authors of the Greek classical period apply the term in a much more restrictive way. The popular English saying “the sky is the limit” would seem quite hubristic to classical Greek authors. �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW in hybrid, hybridize, hybridization). Such events thus divergefrom the primary or teleological course of nature; then vengeful Nemesis intervenes as the just balancer who reinstitutes the natural order. establishing a new state of equilibrium. Consequently, from a Heraclitian perspective of the world, nature tends toward biodiverse harmony through a dynamic equilibrium process that hinders any single creature or species from growing to such an extent that it eventually crowds out all other creatures or species in nature. [Heraclitus’s] unified, ordered world of balanced change is also a world in which the “laws” or norms of justice prevail. . . . “Justice [Nemesis] will catch up with fabricators of falsehoods and those who bear witness to them” (fragment 28b). More generally, such norms can be described as “divine law” in nature, a law that is “common” or universal in its accessibility and applicability: “those who [would] speak with insight must base themselves firmly on that which is common to all, as city does upon its law—and much more firmly! For all human laws are nourished by one [law], the divine [law]” fragment 114). But the justice that is cosmic law is the justice of disruption and revolution, of war and violence, not that of balm and healing. “One must realize,” he says, “that war is common and justice strife, and that all things come to be through strife and are [so] ordained.” . . . [A]ll change, however violent, be it the macrochanges of nature and the outer cosmos or war among states, or civic strife, or the battles that rage in the human heart, can be seen as integral parts of the law or [divine] “plan” that “steers all things” producing, through change, that higher unity which is the cosmos.6 Such a cosmic perspective of measure is a recurring theme in the Koran, where measure is presented as the prime attribute 6. T. M. Robinson, Heraclitus: Fragments, trans. and ed. T. M. Robinson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 185. Note also that in fragment 43 Heraclitus says, “there is a greater need to extinguish hybris than there is a blazing fire” (ibid., 33). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 81 of God’s wisdom and omnipotence:7 HE to Whom belongs the Kingdom of the heavens and the earth. And HE has taken unto Himself no son, and has no partner in the Kingdom, and HE has created everything, and has ordained for it its proper measure (Al-Furqan, 25:3). And Who sent down out of heaven water in measure; and We revived thereby a land that was dead; even so you shall be brought forth (Az-Zukhruf, 43:11). And whosoever puts his trust in God, He shall suffice him. God attains his purpose. God has appointed a measure for everything (At-Talaq, 65:3). Obviously, the Koran’s reference to rainfall as a manifestation of divine measure is in line with the diachronic Heraclitian concept of cosmic measure: Rainfall may vary in space-time, as regards to intensity and duration, but is neither too much (to the extent that all life on earth is flooded off to total extinction) nor too little (to the extent that no life on earth can be sustained). Nevertheless, local floods or droughts may occasionally “steer things” in a local natural environment toward a new dynamic balance of “that higher unity which is the cosmos.” A historical example of the applicability of the Heraclitian perspective of measure is the attempt of Artabanus to avert the Persians from expanding their empire to Europe. Specifically, he gave the following strategic advice to Xerxes, who was preparing to invade Greece:8 Do you see how God does not allow the bigger animals to become insolently visible, as it is them that He strikes 7. In the following translations, italics are mine. The first example is from The Holy Qur’an: Arabic Text and English Translation, ed. and trans. Maulawi Sher Ali (Islamabad: Islam International, 2004), 412. The second and third examples are from A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted: A Translation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 199 and 284. 8. Herodotus, Histories, 7.10e. �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW with his lightning rather than the smaller ones that never insult Him? Do you also see how He throws his bolts always against the tallest buildings and the tallest trees? Because God likes to draw back anything that stands out. Likewise even a mighty army may be discomfited by a small army, whenever God in His wrath exposes the former to fear[feelings of terror] or storm [natural disasters] through which they perish in a way unworthy of them. Because God allows no one to consider himself great, except Himself. (Horais ta huperechonta zōia hōs keraunoi ho theos oude eai phantazesthai, ta de smikra ouden min knizei· horais de hōs es oikēmata ta megista aiei kai dendrea ta toiauta aposkēptei ta belea· phileei gar ho theos ta huperechonta panta kolouein. houtō de kai stratos pollos hypo oligou diaphtheiretai kata toionde· epean sphi ho theos phthonēsas phobon embalēi ē brontēn, di’ ōn ephtharēsan anaxiōs heōutōn. ou gar eai phroneein mega ho theos allon ē heōuton.) Xerxes made the devastating hubristic mistake of ignoring Artabanus’s Heraclitean advice, because he was under the spell of Atē. The typical pairing of hubris and nemesis, which appears in many tragedies such as Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, and Euripides’s Hippolytus, is almost always associated with the Homeric goddess Atē, as epitomized in Sophocles’s choral passage from Antigone, 621–625): Evil seems good, sooner than later, to him whose mind God leads on to [mischief under the control of] Atē. And so he manages only for the briefest time without Atē. (To kakon dokein pot’ esthlon tōid’ emmen hotōi phrenas theos agei pros atan. prassei d’ oligiston chronon ektos atas.) In sum, Atē instills confusion in the mind of every subject of hubristic behavior, and she thus personifies self-destructive syndromes like defensive avoidance, overvigilance, reactivity, and denial. These are ruinous states of mind that have led many �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 83 economies, armies, states, and empires to disaster or even to collapse. 2. The Aristotelian mean In light of the grave consequences of hubris, the critical importance of defining measure comes to the fore. If measure is not defined conclusively, then humans may not be able to detect and avoid catastrophic hubristic aberrations from it. The future of every state would then be precarious, because its leaders would be ignorant of, or confused about, effective and sustainable policies, which are conditional on measured behavior and balanced organization. These considerations haunted Aristotle, who lived during the decline of classical Greece and the rise of Macedonian hegemony. Plato, the teacher of Aristotle, had witnessed the collapse of Athenian democracy in the hubristic Peloponnesian war (431–404 BC). This war among Greek city-states demonstrated that, although the Greeks had prevailed militarily during the Persian invasions of 490-479BC, the Persians prevailed culturally. During the Persian wars, the Greeks had been exposed to, and became well acquainted with, Asian materialistic values and hegemonic aspirations. To the extent that these values infected Greek society, they ultimately ruined most of Greece. To a great extent, the Persians made up for their losses on the battlefield by defeating Homer, Heraclitus, and the tragedians in the political arena of vanity and ambition. After the Persian wars, victorious Athenians lost their post-Homeric sense of measure, and consequently lost their touch with reality. One indication of this is that the Athenians considered their massacre of the inhabitants of Melos in 416 BC as a justifiable act of strategic pragmatism;9 they had become incapable of viewing their horrendous, hubristic crime as the act of genocidal barbarism it was—for which crime they would ultimately suffer the retribution required by cosmic Justice (Nemesis), as prescribed by Heraclitus. 9. Thucydides, Histories, 5.84–111, which recounts the dialogue between the Athenians and the besieged Melians. The Athenians asserted the so-called right of the strongest, which they associated with pragmatism as follows (5.89): �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW At the time, it must have been obvious to Aristotle that Greece started its self-destructive decline of going beyond measure as soon as the independent city-states formed interdependentt confederations and expansionary alliances that battled one another over a hubristic and unrealistic prize—politico-economic dominance over all of Greece and even beyond. This was clearly an emulation of the Asian paradigm. It is quite characteristic of the classical period that the Parthenon was built with the worst of intentions: Pericles wanted to project the cultural and material power of a hegemonic Athens. It was only through the artistic genius of Phidias that Athens erected a wonderous, diachronic manifestation of measure (that is, of beauty, balance and harmony) instead of a monstrous monument to vanity and ambition. In an attempt to check the demise of classical Greek civilzation, Aristotle tried to make clear philosophically the basic attributes, the moral qualities, and the political principles that are symbolized by the architecture and sculpture of the Parthenon. He was actually trying to revive the Apollonian spirit of the Battle of Marathon, where two opposite value systems collided for the first time in history—the materialistic value system of Asia and the idealistic value system of pre-classical Greece, the former aiming at power, the latter at virtue. This conflict of values is in the epigram at the battlefield of Marathon, said to be by Simonides of Ceos (ca. 556–468 BC):10 The Athenians, fighting as the vanguard of all Greece, deprived the gold-bearing Persians of their power. (Hellēnōn promachountes Athēnaioi Marathōni, chrusophorōn Mēdōn estoresan dunamin.) Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. (Dikaia men en to anthrōpeiōi logōi apo tēs isēs anankēs krinetai, dunata de hoi prouchontes prassousi kai hoi astheneis xunchōrousin.) 10. John H. Molyneux, Simonides: A Historical Study (Wauconda, Illinois: Bolchazy–Caducci, 1992), 150. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 85 Aristotle’s difficulty pertained to the materialism of his time. The Greeks, corrupted by Asian influences, had lost their sense of measure, and were carried away by the desire for affluence and power. The loss of an intuitive sense cannot be easily restituted. So Aristotle attempted to call the Greeks back to measure and hubris by appealing to the mind rather than the soul, through reasoning rather than intuition—that is, through logic rather than aesthetics. More specifically, Aristotle did not approach measure merely as a self-evident condition that presents itself openly in natural beauty. For example, he did not argue that the massacre at Melos was a hubristic act because it was savagely messy and unnaturally ugly. Instead he tried to define measure and hubris explicitly and thus demonstrate to the Greeks that every act of barbarism is hubristic because it is extremely beyond measure. To Aristotle, extreme actions are temporary and self-destructive, while measured activities are sustainable and constructive. In that context, Aristotle’s rational approach to measure tried to appeal to the Greeks’ instinct of self-preservation, rather than to their degraded sense of aesthetics. Aristotle’s logical approach to measure was ingenious and realistic in the post-Socratic era of cultural decline, when Greeks were increasingly flirting with extremes like ostentatious consumption, abusive power, and the persecution—or even execution—of men of virtue. But Aristotle faced a conceptual problem. A non-controversial, logically defined concept of measure in human affairs may well be an impossibility. One indication of this is the fact that the golden ratio φ is an irrational number that defies mathematical precision: What is the ratio of [the temple’s] width to its height? I can tell you exactly what it is, but not in numbers. I can also tell it to you in numbers, but not exactly. It is approximately 61.8 units wide and 38.2 units high. That will get you in the ballpark and your eye will then adjust it to make the ratio exact, but it can be proven that no pair of numbers, to any finite precision, can accurately express this ratio, which is that formed by cutting a line so that the whole has to its larger part the same ratio that �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the larger part has to the smaller. We know many things by measuring, and our usual way of measuring is with numbers, but in this case numbers are too crude an instrument by which to know something our eyes know at a glance.11 And if measure in quantitative geometric dimensions defies mathematical precision, then how much more difficult is the task of devising an accurate definition of measure in qualitative human affairs? Aristotle wisely did not conceive of a comprehensive definition of measure, nor did he attempt to define measured behavior in human affairs, because an imprecise definition would be controversial, and thus of limited practical use in policy making. In contrast to Plato’s idealistic quest for an absolute value system, Aristotle formulated a pragmatic and relative definition of measure. He approached the concept of measure through successive logical approximations that involved real-life examples, metaphors, and implicit analogies. Aristotle conceived of measure as a subjective mean between two opposite extremes, one of deficiency (elleipsis) and the other of excess (hyperbolē) with respect to a desired goal. For example, courage (andreia) holds a mean position between one’s own feelings of fear (phobos) and overconfidence (tharsos). Such a mean is usually closer to one extreme than the other, depending on internal trend (idiosyncrasy) and external circumstances (environment), and consequently is not one and the same for everyone:12 Therefore of everything that is continuous and divisible, it is possible to take the larger part, or the smaller part, or an equal part, and these parts may be larger, smaller, and equal either with respect to the object itself or relative to us; the equal part being a mean between excess and deficiency. By the mean of the object I denote a point 11. Sachs, “Measure, Moderation, and the Mean,” 7-8. 12. Nicomachean Ethics 1106a25–35. Translations of the Ethics are by W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908) and H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934) and edited by the author. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 87 equally distant from either extreme, which is one and the same for everybody; by the mean relative to us, that amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this is not one and the same for everybody. For example, if 10 is considered many and 2 few, then 6 is considered the mean with respect to the object, because it exceeds and is exceeded by an equal amount and is the intermediate according to arithmetical proportion. But we cannot derive the mean relative to us by this [arithmetical] method. (En panti dē sunechei kai diairetōi esti labein to men pleion to d’ elatton to d’ ison, kai tauta ē kat’ auto to pragma ē pros hēmas:to d’ ison meson ti huperbolēs kai elleipseōs. Legō de tou men pragmatos meson to ison apechon aph’ hekaterou tōn akrōn, hoper estin hen kai to auto pasin, pros hēmas de ho mēte pleonaei mēte elleipei: touto d’ ouch hen, oude tauton pasin. Hoion ei ta deka polla ta de duo oliga, ta hex mesa lambanousi kata to pragma: isōi gar huperechei te kai huperchetai: touto de meson esti kata tēn arithmētikēn analogian. To de pros hēmas ouch houtō lēpteon.) Aristotle here sets out two distinct types of mean, a lesser and a greater. The lesser type, the mean with respect to the object, is like a mere arithmetic average, static and objective. The greater type, the mean relative to us, which is really the sort of measure that applies to human thought and action, is dynamic and fluctuating. It is rarely midway between opposing extremes. Nor is it the same for different people, because it is perceived subjectively. Nor does it remain the same, because it can evolve with changes of interal states and external conditions. One example of this fluctuation might be the changing measure of courage required by the Greeks in the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. The Greeks needed an exceptionally high degree of courage—that is, extreme fearlessness—when they were fighting for their very existence against the Persian invaders. In the Peloponnesian War, however, a less intense degree of courage— much closer to fearfulness—might have served them better, because it might have prevented them from waging that civil war �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW in the first place, or, at least, might have induced them to put an end to the madness of that war earlier than they finally did. This shows that an adequate definition of measure in human affairs must be subjective at an individual level, cultural at a macro-social level, and always relative to changing external circumstances. Such a definition would have to be dynamic rather than static, as Aristotle himself hinted by the reference to continuity and divisibility at the opening of the above passage. 3. Sustainability According to Aristotle, policies that are effective at present, and thus seem to be implemented according to measure, should still be considered hubristic if their desired effects are unsustainable in the foreseeable future. In this context, Aristotle uses the metaphor of the lifetime of a single individual, as shown in the following passages from the Ethics: For [happiness] requires, as we said, not only complete virtue but also a complete lifetime. Indeed, many changes and vicissitudes of all sorts occur in one’s lifetime, and the most prosperous man may fall into great misfortunes in old age, as is told of Priam in the Trojan epic; and no one calls happy a man who has experienced such misfortunes and has passed away miserably (1100a4-9). (Dei gar, hōsper eipomen, kai aretēs teleias kai biou teleiou. Pollai gar metabolai ginontai kai pantoiai tuchai kata ton bion, kai endechetai ton malist’ euthēnounta megalais sumphorais peripesein epi gērōs, kathaper en tois Trōikois peri Priamou mutheuetai: ton de toiautais chrēsamenon tuchais kai teleutēsanta athliōs oudeis eudaimonizei.) Therefore what would prohibit us from saying that he is happy who is active in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout his complete lifetime? Or must we add “and who is destined to live thus and die accordingly”? Because the future is hidden from us, and we consider happiness as a teleological goal, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 89 something utterly and absolutely complete. And if this is so, we shall pronounce happy those among the living in whom these conditions are, and are to be, fulfilled—and [we’ll call them] happy human beings (1101a14-20). (Ti oun kōluei legein eudaimona ton kat’ aretēn teleian energounta kai tois ektos agathois hikanōs kechorēgēmenon mē ton tuchonta chronon alla teleion bion; ē prostheteon kai biōsomenon houtō kai teleutēsonta kata logon; epeidē to mellon aphanes hēmis estin, tēn eudaimonian de telos kai teleion tithemen pantēi pantōs. ei d’ houtō, makarious eroumen tōn zōntōn hios huparchei kai huparxei ta lechthenta, makarious d’ anthrōpous.) The implied analogy is obvious: The lifetime of an individual may span three to four generations (say, 60–80 years), while the historical course of a city-state normally spans many more generations (say, several centuries). A man should be considered happy only if he lives a measured life during his entire lifetime, away from the pitfalls of extreme misfortune and misery. Likewise a city-state should be considered successful only if it applies measured policies with effects that are sustainable in an intergenerational historical period. On the basis of this analogy, a definition of measure in individual behavior and political organization must satisfy the axiom of sustainability, which is the criterion for discerning between actual measure, which is sustainable, and illusory measure, which is unsustainable. For example, the shared confusion of Fig. 2: Unsustainable Aesthetic Mess in Contemporary Athens �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW contemporary Greeks about the difference between real development and illusory development is manifested by the city they have built all around the Parthenon in the post-WWII era: Athens is one of the ugliest and most polluted capital cities in Europe (Fig. 2). Of course, there are many terribly polluted cities in the world, but Athens is unique. The city surrounds the Parthenon chaotically, as if the surrealistic pandemonium of the former threatens to engulf the Apollonian harmony of the latter. For six consecutive decades (1949–2009), while the contemporary Greeks were building their grotesque city, they thought they were developing their economy in accordance with measure. After all, they did provide work and housing for millions of Greek peasants who emigrated from their villages to the new, “modern” Athens. During that period, under the spell of Atē, most Greeks were incapable of seeing what was obvious to sight—namely, the visual actuality that their city is a heap of aesthetic hubris lying all around the Parthenon. As a consequence, they were unable to take corrective action in time. Only recently, under the specter of Nemesis, did the Greeks start to re-evaluate their perception of progress. Now at last, Athenians can see that their city, and the hubristic model of economic development that underlies it, have been unsustainable all along.13 This manifestation of Athenian hubris around the Parthenon is symptomatic of the world’s industrial hubris in regard to planet earth. Contemporary Athens was built as a gargantuan labor city that would allegedly provide an ample supply of cheap labor to heavy industry nearby, at Eleusis, the former site of the Eleusinian Mysteries. At a global level, unbounded materialistic expansion has crowded out the Apollonian tradition. The echo of the idealistic values of the victors in the Battle of Marathon is becoming increasingly attenuated in the era of so-called globalization. Unlimited economic growth on a planet with limited 13. Nicos Souliotis, “Cultural Economy, Sovereign Debt Crisis and the Importance of Local Contexts: The Case of Athens,” CITIES: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning 33 (2013): 61–68. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 91 resources is not merely unsustainable. It is irrational. It is too late for the Athenians, because their aesthetic blindness has already brought upon them the current retribution of socio-economic Nemesis. The pressing question now is whether it is too late for humanity as well, in view of the climatic Nemesis that seems is appearing on the horizon. Aberrations from measure cannot survive the forces of nature for long. Nemesis always intervenes, sooner or later, to restore beauty, harmony and balance, which are all associated with sustainability.14 Even in judicial practice and strategic analysis, the concepts of measure and justice are sometimes associated with the notion of sustainability.15 For example, akin to the concept of measure is the legal principle of reciprocity or lex talionis (legal equivalence, as in “equivalent retaliation”), as well as the popular saying “tit for tat.” They trace their origins to the Biblical scripture “an eye for an eye”16 and the Babylonian legal code, enacted in 1772 BC by Hammurabi, the sixth king of Babylon. Hammurabi’s code included no provision for extenuating circumstances to modify a prescribed punishment. According to Aristotle though, proportionate reciprocity with qualification that takes account of circumstances, that is, retribution with measure, 14. Patricia Grant, “An Aristotelian Approach to Sustainable Business,” Corporate Governance 11.1 (2008): 4–14. 15. Stefan Baumgärtner and Martin Quaas, “What is Sustainability Economics?” University of Lüneburg Working Paper Series in Economics, 138 (2009): 3, available at http://hdl.handle.net/10419/30222: “The vision of sustainability aims at justice in the domain of human-nature relationships and in view of the long-term and inherently uncertain future. This includes three specific relationships . . . : (i) justice between humans of different generations (intergenerational justice), (ii) justice between different humans of the present generation (intragenerational” justice), and (iii) justice between humans and nature (physiocentric ethics).” 16. The Biblical commandment “an eye for an eye” is literally “an eye under an eye” (Leviticus 24:19–21; Exodus 21:22–25; Deuteronomy 19:16–21). �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW is the sort of justice that safeguards the sustainability of the citystate (Ethics, 1132b33-35): this sort of justice does hold men together: reciprocity in accordance with a proportion and not on the basis of precisely equal return. For it is by proportionate requital that the city-state holds together. (Sunechei to toiouton dikaion, to antipeponthos kat’ analogian kai mē kat’ hisotēta. Tōi antipoiein gar analogon summenei hē polis.) The principle of just retribution is the conceptual basis of measured response, which is a highly effective strategy in game theory in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma.17 But under extraordinary circumstances, a policy of reciprocity may be too rigid and ineffective if it does not satisfy the axiom of sustainability. For instance, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 imposed war reparations beyond measure upon Germany after World War I. Those retributive payments were unsustainable. As consequence, the German economy was soon ruined, and ultimately its political system collapsed in 1933. After the war, during the military occupation of Germany (1945-1949), retaliative justice was of little use to the Allies when they had to decide how to respond sustainably to the Holocaust. The proper response could not be to visit another Holocaust on the Germans. Instead, sustainability took center stage in shaping U.S. policies with respect to Germany, as shown in the fifth paragraph of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directive 1067, issued to General Eisenhower in April 1945: “The principal Allied objective is to prevent Germany from ever again becoming a threat to the peace of the world [italics mine].” In particular, German reparations to the Allies were rather moderate and non-monetary, such as technology transfers from Germany to the U.S. and Russia,18 or capital equipment transfers 17. Anatol Rappoport and Albert M. Chammah, Prisoner’s Dilemma (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965). 18. John Gimbel, Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 171. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAPPAS 93 to France and Russia—primarily from dismantled German military factories and heavy industry.19 Aiming at sustainability, the Western Allies implemented an imaginative mix of policies, including: immediate apprehension of war criminals for punishment, control over German education, disarmament and demilitarization, a federal form of government for post-WWII Germany, now to be called the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), participation of the FRG in supranational organizations, like OEEC and later OECD, integration of the German economy into an orderly and prosperous Europe, generous restructuring of the foreign debt of the FRG by about 50% in 1953,20 a reparations agreement between the FRG and Israel with respect to the Holocaust, internationalization of the FRG’s entire Armed Forces under NATO command, and ever-continuing stationing of units of the U.S. Armed Forces in Germany as forward enablers. With respect to sustainability, the treatment of defeated Germany by the Allies was a measured policy, and because of this it has endured and has served the cause of peace in Europe for many decades. In the wake of the tragedy of World War II, the greatest war in human history, moderation and sustainability were the two principles that guided Europe safely, in measure, on the path of Aristotelian catharsis.21 4. Conclusion For millennia, from the age of Homer to the present, philosophy has failed to provide a comprehensive definition of measure with 19. Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A history of the Soviet Zone of occupation 1945-1949. (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1995), 206. 20. Timothy W. Guinnane, “Financial Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung: The 1953 London Debt Agreement,” Yale University Economic Growth Center Research Paper Series 880 (New Haven: Yale University, 2004), 22 and 24–25. Available at http://ssrn.com/ abstract=493802 21. As first noted by Aristotle (Poetics, 1449b28), the characteristic attribute of tragedy in the theater is that “through pity and fear it effects relief (catharsis) to these and similar emotions” (di’ eleou kai phobou perainousa tēn tōn toioutōn pathēmatōn katharsin). �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW respect to human behavior. If measure is “due proportion,” then what exactly is “due”? And if it is a “subjective mean” between two extremes, one of deficiency and the other of excess, closer to one extreme than the other, then how much closer? So far, no magic number (like φ) or undisputed formula has been conceived for defining measure in human behavior and economics . This indeterminacy in the concept of measure, coupled with the human impulsive tendency to excess, has made many individuals, societies, and states prone to hubristic aberrations from measure. And as soon as people lose their sense of measure, they also lose their touch with reality.22 But even if they lose that sense, they might still be able to detect such aberrations by using the criterion of sustainability. In this respect, rational analysis of sustainability is a secondbest and time-consuming methodological tool when compared to instantaneous aesthetic appraisal of human activity with respect to beauty, balance, and harmony. The Nazis would not have needed a rational analysis of their genocidal hubris if they only could have seen the ugliness, the monstrosity, and the barbarity of their concentration camps. They might then have returned to their senses by themselves, in time. Similarly, open-minded residents of Athens, Detroit, or Shanghai, might not have needed an elaborate analysis of sustainability if they could have seen for themselves what is instantly clear to the eye, namely, the dead end of hubristic economic development. But for those who are short-sighted or blind with regard to measure, the Aristotelian criterion of sustainability might well be enlightening.23 22. Do humans really have a sense of measure? The answer to this question is a part of a discussion that includes the question of the best human life. This inquiry demands philosophic reflection, but such reflection would not be possible if one could not, in the first place, simply see its form (Sachs, “Measure, Moderation, and the Mean,” 22). 23. Indicators and measures of sustainability derived from the Canadian Report of the Alberta Round Table on Environment and Economy (1993) are listed at www.iisd.org/educate/learn/measures.htm. �95 Platonic Theōria Mark Shiffman Plato’s dialogues incite us to think about both the words we use and the phenomena we are trying to understand by means of those words. In some cases the relationship between word and phenomena provides the explicit theme of the dialogue, as in the case of justice (dikaiosunē) in the Republic or knowledge (epistēmē) in the Theaetetus. There are other themes, however, that remain implicit and revolve around words that require us to think more generally about the relationship of words and phenomena—for example, speech (logos) or wonder (thaumazein). The latter class would include theōria, which we tend to translate as “contemplation” and which seems to suggest a more direct, less word-bound relationship to the phenomena, a kind of insight the dialogues seek to foster but cannot encapsulate in words. But of course theōria is a word, and a peculiar one. Do we understand this word, and do we understand the phenomena it bespeaks? Let us ask a question the dialogues never directly raise: What is theōria? To what does the word refer, or toward what does it gesture? To reflect on this question, we must reflect on how the word theōria is used in the dialogues. When we do, we will notice several things: 1) the language of theōria (including the related verb theōrein and noun theōros) has meanings in Greek before Plato, and the dialogues use these words in ways related to but departing from their previous uses; 2) there is no simply identifiable single meaning of theōria in the dialogues; 3) outside of the Laws, in which Socrates does not appear, the only character who uses “theoric” language in these innovatively varied ways is (with a single exception) Socrates; and 4) his use of this language varies in relation to the demands of the particular Mark Shiffman is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at Villanova University. �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW interlocutor and conversation. The question then becomes: How should we understand what Plato depicts Socrates as doing by means of the language of theōria? I: The Range of “Theoric” Terms In a century in which the meanings of theōria and theōrein become quite flexible, they reach their maximum flexibility in the Platonic dialogues. In the attested uses we have from the 540’s to the 420’s (from Theognis, Aeschylus, and Herodotus to Aristophanes, Euripides, and Lysias) we find a group of meanings for words of the theōr- root which we may call “traditional,” in the sense that they are clearly distinguishable in the early authors and continue in a relatively ossified use through later ones: 1. theōros: a delegate to consult the Oracle (later: theōria as a delegation and theōrein as participating in a delegation) 2. theōria: a sacred festival involving games or performances theōrein: attending or being a spectator at such festivals (later: theōros as festival-delegate, theōria as festival-delegation) 3. theōros: observer of an unusual spectacle theōria: the spectacle or its observation (usually as “sightseeing”) theōrein: observing such a spectacle These ordinary denotations of the words share certain characteristics: the viewer travels away from his customary setting and enters into an attentiveness that differs from his everyday attitude toward familiar beings. From the 420s to the 320s, in Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, these words receive metaphorical extensions of meaning that differ with each author, but share a common character.1 By evoking physical and psychic displacement and 1. Thucydides 3.23.4.4 and 4.93.1.5. Xenophon, Anabasis 1.2.16 and 2.4.25–6; Hellenica 4.5.6; Cyropaideia 4.3.3; Memorabilia 4.8.7; Symposium 7.3. Isocrates Busiris 46, To Nicocles 35.6, Antidosis 277.1–4, Evagoras 29.3, 73.9, 76.5, and Epistle 6.12.10, On the Peace 74.5, Nicocles or the Cyprians 17.5–7, and Panathenaicus 21.7, 39.2–40.4 and 222.6. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 97 the absorbing spectacles constitutive of traditional theōria, each author highlights experiences in which we are drawn out of our everyday mode of attentiveness into the presence of something exceptional. The story of Aristotle’s innovations in theoric language (besides requiring a prior account of Plato’s) is vast and complex. Whereas the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae gives roughly 125 instances up to the fourth century of words with the theōrroot in authors other than Aristotle (54 of which occur in Plato), in the Aristotelian corpus it locates nearly 700, only a handful of which bear traditional senses. What we can say is that theōria in the sense of attention to noetic objects and Aristotle’s coinage of the adjective theōrētikos (especially as used to describe a way of life) achieved remarkable success in subsequent philosophical usage and became new ossified terms. After Aristotle, innovation in theoric language effectively comes to an end.2 Plato exhibits the greatest variety of innovative denotations of theoric terms. 22 instances bear traditional senses. In the other 32 cases we find extensions beyond the traditional circle of meanings that we may classify according to the following benchmarks: 1. Adaptation of traditional sense to imagined social/political context (Laws 12, 950d–952d) 2. Traditional theoric settings, nontraditional acts of attention (Laws 650a7, 815b4; Lysis 206e9) 3. Observation of other persons for the sake of judging them (Laws 772a1, 781c4; Gorgias 523e4) 4. Observation of nonhuman entities for the sake of judging them (Laws 663c4; Philebus 42b3; Theaetetus 177e2) 5. Observation of particulars for the sake of recognizing a general pattern (Laws 695c6; Philebus 53d9; Phaedo 99d6) 6. Beholding beautiful/noble things without (apparent) ulterior end (Symposium 210d4; Gorgias 474d8–9; Phaedrus 276b4, 276d5; 2. Subtle and interesting changes take place in the Greek Church Fathers’ writings about the relationship between prayer and knowledge, but these are best understood as modifications of the specifically Aristotelian sense of the words. �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Republic 529b3, 601a2 and a7, 606b1, 607d1) 7. Beholding transcendent beings or forms (Phaedrus 247c1, d4; Republic 486a8, 511c6, 517d5; Phaedo 65e2, 109e8 [ambiguously]) All these varied extensions of the range of theoric language in Plato involve attention to particular beings, whether identified as specifically as certain individual persons or as generically as “just things,” “beautiful/noble things,” or “pleasures and pains.” The beholding of transcendent beings that comes to be associated with the philosophic sense of the words constitutes a quite deliberate extension of meaning, always used in relation to other senses of the words theōria and theōrein in the same dialogues. This “contemplative” sense, then, is only one of a broad spectrum of senses in Plato, by no means more common than others (6 or 7 instances out of 54), and not the only distinctly Platonic extension of the meaning of these words (since headings 4 through 6 above are distinctly Platonic innovations as well). With this in mind, let us examine the three dialogues–Phaedrus, Phaedo, and Republic–in which these words seem to denote or suggest transcendent vision of eternal truth, which is both the maximum metaphorical extension of their traditional sense and the sense of the word most distinctively associated with Plato and his characterization of the philosophic experience. II: The Phaedrus In Phaedrus, a dialogue which concerns artful composition, innovative senses of the verb theōrein appear in two nearly symmetric pairs (247c1, d4 and 276b4, d5). The first two cases occur within the Palinode’s description of the soul’s journey to the outer cosmos and the region of the true beings. The word theōrein is not, however, predicated of human souls, but only of those of the gods. Since the horses of their chariots are well-behaved, the gods (or their souls) can stand erect at the edge of the heavens and gaze untroubled at the truth beyond (247b6–d4). The soul of the man capable of following the gods to the limit is troubled by its �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 99 horses and at best only able to scarcely have a look (248a4).3 This whole festive procession of the gods going to a remarkable spectacle with their clients in train recalls the festival-going type of traditional theōrein.4 Socrates appropriately applies this word to the gods in contradistinction to the human souls because of their focused attention given to the thing seen, a dimension of traditional theōrein carried over into all the innovative uses. The gods gaze steadily, while the human souls look only with a divided attention, most of it elsewhere.5 Transcendent theōrein is beyond the power of the human soul even in the proximity to eternal beings imagined in the Palinode, and thus a fortiori to the embodied soul in this life. The other two instances of theōrein in this dialogue, by contrast, have as their objects beautiful but ephemeral products of human artifice. In discussing the appropriate way to engage in writing, Socrates likens the author to a farmer. The latter is serious about the crop from which he derives sustenance and profit; he would not plant these seeds in a forcing garden for the pleasure of ephemeral gazing, but would only engage in such planting in play or for the sake of a festival (276b1–5). So too, the writer who is serious about the just, beautiful, and good will write only as a recreation, delightedly gazing on his delicate productions without expecting anything else to come of them, unless a spur to memory in old age, and perhaps an aid to those pursuing the same paths of inquiry (276d1–5). 3. While 247d2-4 seems to leave open the possibility that a human soul, “insofar as it has a care for receiving what befits it,” can also experience theōria, the strong contrast of gods and humans at 248a1 appears to minimize if not eliminate this possibility. 4. At the City Dionysia, for example, Athenians were divided into tribes while proceeding to and sitting in the theater, and each tribe was represented by one general pouring libations and one judge of the competitions (see Sara Monoson Plato’s Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000], 92–96). 5. Accordingly, at 278c Socrates insists that only a god could be wise, while men can at best be lovers of wisdom. �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The key to understanding the relationship between these two pairs of instances lies in the character of Phaedrus, whose world is bounded by his love of speeches. At the outset of the dialogue, Socrates finds Phaedrus on his way out of the city to commit to memory a speech of Lysias that has particularly impressed him. The lewd insinuation of Socrates’s reference to the scroll of Lysias’s speech Phaedrus clutches in his left hand under his cloak (228d6–7) suggests the fruitlessness of his love of the written word. This suggestion associates him both with the farmer who puts his efforts into non-nourishing hothouse plants and with the intemperate lovers of the Palinode, whose bodily gratification of eros prevents the nourishing stream of beauty from flowing to the wings of the soul that, if grown, would lift them up to their true heavenly nourishment (251a–b). The implicit critique of Phaedrus as one distracted from true nourishment by love of speeches receives its most pointed expression immediately after the Palinode. In the face of Socrates’s lyrical account of true beauty and its benefits to the soul, Phaedrus distinctly manifests his fixation on artificial beauty by professing his admiration for the beauty of the speech only insofar as it raises a formidable challenge to the skills of Lysias (257c2); he is impervious to the inspiration of its imaginative content as it applies to his own soul. Socrates responds to Phaedrus’s impassibility by implicitly comparing him to the cicadas, who were once men who became so mad for music that they ceased to care about food and drink. Plato has Socrates warn Phaedrus (and the reader) not to be bewitched by literary artistry into a self-oblivious aestheticism that would distract us from caring about our own souls in relation to the truth–or in Socrates’s words, about where we are coming from and where we are going (227a1) and whether our soul is monstrous or not (230a).6 Socrates, by contrast, professes himself a lover of the living speech of dialectic (266b3–4). Thus, in the agricultural analogy, 6. The initial indication of Phaedrus’ self–oblivion is that, entranced by the prospect of conning Lysias’s speech, he in fact does not know where he is coming from or going to. He claims to be coming from Lysias, when �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 101 he stands parallel to the farmer who plants a serious crop. In the same breath, he claims that when he finds a man naturally able to make dialectical divisions and groupings, he follows him like a god (266b5–7). Thus, in the realm of speeches, he is the equivalent of the Palinode’s true lover, whose reverence for the godlike beloved enables him to follow in the train of the god in the circuits of the heavens (251a1–7) and thus to attain in small measure the true nourishment of the soul. Like the vision of the beautiful beloved chastely endured, the practice of dialectic helps the soul regain something of the nourishing vision of the intelligibles. It seems then that in each half of the dialogue Socrates uses theōrein to denote the highest kind of delight: in the cosmos of the Palinode, this is the delight of unperturbed gazing on the fullness of truth and being; in Phaedrus’s world, the same place is occupied by the undisturbed delight in masterful speeches. The reversal of its valence from the first pair of instances to the second–from lyrically celebrated height of the soul’s destiny to critically exposed squandering of the soul’s best labors–emphasizes the opposite tendencies of Phaedrus’s hedonistic and effete love of speeches and Socrates’s love of dialectic. Socrates first uses theōrein to express the ideal, however unreachable by humans, that may be imagined as polestar and spur to the philosophic enterprise. He then uses it to express the idle and fruitless delight in beautiful speeches that makes an idol of man’s power to produce beauty, and so obscures the natural connection between beauty and truth. At the same time, Plato also dramatizes the problematic character of dialectic, which occupies an ambiguous status between these two poles of theōrein. If dialectic is a process of grouping and dividing according to classes, and these classes are necessarily delineated by man, what can guarantee that they bring us in the direction of the divine theōrein, if the reference point of that divine experience itself, as a steady vision of all truth, is beyond he is in fact being spiritually drawn to him by his love for his speechwriting prowess; and the countryside walk he is heading toward on the advice of his physician friend is in fact a flight from the threat of ill health (227a). �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the sure reach of man? May these delineations not turn into bewitching and calcified products of our speech? That is a phenomenon dialectic must continually confront and seek to overcome, supported by partial intuitions of the natural and intelligible whole but without sure and final knowledge of it. III: The Phaedo In Plato’s Phaedo, we find theoric language again associated with the aims and practice of dialectic and the problem of self-oblivion. The words theōria and theōrein occur in the dialogue three times each: theōria thrice in the traditional sense of an official delegation to Delos (in the conversation between Phaedo and Echecrates that frames the narrated dialogue), and theōrein in untraditional senses within the dialogue itself, in response to the unfolding of the philosophical drama. Socrates’s interlocutors, Simmias and Cebes, are associates of the Pythagorean Philolaus (61d), who prioritizes the mathematical, musical and cosmological aspects of Pythagorean teaching over its “religious” (cultic and ritual) aspects.7 Accordingly, Simmias and Cebes are devoted to investigation of nature, and treat the question of the soul’s immortality with skepticism, professing uncertainty regarding the rationale for the Pythagorean prohibition of suicide. Socrates develops his explanation of philosophy as preparation for death by conversing with the two Pythagoreans in the cultic idiom underemphasized in their branch of the tradition. He speaks of philosophy as a kind of purification of the soul from the influence of the body, thus suggesting a strong dualism of the kind necessarily implied by the Pythagorean claim that bodies and souls are two different things that can be sundered and rejoined in reincarnation. In the context of this explanation the verb theōrein first occurs, when Socrates introduces the question of the “just itself,” 7. See Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp.176–208, 277, 298, 480. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 103 (along with the beautiful and good, greatness, health and strength). He asks: Is that which is truest in them seen [theōreitai] through the body, or is it like this: whoever of us best and most precisely prepares himself to think about each thing he investigates will come closest to knowing each thing? (65e1-4) At first reading, the question might seem to be, “Do we theōrein these things through the body, or rather through thinking?” Strictly speaking, however, the verb theōrein applies only (and interrogatively) to the hypothetical sense-activity of the body. The weight of Pythagorean doctrine might however lead one to construe it as applying also to the activity of the intellect in which the purifying preparation culminates–especially as Socrates invokes the language of purification characteristic of the Orphic mysteries, with their revelations of extraordinary knowledge to the initiates (65e6, 69d).8 Socrates’s grammatical ellipsis thus suggests (without itself necessarily reproducing) the Pythagorean tendency to understand soul and its phenomena by analogy to body, as a body-like, localizable and separable thing. It is left for the reader to wonder whether the proper cognition of what is truest is best characterized as theōrein. The Pythagorean and Orphic cultic mysteries explicitly profess that the purification of the soul is accompanied by a privileged and salvific knowledge. Soul is understood above all as pure intellect, while passions, which perturb the purity of the intellect, are understood as bodily. This perspective governs the entire first half of the dialogue; the first three “proofs” of immortality depend upon the identification of soul with pure intellect. Only in the second half of the dialogue does the soul as principle of life enter into the reasoning. This implicit cultic-Pythagorean identification of soul as pure intellect, unrelated to but entangled with body, is reproduced in an obscured form in rationalist Pythagoreanism, insofar as the latter is wholly devoted to pure intellectual attainments. Thus while the older Pythagorean tradition occupies its adherents with 8. “Orphism and Pythagoreanism were almost inextricably intertwined in the fifth century” (Burkert 1972, 39). �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW transformation of the soul in a self-attentive discipline of life, the newer strand, devoted to scientific knowledge, leaves in obscurity the concrete interplay of soul and body in the passions, engendering forgetfulness of the soul and lack of self-knowledge. Socrates’s turn to the discussion of misology that occupies the second half of the dialogue seems incited (at least in part) by his recognition that Cebes is afflicted by this self-oblivion. When Socrates addresses the relationship between types of soul and the lives and destinies belonging to them (81e–84b), Cebes, hitherto so quick to follow Socrates’s meaning, has difficulty understanding at almost every turn. His hesitations suggest the following deficiencies of awareness: he has not thought about the variety of kinds of soul (81e); he has no sense of the relative happiness of virtuous, nonintellectual citizens (82b); he has no definite conception of that from which philosophy offers the soul liberation (82d); he has paid little attention to the drama of the soul’s passions in response to the freedom offered by philosophy, especially the influence passions have on the intellect (83c); and he has no concrete notion of the dynamics by which the soul becomes riveted to the influence of the body (83d). In short, he understands soul only in schematic terms of the opposition of body and intellect, and not through firsthand attentiveness to the complexity of its real possibilities for order and disorder. After some silent reflections (perhaps on these shortcomings of Cebes), Socrates brings into the foreground the influence of passions on thought, in three ways. First, in rejecting the common interpretation of the swan’s song as a lament, Socrates appeals to the regularity of natural phenomena–observing that no other bird sings when it is anxious or fearful–in a way that is surely welcome to his hearers. But he also points out that the intellectual failure of humans to note this regularity and apply it to the swan is due to a passion, namely fear of death, which they mistakenly project onto the swan (84e– 85a). Second, sensing the depressing effect on the hearers of the objections by Simmias and Cebes to the immortality thesis, Socrates warns against misology (89d–90d). Misology arises �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 105 when one has the repeated experience of accepting the truth of arguments uncritically and then seeing them fall prey to criticism—probably an experience familiar to these rationalist Pythagoreans, especially with regard to the school’s doctrines regarding the soul, and especially to Cebes, the more obstinate critic.9 Socrates warns that we are prone to grow disillusioned with argument as such, rather than blame our own weakness as arguers. He shows himself a keen observer of souls, one who understands their aspirations and disappointments and how these influence their interpretation of reason itself. Third, Socrates offers himself as an example of the influence of passion on the soul’s engagement in reasoning (91a). He claims to be worried that, under the influence of fear of death, he is approaching the argument about immortality in the spirit of those who merely want to win a case. He confesses to pleonexia and philonikia, grasping after more than his due and infatuation with victory, and thus exhibits the critical self-knowledge he seeks to engender. By articulating these pitfalls of the intellect brought about by passions, Socrates makes manifest a middle ground upon which the two influence one another, the true ground on which purification of the soul must take place. What he exemplifies is not an objectivity of pure intellection insulating itself from all that is foreign to its purity, but rather a self-critical awareness of the mutual influence of reason and passion that will allow a proper vigilance of the soul’s activity in pursuit of understanding, both in oneself and in others. In this understanding, passion does not belong entirely to the body or to the soul; but the understanding of passion and its relationship to thought belongs integrally to the soul’s self-understanding. Soul is not a being like other beings of 9. Simmias shows himself willing to be convinced of doctrines he already believes by the first argument that offers itself, though he is always happy to hear more (73b). The suicide prohibition, which is connected with the whole complex of Pythagorean doctrines about the soul, had been communicated to Simmias and Cebes by Philolaus and others (presumably Pythagoreans), but apparently without sufficient supporting argumentation (61e). �106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW which we render account, first because it is the soul that must render that account, and second because we can only render account of soul itself by means of self-knowledge. This difference is not dualistic, like that between two comparable beings we might account for in the world known by soul, but is a difference that keeps the relationship between such different modes of being as puzzling as it ought to be. As a result of his inattention to the phenomena of soul, Cebes fails both to attain self-knowledge and to distinguish the soul from other kinds of being. His last argument against immortality compares body and soul to a man and a cloak (88a-b). Even if a soul outlasts a body, might it not eventually wear down through successive incarnations? Thus soul appears as something affected the way bodies are in its dealings with bodies. Beings are all on one level; what appears as a body-soul dualism is really a kind of monism of the ontological imagination. The attempt to account for all beings in the same terms (in the case of Pythagoreans, through number) leads to the overzealous hopes that end in misology. Thus, in his attempt to counter the threat of misology, Socrates proposes what he calls his “second sailing,” a discipline of conversation that allows the eidetic determination of a thing to appear in its distinctness.10 As eidetic, it is distinct in status from its embodiments; as a determination, it is distinct from other eidetic determinations. In this context Socrates uses the verb theōrein (99d6) once again in relation to those things he “never stops saying, both at other times and in the earlier speech” 10. To be precise, the second sailing seems to refer to one or more of several things. The first, on the procedural level, is the so–called “method of hypothesis.” The second is the result of Socrates’s applying that procedure to the problem of the aitios, namely the resort to “participation in forms” as the best explanation for why things are as they are. Cebes and Simmias assent to this result (102a1), and it, rather than the procedural principle, informs the subsequent discussion. It may also refer to the implied turn to “the human things,” to the soul’s self–understanding as the necessary starting point for all philosophizing. It is beyond the scope of this essay to attempt to clarify the relationship among these three meanings. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 107 (100b1–2), namely that the beautiful and good and great themselves with respect to themselves “are something.”11 That is, he refers explicitly back to the very discussion in which he previously used the verb theōrein. In that earlier discussion, it seemed that, in keeping with the mystery-structure, the process of purification by “looking at each thing with thought alone” served as preparation for seeing the “itself with respect to itself” as a culmination. Here, however, the reverse is clearly the case. Socrates finds it safest to begin from these things (100b5) if he is to think properly about them so as to make progress toward the truth. It is the identification of what belongs to the thing discussed wholly with respect to its own determination that provides Socrates and his interlocutor with an initial clarity of communication, upon which basis they can proceed to further clarification of the question at hand.12 They are not likely to arrive at a grand cosmic vision as Socrates had once hoped, and as the earlier discussion of the “in-itself,” also pursued in the spirit of the “first sailing,” may have suggested. Accordingly, Socrates here uses theōrein to refer, not to the culmination of the soul’s journey of inquiry, but rather to a wholly natural, though out of the ordinary, kind of seeing. He speaks of those “looking at (theōrountes) and investigating (skopoumenoi) the eclipsing sun,” which he compares to investigating the causes of natural things by looking at the natural things themselves. The result of both is a kind of blindness. By contrast, when he speaks of seeking the truth of beings in speeches, he talks only of “investigating” (skopein, 99e5–6); and to reinforce this implicit con11. Ti einai, here as also at 65d5. 12. This, for Gadamer, is the crucial difference between the Socratic approach to philosophizing and what is typically desired by the interlocutors (including the readers): “In the final analysis, our wanting to think of the participation of existent things in being as a relationship of existent things to each other always involves us in a false concretion. Instead we would do better to acknowledge from the start that this participation is the point of departure for all meaningful talk of the idea and of the universal” (“The Proofs of Immortality in Plato’s Phaedo,” in Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight hermeneutical Studies of Plato, tr. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp.124-5 (emphasis mine). �108 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW trast, he immediately and emphatically rejects a too strict analogy between his visual image and the phenomena of investigation in speeches (99e6–100a3). Theōrein here names an activity of the bodily senses that quite clearly should not serve as a model for the activity of the inquiring mind. Socrates delivers this account, which rejects understanding natural things in terms of generation, in response to Cebes’s naturalistic notion of the dissolution of soul—a problem which, according to Socrates, would require “a thorough examination of the cause of generation and destruction” (95e9). Socrates implicitly warns Cebes that his mode of inquiry will produce only blindness and disappointment. By means of the second sailing, Socrates and Cebes make some progress in clarifying the question starting out from agreement about what is strictly proper to soul. Ultimately, however, Cebes fails to adhere to this discipline. He makes the mistake, which Socrates does not explicitly correct, of deducing the soul’s inability to suffer corruption from its deathlessness (106d). As Socrates implies in his somewhat evasive response to Cebes’s confident assertion, one might properly say that soul is deathless by virtue of its eidetic determination, since the presence of soul in a thing necessarily entails the presence of life. Soul as an object of the intellect can also be strictly considered not liable to corruption by virtue of its eidetic status as such, to which the question of corruption would be simply irrelevant. Neither premise enables us to conclude anything about the perdurance of actual living souls. In applying a determination of the eidos of soul as such to the level of instantiation (i.e. equating deathlessness of soul as soul with incorruptibility of any given soul), Cebes exhibits what Aristotle will later identify as a characteristic flaw of Pythagorean metaphysics: By making number the being of things, Pythagoreanism fails to distinguish numbers, as intelligibles without qualities, from the sensible entities they are supposed to compose.13 13. Metaphysics 1090a31–b2. Compare Gadamer, p.112: “Plato . . . is not simply Pythagorean. On the contrary, he explicitly distinguishes the noetic �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 109 Thus, even within the structure of the cosmos apprehended by soul, Pythagoreanism fails to discern the eidetic determinations through which alone the soul can attempt an adequate grasp of beings.14 In the face of the recalcitrance of this basic Pythagorean principle, Socrates turns to a myth, in which he uses theōrein for the last time. He acknowledges the argument’s inconclusiveness and encourages Simmias and Cebes to push the dialectical inquiry further back, to examine more clearly the primary hypotheses in spite of their inclination to trust in them. Only if they do this sufficiently will they follow the logos as much as humanly possible (107b). The myth, that is to say, enters on the heels of an acknowledgment that the dialectic has been inadequately achieved because of the ultimate hypotheses from which Simmias and Cebes seem unable to break free, and it seems intended to address this state of affairs. In this most thoroughly corporeal of Socrates’s eschatological myths, the “higher world” is not an eidetic world or a place of souls, but a literally higher and more perfect region of the earth, whose stones are less liable to corruption and whose people live longer (by both of which Cebes has characterized soul).15 These purer and higher regions are imaginable precisely through world of numbers and mathematical relationships from what is given in the reality of concrete appearances.” (Thus also Burkert, pp. 31 and 480.) Moreover, the Pythagoreans load numbers with all sorts of noetic determinations, without recognizing that the noetic forms must provide the ontological ground for these distinctions, such that number cannot be the most fundamental determination of beings (unless they are seen as more fundamental determinants of the ideas themselves, as may be the case in the Platonic “unwritten doctrines”). Thus the Pythagoreans occlude the distinction between the aesthetic and the noetic. 14. If the question remains open whether the soul’s requirement of eidetic determinations for understanding the world is to be attributed to the soul or to the world, this is only to say that the Socratic approach keeps the relationship of soul to world as puzzling as it ought to be as well. 15. Stones: 110e2–5. People: 111b1–3. �110 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW proportionality: as air is to water in visual clarity and purity, so the ether in the upper regions is to air (if not more so), and the senses and wisdom of the inhabitants exceed ours in the same ratio (111b). There the geometrically structured beauties of nature, the precious stones, are in plain sight, not hidden under the rough ground as here (11a1–2). This higher world seems to body forth the main features of the Pythagorean ontological imagination of reality. In this context Socrates speaks of the hypothetical case of someone from our impure part of the earth rising up to catch sight of the outer, purer surface. If his nature were up to the task of holding himself aloft gazing (theōrousa), he would see the true heaven and light and earth (109e5–8). Here theōrein (in a fairly traditional sense of traveling afar to see extraordinary sights) does express an image of the goal of Pythagorean inquiry, namely the vision of the purified natural and visible things. The suggestion that one might achieve this by growing wings (109e3) reminds us of the Palinode of the Phaedrus, but thereby reinforces the contrast that here we are speaking emphatically of an imagined bodily journey. That the geographical context of the image suggests flight above the Mediterranean (especially in light of the pervasive imagery of the Theseus story in the dialogue16) also calls to mind Icarus, a fitting image of the calamitous misology attendant upon the excessive hopes of Pythagorean rationalism. The crucial detail for understanding the role of the myth in relation to the underlying concerns of the dialogue would seem to be the remark that among those dead vouchsafed transport to the higher regions (who seem to meet their fates in their bodily condition), only the ones purified by philosophy go on to live without bodies in even higher dwelling places whose beauty it is “not easy to make manifest” (114c5). The true philosophical purification, the art of dialectic conducted in light of the soul’s pursuit of self-knowledge, is not visible or discernible through proportion; it can only be distinctly known from the inside. The intermediately higher world seems to translate the dangers of the Pythagorean aspiration into spatial terms and to put it into perspective in relation to the indescribable fate of the philosopher. 16. Cf. Jacob Klein, “Plato’s Phaedo,” in Lectures and Essays (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 375-393 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 111 It is not those who make their dwelling in the land of mathematical purity who ascend to fundamental philosophical insight, but rather the dialectical philosopher who starts out on the rough ground of our world and aims beyond the vision of a mathematized nature to the eidetic principles of being. The three instances of theōrein are thus associated with three kinds of purification. The dualistic approach to philosophy seeks to purify the mind by ignoring the body, thinking it will culminate in theōrein of the true beings; but this hypothetical theōrein is conceived as belonging to a body-like soul on the analogy of bodily perception. The second sailing seeks to purify the logos by means of fidelity to the eidos in the light of the pursuit of selfknowledge; it distinguishes itself from the blindness-inducing theōrein of natural phenomena. The monistic myth imagines a purification of the visible things themselves by placing them in higher, purer physical conditions, and depicts theōrein of these perfected natural beings as the inevitably frustrating, misologyinducing goal of Pythagorean thought. This consistent emphasis on purification harks back to the uses of theōria in the initial conversation that frames the dialogue.17 In three consecutive sentences (58b2, b5, c1), Phaedo says the following about the theōria to Delos that delays Socrates’s execution: 1. It has been performed annually by the Athenians since they vowed it to Apollo if he should save Theseus. 2. They must remain pure from executions while it is gone, and uncooperative winds sometimes considerably delay its sailing. 3. It begins when the priest of Apollo lays the wreath on the prow of the ship. Perhaps the mentions of Apollo in the first and third sentences about the theōria to Delos provide a key to the parallel. Apollo is a god of ritual purification and of vision, which correspond re17. As Burkert (p.474) notes, the “significance of 3 in purification ritual was emphasized by Aristotle” in On the Heavens 268a14. �112 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW spectively to the dualistic and monistic aspects of Pythagoreanism. Moreover, Pythagoras himself seems to have been identified by his early followers with the “Hyperborean Apollo.”18 Whatever we make of these two instances, the central use here presents a clearer parallel to the central use of theōrein: the theōria to Delos is delayed by the sort of conditions that might (but in this case apparently do not) lead one to resort to a “second sailing.” We learn at the beginning of the narrated conversation that Socrates, during the period of his confinement that corresponds to this lag, practices his own different kind of devotion to Apollo, one that combines the soul’s self-knowledge with the pursuit of communication through eidetic precision: He is not sure he clearly understood the injunction in his dreams to make music, fearing that his own passion for philosophy may have led him to construe the class of “music” too narrowly (60e–61b). Though superficially an abandonment of philosophy, the purification he carries out through poetry reflects the purification of the second sailing and of Socratic self-knowledge: it too is chosen as the “safer” course (61a8, 100d8). IV: The Republic In the Phaedrus, theōrein denotes, first, a steady attention to the vision of complete and eternal truth available to gods alone and, second, a non-serious delight in products of man’s art. In the Phaedo, it flirts with expressing a human vision of eternal truth, but then suggests that this excessive expectation is characteristic of a false philosophy. It becomes all the more striking, then, to find theōria used twice in the Republic to refer explicitly to a kind of intellectual vision of eternal and divine truth available to human beings. In Book VI, Socrates describes the philosopher as enjoying theōria “of all time and all being” (486a8).19 In the allegory of ascent from the cave to the sunlit regions, he remarks that it should be no surprise if the philosopher, coming into the darkness from “divine contemplations” (apo theiōn theōriōn, 517d4–5), cuts a ridiculous figure when forced to deal with shad18. Alternatively, he was thought to be the son of Apollo (Burkert, pp.141–146, 149, 168). 19. Quotations are from Allan Bloom’s translation of The Republic (New York: Basic Books, 1968), unless otherwise noted. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 113 owy human affairs. If we look to Socrates’s relationship to his interlocutors to explain this anomaly, we note that, of the twelve instances of theoric language in the Republic, all but one appear in conversation with Glaucon, even though he is Socrates’s explicit interlocutor in only a little over half the conversation.20 We note as well that Glaucon exhibits the single use of theōrein in the whole corpus by any character other than Socrates or the Athenian Stranger (517d5). The association of theoric language with Glaucon begins, in fact, in the opening scene: he and Socrates go together to the Piraeus to see the festival of Bendis, and when they have attended and watched (theōrēsantes), they start back to town (327b1). Although Socrates applies the participle to both himself and Glaucon, the motives he identifies are only his own: he wanted to see how they would conduct the novel festival (327a2–3). Socrates’s judgment, that both Athenians and Thracians conducted themselves with equal propriety (a4–5), reveals a philosophic motivation of his theōrein that will be a central facet of his discussion of the best city: a desire to see how different peoples with different laws and educations conduct themselves, especially toward the gods. The motives of Glaucon remain a question for us. Plato thus invites us to pay attention to two phenomena in relation to one another: the motives of theōrein and the psychology of Glaucon. The dramatic intervention of Glaucon also provokes the first instance of theōrein within the conversation. Mocking the city of rustic simplicity Socrates has described to Adeimantus as a city fit only for pigs, Glaucon insists that a city fit for men requires refinements, adornments and relishes. Socrates responds: “Now the true city is in my opinion the one we just described–a healthy city, as it were. But, if you want to, let’s look at [theōrēsōmen] a feverish city, too” (372e8). The feverish city becomes an object 20. The exception is in the discussion of regimes in Book Eight (556c10), where Socrates speaks of rich and poor citizens of an oligarchy mixing together at festivals (kata theōrias) or on campaigns. This sole use of theoric language in speech addressed to Adeimantus is a strictly traditional use, which underscores the nontraditional uses in Socrates’s exchanges with Glaucon. �114 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of attention when Glaucon’s unexamined passions introduce a new dimension of motivation into the inquiry. The question of justice began with Socrates’s perplexity about what exactly it is, a perplexity arising from a specific contradiction: according to Cephalus’s conception of justice, certain actions appear to be both just and not just (331c). With the intervention of Thrasymachus, the focus shifts from the resolution of perplexity to controversy over the choiceworthiness of justice and of different ways of life. The theōrein of the feverish city must satisfy not only the practical need to choose a way of life and the intellectual need to resolve perplexity, but also the demands of certain unquestioned appetites. The subsequent instances of theoric language fall into three types, corresponding to these intertwined dimensions of the motivation of the inquiry. In the discussion of the auxiliaries’ early education, theōrein is used within the framework of pursuing a chosen way of life. In the discussion of the philosophical nature and its education, Socrates gradually disentangles the philosopher’s motive to resolve perplexity from the ruler’s motive to maintain a certain way of life for himself and his city. In the discussion of imitation and dramatic poetry in Book Ten, Socrates reveals the hidden action of unacknowledged appetites in the theōrein of the spectator of dramatic poetry. This gradual process of disentanglement reveals both the advantages and limitations of Glaucon as an interlocutor in this inquiry. 1. Practical/Productive Theōrein. The next two instances of theōrein occur within the discussion of whether the children of the city destined for the warrior class should watch the older warriors conducting battle. Socrates, arguing that they should, speaks of an analogous need of potters’ apprenticed sons to learn the art by watching their fathers at work (467a4, c2). This kind of theōrein has four moments: 1) the projection of a possibility for oneself of being and doing; 2) the desire to appropriate a characteristic (power, skill, virtue) needed to fulfill that possibility; 3) observation of that characteristic in action in order to grasp its archē; 4) the emergence into view of the archē. The watching for and seeing the emergence of the archē that is theōrein proper is guided by a projection of one’s potential self toward which one’s aspirations are directed, which is to say by �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 115 the desirability of a way of life. The paradigm to which one’s attention is directed is an acting human being.21 2. Theōria and Philosophical Perplexity. When the noun theōria appears for the first time (486a8), in the context of the fitness of the philosopher for rule, it too, like practical/productive theōrein, results in a principle that informs action. Because of the philosopher’s contemplation of all time and being, he will think little of human life and not fear death: he will be neither petty nor cowardly. Again, an activity of attention leads to the attainment of a virtue. In the philosopher’s case, however, the principle of action is not the thing looked for in the contemplation, but an incidental result of it. His theōria leads to virtue not as a result of emulating another philosopher, but because all his love is directed to the objects of his attention rather than to objects that incite vice (cf. 500b-c). The education of the philosopher-king requires such absence of emulation, since he will only be fit to rule if he does not aspire to rule. The more detailed discussion of this education, however, brings to light a divergence between the motivational structure of the philosopher as king and of the philosopher as philosopher. The philosopher’s desire to know is initially aroused by a perplexity arising from contradictory appearances (523a–524d). He is drawn toward theōria for the sake of resolving this perplexity. As the allegory of the cave dramatizes, however, the prisoner released from the power of opinion does not know where he is going; only as he progresses stage by stage can he have any notion of the condition into which he is being drawn (515c–516b). Perplexity comes upon us, and we do not know where it will lead us, or whether its resolution will provide us with anything of instrumental or edifying use. Perplexity of the sort that motivated Socrates’s initial question about justice in Book One is brought to light in Book Seven as a motivation internally distinct from that of practical/productive appropriation, and as distinctly philosophical. The city attempts to bring it about, by means of planned perplexity, that the philosopher approaches the “true forms” as an 21. This, incidentally, is the case for every use of theōrein by Isocrates. �116 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW appropriating artist, so as to return to the city to reproduce images of them. The preference for “divine theōria” over human affairs, however, initially the philosopher’s qualification for office, soon appears as a source of his awkwardness in dealing with the phantoms of the shadowy world to which other men’s attention is confined (517d5). This shift of theōria from a source of harmony between the philosopher-king’s two roles to a source of conflict is highlighted by Glaucon’s dramatic objection to the requirement that the philosophers, for whom “a better life is possible” (519d), leave their divine theōria and return to the cave to rule. A closer look at his understanding of why this contemplative life is better (and his singular use of the verb theōrein) reveals his promise and limitations as interlocutor. 3. The Ascent and Peripeteia of Glaucon. The course of the discussion of poetic censorship reveals that Glaucon is much more sensitive than Adeimantus to the subtle effects on the soul of the productions of the Muses. Adeimantus treats poetry as a source of overt lessons and maxims, questioning what effect the opinions about justice enunciated by characters or narrators will have on the opinions of those who hear them and are persuaded of their truth; he is thus a fitting interlocutor while Socrates focuses on explicit opinions communicated about gods (377e–383c). When the focus shifts to effects of the less conscious process of imitation, Adeimantus is out of his depth (392d), and even more when it comes to the influence of music on the soul. At this point Glaucon, who has had a musical education (398e) and shows a clear understanding of how different musical modes communicate different dispositions of soul (399a–b) and can insinuate grace into it (401b–d), takes over as interlocutor.22 Theōrein, in both its earlier practical/productive and its later dramatic/poetic uses in the dialogue, expresses just the sort of aesthetic internalization to which Glaucon is especially attuned. One observes attractive features of another soul or its artful products, so as to incorporate them into one’s own soul and make it similarly fine. Accordingly, Glaucon understands all lovers of spectacles—that is, all who engage in theōrein in the traditional sense in which it is used in the opening scene of the dialogue— 22. As Socrates remarks, Glaucon remembers this discussion quite precisely much later in the dialogue (522a). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 117 to be lovers of learning (475d). If he expresses some contempt for those who show themselves especially eager for such learning, it is not because of their understanding of what learning is, but because of their lack of discrimination in the objects of their attention and internalization. It is in response to this understanding of observing-as-learning that Socrates first introduces the visual characterization of philosophical learning (475e), and not long after that he begins to speak of philosophical theōria (486a). Socrates thus begins where Glaucon begins: with a conception of learning as internalization of the finest things through observation, so as to produce a soul as fine as a fine statue.23 By supposing that the philosopher actually achieves theōria of things finer than any Glaucon had imagined in his feverish city, Socrates is able to use theoric language as a stepping stone from aesthetic education to the understanding of philosophy as knowledge of ignorance. By presenting the motivational structure of philosophical theōria as different from that of the theōrein of appropriation, Socrates opens a path toward a distinctly philosophical understanding of education as dialectical questioning, determined by the relationship of perplexity between the philosopher and the thing to be known, and modest about the possibility of attaining definitive knowledge. In the course of following that path, Glaucon the lover of dramatic poetry is caught in a classic plot of illusion of good fortune followed by reversal of fortune. Glaucon’s recapitulation of the Divided Line at the end of Book Six (511c–d), which Socrates pronounces “most adequate” (511d), appears to represent one of the great successes of Socratic teaching in Plato’s dialogues. Socrates has apparently succeeded in communicating to a non-philosopher the structure of being and intelligibility that orients the philosophical pursuit of knowledge. Following in the footsteps of Socrates’s use of theōria to describe the philosopher’s apprehension of the objects of his attention, Glaucon sums up: 23. Glaucon imagines the fine soul on the analogy of a finely sculpted statue (540c). When Socrates wants him to imagine the superior excellence of the philosophic soul, he claims that the soul as we experience it is as disfigured by foreign accretions as Glaucus–statues (611d–612a). To “see” it in its purity requires engaging in philosophy and experiencing in oneself the soul’s attempt to liken itself to the knowable (611e). �118 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW I understand . . . that you wish to distinguish that part of what is and is intelligible contemplated by the knowledge of dialectic [tēs tou dialegesthai epistēmēs . . . theōroumenon] as being clearer than that part contemplated by what are called the arts. (511c) In the educational drama, Glaucon here and in the Allegory of the Cave seems to have reached the high point of his fortunes. In Book Seven, however, Glaucon and the language of theōrein suffer a revealing fall. After the explanation of the Cave allegory and the recognition by Glaucon that the life of the liberated philosopher is a better one than the political life, the remainder of Book Seven is devoted to the discussion between Socrates and Glaucon about how such philosophers “will come into being and how one will lead them up to the light” (521c). The would-be philosopher must be assigned studies that “summon the intellect to the activity of investigation” (523b). Since, however, these philosophers are also warriors, their studies must also be useful for the conduct of war (521d). The mathematical disciplines are chosen to fulfill this double imperative of practical utility and intellectual awakening; but as the argument progresses, the tension within this duality brings to light an impediment to Glaucon’s grasp of the activity of the philosopher. Through the discussion of several branches of mathematics, Glaucon remains intent on detailing their practical benefits for the warrior (526d). After Socrates several times insists on their importance for turning the soul toward “what is always” (526d– 527b), Glaucon tries to make amends: And on the basis of the reproach you just made me for my vulgar praise of astronomy, Socrates, now I shall praise it in the way that you approach it. In my opinion it’s plain to everyone that astronomy compels the soul to see [horān] what’s above and leads it there away from the things here. (528e6–529a2) This time, Socrates responds with obvious sarcasm: In my opinion . . . it’s no ignoble [ouk agennōs] conception you have for yourself of what the study of the things above is. Even if a man were to learn something by tilting �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 119 his head back and looking [theōmenos] at decorations on a ceiling, you would probably believe he contemplates [theōrein] with his intellect and not his eyes. . . . I, for my part, am unable to hold that any study makes a soul look upward other than the one that concerns what is and is invisible. (529a9–b5) The implication that Glaucon fails to distinguish properly between visual and intellectual attentiveness seems odd given that Glaucon admitted and followed the initial distinction in the divided line between visible and intelligible objects (507b11), and affirmed Socrates’s inclusion of the heavens in the visible (509d5), and thus casts doubt on how well he understood what he was saying. Socrates’s response suggests further that Glaucon mistakenly thinks that his standard of praise is the same as that of Socrates. For Socrates, the contrast between higher and lower is one between what unchangingly and invisibly is and what partakes of change and is sensible; this corresponds to the difference between perfect and imperfect intelligibility. The dignity of the object of attention (and hence the act of contemplation corresponding to it) depends on how intelligible it is. For Glaucon, on the other hand, the dignity of the object of attention seems to depend on the magnificence it imparts to the soul. Glaucon seems to want above all to hold Socrates to his original promise that the philosophic preoccupation will produce virtues. The consideration of the stars, like Socrates’s “theōria of all time and being,” may suggest to him a noble unconcern for the petty cares that consume men, revealing an aristocratic dimension of Glaucon’s understanding of paideia as the cultivation of a soul superior to vulgar and frivolous concerns. He can only appreciate from the outside the excellent soul of the virtuous philosopher-king, or the superior existence of the philosopher freed from vulgar opinion and ignorance because he has taken possession of the most exalted objects of sight. Thus the irony in Socrates’s rebuke is complex: when he says Glaucon’s conception is “not ignoble” (ouk agennōs, literally “not non-wellborn” [529a9]), he is backhandedly pointing to its aristocratic weakness. The aristocrat may have contempt for the ethics of the marketplace, but he still expects a payoff from his leisurely pursuits in some acquisition recognizable by and valuable to others of his kind. �120 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Glaucon accepts the justice of Socrates’s rebuke, but now finds himself somewhat at a loss to specify what their study aims at; he asks vaguely how astronomy should be studied “in a way that’s helpful for what we are talking about” (ōphelimōs pros ha legomen) (529c). He has to acknowledge that he needs to be led by Socrates to alter his understanding of education to encompass what Socrates means by “the invisible and intelligible” (530b). He is no longer the passionate hero fulfilling his ambition to encompass all the best and highest things in his theōrein. Emblematic of this change in fortune is the immediately ensuing discussion of music, in which the study so dear to Glaucon, whose highest task had been engendering the graceful soul, now serves to lead the student up to problems and inquiry into causes (531c). The pursuit of the perfectly formed soul has unobtrusively given way to the cultivation of a dialectical way of being; but at the end of the discussion of dialectic, when Socrates lays down the need for a synoptic integration of earlier studies, to Glaucon’s mind the benefit of this is still that they will stick fast as an acquisition, whereas Socrates is primarily concerned with revealing who is dialectical (537c). Having revealed the impediments in Glaucon’s soul to the achievement of this philosophical transformation, and after an extensive elucidation of the varieties of disordered souls in Books Eight and Nine, Socrates returns to the dangers of poetry in Book Ten. There he brings to light certain harmful effects of poetic internalization that Glaucon needs to understand if he is to attend adequately to his own soul. 4. Dramatic/Poetic Theōrein. While the practical/productive theōrein in Book Five involves a conscious self-projection, in Book Ten the theōrein that belongs to the enjoyment of poetry seems at first to be something engaged in simply for its own sake. Socrates, however, reveals that it involves an unconscious selfprojection, one that may be at odds with one’s conscious choice of proper objects of imitation and aspiration. In this discussion, Socrates uses theōrein four times. In each case it refers to an attentiveness to works of art that constitutes a distraction from true knowledge. Socrates first assaults the traditional aura of grandeur belonging to the poet by arguing his impotence to lead men to truth, and then argues that the poet tends to corrupt the soul precisely through his power to fascinate us. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 121 The poet claims to be an interpreter of the divine, but Socrates places a middleman between the poet and the god, namely, the craftsman who makes imitations of the god-made form, which are in turn imitated by the poet. If we look to the idea that governed the craftsman’s production, we can look in the direction of the idea produced by the god. The poet, on the other hand, enchants us with words. Just as absorption (theōrein) in colors and shapes leads to being easily fooled by paintings (601a1–2), so an analogous absorption (theōrein) in words and speech leads to taking the poet’s falsehoods for truth (601a7–9). The contemplation the poet offers us is not a theophany but a screen between us and the divine. Next, Socrates exposes the danger of a seemingly innocent absorption in the passions of others that poetry represents: What is by nature best in us . . . relaxes its guard over this mournful part because it sees [theōroun] another’s sufferings, and it isn’t shameful for it, if some other man who claims to be good laments out of season, to praise and pity him; rather it believes that it gains the pleasure and wouldn’t permit itself to be deprived of it by despising the whole poem. (606a7–b5) The theōrein encouraged by the poets is not merely deceptive; it generates disorder in the soul, along with a deceptive self-oblivion on the part of the one disordered by them. Insofar as it leads to this unrecognized dissonance, poetry is the foe of philosophy, which seeks self-knowledge and preservation of the right order in oneself. In the final instance of theōrein in the dialogue, Socrates invites Glaucon to admit that he himself is subject to the witchcraft of the poets: “Aren’t you too, my friend, charmed by [poetry], especially when you contemplate [theōrēs] it through the medium of Homer?” “Very much so.”(607c8–d2) Glaucon depends on images for understanding.24 His unnecessary desires for fine living are responsible for introducing the poets 24. 533a; cf. 440d, 506d. �122 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW into the city in speech (372a–373c). His narrative of Gyges (359d–360d), his tragic description of the terrible fate of the just man who seems unjust (361e–362a), and his epic threat of the attack Socrates will be liable to for insisting on the rule of philosophers (473e–474a) all reveal a dramatic imagination, and suggest that the poets have insinuated their magic into his soul—a magic that smuggles into the soul a subconscious proto-tyrannical selfprojection by reinforcing and legitimating the unlawful desires normally repressed in pursuit of one’s conscious self-projection. Socrates reveals that the contest between the tyrant and the philosopher, which Glaucon judged as an external question in Book Nine, exists within Glaucon’s own soul, and the souls of all who enjoy poetry. He has revealed hidden motives in Glaucon’s love of poetry and spectacle, culminating a process that began with the first use of theōrein in the dialogue’s opening scene, and may thereby have opened for Glaucon a much-needed path to self-knowledge. In the Republic, then, theōrein in its “nonphilosophical” uses refers primarily to two ways in which we form our souls through observation of others and imitation of them. While we consciously imitate the conduct of those who exhibit characteristics we would like to possess, we often unconsciously allow poets to lodge within our souls the desire to imitate the figures presented to us in poetry. In both cases we internalize models of conduct and understandings of what it is to be human that shape our souls. In order to make the “examined life” available and attractive as an alternative, Socrates has to compete with the images of man fostered by the city and the poets by presenting a fictional image of man, the philosopher king, who fulfills the dearest ambitions of both civic action and education in the finest things. He is, as it were, the theoric conduit that channels civic and aesthetic aspirations into the philosophic desire to understand. But he and his theōria are only capable of engendering the more humble activity of dialectical inquiry if they are recognized as an exaggerated version of it. V: Theōria, Self-knowledge, and Dialectic In each of these three dialogues, Socrates at some point uses theoric language to put forward a fantasy version of the telos of philosophy tailored to the shortcomings of his interlocutors with respect to their capacity to practice philosophy as Socrates understands it. This prac- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN 123 tice involves: 1) a sense of dissatisfaction with ignorance, 2) a desire to transcend it and reach for truth, and 3) a moderation of one’s expectations of success. Phaedrus, absorbed in the beauty of human verbal artifice, requires a vision that, while promising benefits to the practice of rhetoric, points him beyond his satisfaction with beautiful speeches to a need for truth. Glaucon, in his quest for beauty and grace of soul, already harbors potential seeds of dissatisfaction, but the objects with which he seeks to furnish his soul do not lead him to adequate knowledge of his ignorance; Socrates has to offer him higher objects for internalization and deeper self-knowledge in order to direct his longings toward philosophy. Simmias and Cebes already long for wisdom of a mathematical-naturalistic sort, but their excessive hopes for attaining it lead to despair and misology, and must be moderated by the “second sailing” and the exposure of their erroneous notion of knowledge. Finally, though it is unclear to what extent Socrates succeeds in moving any of these characters in the direction of philosophy as he understands it, the more important thing is that the reader see the direction he is trying to go. When we compare the three dialogues, we see that the direction is substantially the same. Dialectical inquiry presupposes a certain background trust in a natural eidetic distinctness of things that it can neither demonstrate nor definitively grasp. The ambition for such a definitive grasp in theōria is quite human, but its complete fulfillment is beyond human power. At the same time, it would be rash to reject the intimation that there is some natural eidetic structure to things which orients our efforts to understand, draw proper distinctions, come to agreement, and uncover first principles. Dialectic, whether understood as classing and distinguishing, as examining the cogency of ideas and hypotheses, or as penetrating to more fundamental levels of hypothesis, is always incomplete and on the way, but also always (and ever anew) making headway. The closer Socrates comes in the dialogue to forthrightly presenting his philosophical practice in this modest way, the less heavily he relies on the language of theōria to express the achievement of philosophy. Theōria and theōrein, then, are not technical, precise or static terms for Plato, but words addressed to the various conditions of specific interlocutors. If they offer a key to his understanding of the philosophical experience and the fruits of philosophy, it is only by marking moments in a dialectical transcendence of false starts in that direction. �124 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Two Villanelles Kemmer Anderson The Socratic Dilemma What is the news? Has the ship come from Delos, at the arrival of which I am to die?—Socrates to Crito The ship from Delos will always arrive with news from the gods that juggle your fate. Who decides if you are dead or alive? When the sailors land, how can you survive the execution prepared on this date? Cargo ships from Delos sometimes arrive with prophecies from Apollo to drive away the judgment of a court’s mandate whose law decides who is dead or alive. From what source do politicians derive their hate to turn the truth that guides our state? You think the ship from Delos will arrive on time? But let us through reason revive your legal case and find a delegate to sway the city to leave you alive for now and permit our learning to thrive, though your words make some citizens irate. The ship from Delos will always arrive With that grave choice to be dead or alive. R. Kemmer Anderson has taught at the McCallie School in Chattenooga, Tennesee for over three decades. �POEMS | ANDERSON 125 Palamedes’s Ghost Then I suppose that you have only heard of the rhetoric of Nestor and Odysseus, which they composed in their leisure hours when at Troy, and never of the rhetoric of Palamedes?—Socrates to Phaedrus I would teach Andromache how to write Her flesh, a record of her eyes and ears To leave behind a mirror of this sight. The alphabet of blood seen in signs might Cut a path through the mind stained by her tears After Andromache learns how to write. The vowel screams from these war wounds would bite Like flames and burn the heart with countless biers Of piled dead through mirrors from this sight. Consonants of bruised sounds, broken bones right In front of a reader’s eyes print our fears When I teach Andromache how to write Lettered memories of her city’s fright. When armies rip through lines of sons with spears Leaving mirrors of grief strewn on site, Words remain, picked clean from decaying light That casts nations into long rotting years Of death when women have not learned to write A breathing mirror loomed and thread from sight. �126 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Two Poems Elliott Zuckerman Not Twins We’ll never have enough rehearsal time. Someone who looks a little bit like me and I are playing twins. We’re asked to shout some words, one to the other, but no one will tell us which one shouts which words. No doubt the overseer, who seems distracted, is thinking of something else, perhaps another pair of twins. We sit at matching windows while the players, tolerably in time, proceed from door to door. Nearby the Playhouse is already showing posters of the play. People are lining up. The stagehands are preparing. I’m glad it isn’t to be called The Shouting Twins. I wish they’d chosen someone else to play my counterpart. It’s hard for him to look like me, for me to look like him. His ears lack lobes. Nor is there kinship in our eyes or in our souls. We hardly think alike. Perhaps we could succeed if there were more rehearsal time. Elliott Zuckerman is tutor emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis. �POEMS | ZUCKERMAN Carrying Cordelia I am assigned to carry in Cordelia. The old and mobled king is weakened by the recent incidents. I have the arms and gravitas for what they call a gracious act. Right now we’re covered in heavy sheets of thunder, wind and rain. There’s ranting and expostulation. The lightning doesn’t seem to work, but it is silent anyway. A lactic hiss now drowns out any other sound. Hey, ho. I still have time, but I must rush to dip my paddle in the flood and get to the king in my hurra-canoe. 127 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. 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. 127 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 Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Fall 2014 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T. H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Trentina, Allison Sachs, Joe Lee, J. Scott Lenkowski, Jon Painter, Corinne Pappas, John D. Shiffman, Mark Anderson, Kemmer Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 56, Number 1 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Fall 2014. 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